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.
“MUSLIM BAN” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H2175-H2180 on March 17, 2017.
The State Department is responsibly for international relations with a budget of more than $50 billion. Tenure at the State Dept. is increasingly tenuous and it's seen as an extension of the President's will, ambitions and flaws.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
MUSLIM BAN
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, happy St. Patrick's Day.
March 17 is St. Patrick's Day--a day that, for so many, has become a reason for frivolity and joy and fun. Some think it is a day just for drinking, but St. Patrick is remembered not because he drank, not because of frivolity, but because he was a dedicated Christian committed to serving the Lord. I think it is good on St. Patrick's Day to remember why he was a saint.
{time} 1245
Now going 180 degrees from talking about saints, Mr. Speaker, I think it is worth discussing the decision made by a Federal judge in Hawaii, also in Maryland. We have judges who have become dictators. We have judges who have ceased to abide by the Constitution. They have widely applied themselves as politicians, though they do not run for office.
A true judge, a conscientious and ethical judge, would review a document such as the President's executive order for what it is, what it says, what it does. Intent is not an issue. What does it do?
The President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, was seeking and is seeking to protect Americans, but we have judges who are not interested in protecting Americans so much as they are patronizing and sucking up to the liberals in the country: those in the media, those in entertainment, those in their highbrow circles. They are not interested in following the Constitution or the law.
We had a hearing in the Committee on the Judiciary on the Ninth Circuit this week. The Ninth Circuit apparently is the most overturned circuit in the country. It has a massive number more cases filed in their circuit than any other circuit. In fact, I have now filed a bill that would divide the Ninth Circuit so that the Ninth Circuit would be comprised of California only, and then all the other States--Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming I believe is in, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, and territories--I may have missed a State, but all of the other States and territories would be in a new 12th Circuit. The judges who are currently on the 12th Circuit Court in my bill--who are currently part of the Ninth Circuit would remain with the Ninth Circuit. We would have a new circuit, and the judges would be appointed by the current President.
I know there are a lot of people in California who have great sympathy for that, have been begging for years to be carved out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals because their destructive, unconstitutional decisions are doing great harm to those who believe in the Constitution as written, not as some liberal judge thought it might should be as he tries or she tries to play up to friends at their get-
togethers. They would be hailed as being so wise, but the truth is, as Scripture talks about, these are people who are wise in their own eyes, but they are doing great harm to the United States of America.
When anyone in any kind of leadership position loses their common sense, they are educated beyond common sense--they educate common sense completely out of some folks in the United States now--we have problems. And anytime people are educated and taught to believe that what instinctively they knew or were taught was not the right thing to think, and those people become leaders in the country, that country speeds up in its travel down the road to the dustbin of history.
No nation has ever lasted forever. No nation ever will in this world. It is not going to happen. So the question is, from its founding, how long does it go? It depends on how long the leaders of that nation can keep good sense within their consideration in making decisions. That is not happening. Good sense is not being used by judges who have assumed powers they never had, were never given.
Under the Constitution, the powers regarding refugees, immigration, those decisions are left to the President. Some judge may say, oh, you can't consider religion, but indeed any judge that so says is completely wrong. Thank God religion has been considered many times, as when Jews were being persecuted and killed, it was appropriate to say that we want to welcome Jews out of those horrors as refugees, bring them in. But this Nation is being put at risk by judges who are wise in their own eyes.
Now, there is an article here about the Hawaii judge. It is in The Guardian. It was written by Les Carpenter, Oliver Laughland, and Liz Barney. It was written apparently before the decision was made.
``U.S. district judge Derrick Watson is one of several judges hearing arguments over the ban in the final hours before its implementation. He said on Wednesday afternoon after hearing oral arguments that he would issue a written ruling before 6pm Hawaii time. Hawaii was the first state to challenge the second version of Trump's travel ban, after the first was halted by court order.
``The state has argued that the ban is unconstitutional, and that it will suffer damage to its local economy and to various educational and religious institutions. It also argued that some Hawaiians will be prevented from reuniting with family members swept up in the ban.''
That is heart rending, but the fact is none of those are a basis for reversing a Presidential executive order that Congress and the Constitution together gave the President to issue.
We also find from comments that the courts didn't look to the four corners of the document and look what the document says because many of us know that as long as the Constitution is the foundational bedrock for the country, we have a solid foundation. But when we have judges like this Derrick Watson or the judge from Maryland or James Robart, who issued a ban in the first travel order, when they don't pay attention to the Constitution but pay more attention to what they hear from their liberal friends who are disgusted by the elected President of the United States, and they know they will be heroes, and they long for the accolades of the intelligentsia, which actually isn't the intelligent--
educated, yes; intelligent, no.
The Constitution gives certain powers to certain parts of the government. Congress has the power to make decisions on immigration, migration, naturalization, but it has the power to delegate those responsibilities as it sees fit to the President, and it has done so. The President has certain powers of his own office, of his own right to protect the United States of America. But these judges think that you should not consider the fact that one of the most educated people in the world on what Islam is and what it isn't says the Islamic State is Islam. He has a Ph.D. in Islamic studies from the University of Baghdad, as I recall, and he happens to be the head of the Islamic State.
But the judge would have us disregard the fact that a man who spent his life studying Islam, Koran, the Holy Koran because the Koran that is brought around to some of our offices, they take out verses that have to do with violence against those who are not Muslims, but the Holy Koran he spent his life studying, but these judges would say, oh, no, no, you can't consider the fact that these radical Islamists claim to be Muslim or Islamists, you can't consider that.
One article out this week pointed out that somebody should tell these judges that the terrorists coming in from the nations designated by the President are Muslim. They are not Christians. They are not Jews. They are not secularists. They are radical Islamists. It is ridiculous to have to continually state the obvious that we all know, that all Muslims are not a threat to the United States, but it is absurd not to understand that those who in the name of Allah are killing, beheading, torturing, trying to destroy a free society in the name of Allah, they should not be allowed into the United States. If they are U.S. citizens and their goal is to supplant the U.S. Constitution with sharia law, that is treasonous.
That is why I was so pleased with President Sisi, as a Muslim leader, telling a room full of imams: We have got to stand up to the radicals who have hijacked our religion. President Obama didn't know that. He kept continuing to say that, oh, no, the Islamic State, it is not Islamic, these Islamic terrorists are not Islamic, when actually wise Muslim leaders like President Sisi, they understand, yes, these people are Islamic. They claim it in the name of Allah. They claim it in the name of the Holy Koran, but they have hijacked our religion, and it is time to stand up to them. As long as we have world leaders who are, metaphorically speaking, without clothes, and nobody has the nerve among the world leaders to say: you are naked, put on some clothes. Again, for those who are educated beyond their intellectual level, that means you have got to call it like it is and don't just go along to play to the crowd, the media, the Hollywood types. Stand up and call it like it is. We have a President who is trying to do that.
{time} 1300
There is no doubt, as Justice Scalia said about one of the ill-
advised decisions previously made by the Supreme Court, this will end up costing American lives. These decisions, if they are allowed to stand, by these unconstitutional judges will cost American lives, and the blood will be on the judges' hands in their pursuit of accolades and popularity among the neo-intellectual elite. They left common sense behind and put our Nation at risk. It is tragic.
I have the two decisions from the courts--one from the District of Hawaii and one from the District of Maryland. But it is interesting. In this article I was reading, Mr. Speaker, it says the judge, within just a matter of brief hours, was going to have this 42- or 43-page decision made. Let's see. This is the Hawaii decision, 43 pages. It seems to me somebody must have been working on that before oral arguments. The decision must have been worked on before that to have a 43-page decision just within a matter of a few hours.
But let's face it, the litigant surely knew before they ever had a hearing what the judge surely knew before the hearing--that he was biased, prejudiced, and was in no way going to have a fair hearing. He was going to end up ridiculing the President of the United States, and unwittingly, witlessly, putting America at risk.
We have testimony here from the FBI Director saying: We will vet these people, but we have nothing against which we can check the information they give us. Yeah, we will vet them, but we got nothing to check their information against.
As Director Comey pointed out: At least in Iraq, we had government records from Iraq, we had the criminal records. But in Syria, since the Obama administration was so diametrically opposed to the Assad administration in Syria, well, the official government certainly wasn't sharing information. And since this administration said we were going to stop the Islamic State--even though we did nothing from the administration decisions, at least, but help the Islamic State grow bigger and strong, and kept sending weapons, material to what the Obama administration thought or said were our friends and allies, but actually ended up repeatedly allowing the weaponry, the heavy artillery tanks, to fall into the hands of the Islamic State--well, the Islamic State was not sharing the information they had about the people of Syria.
And, in fact, Mr. Baghdadi made clear that they were going to get some of their best warriors mixed in with refugees, and they surely have. When you have judges who close their eyes, wet their finger, and hold it up for liberal friends to blow on so they know which direction they should move, well, we get bad decisions that put the Nation at risk.
For those of us who spent much of our lives studying history, it is very clear. Since you know no nation lasts forever, then you look at important milestones along the rise and along the demise, and these are the kind of decisions that lead to a country's demise. When you refuse to recognize what your enemies say--that they are your enemies, they are going to destroy your way of life, they are going to get refugees who are terrorists into your country--because you are so stupid you don't know how to defend yourself, you want to pat yourselves on the back for being so open-minded and open-doored that you allow your killer to come in and kill you, just like the proverbial song and tale taking in a snake, warming it, bringing it back to life, and it bites the rescuer; or the tale of the tortoise carrying the scorpion across the water and then getting stung. When people tell you they despise your way of life, they are going to bring your way of life down. When their documents tell you that they believe that you are infidels and need to be destroyed, there has to be somebody at the top of the country's leadership that understands the risk and stands up to protect the country.
And when people like these judges take the Constitution into their own hands, rip it up, and say, ``I don't care what restrictions we have on us, I don't have any restrictions, I am a Federal judge for life,'' well, that is only so long as the judge has good behavior. And these judges have not had good behavior. They have taken powers under themselves--their name might as well be Chavez or Morsi--taking power into their own hands that they were never supposed to have.
But at least in the case of Chavez and, possibly, Morsi, they won elections. There was a great deal of fraud involved in Morsi's election. It was questionable whether he actually won. The threats eliminated any contest to the election results. But the 30 million or so that went to the streets and demanded his ouster in Egypt, the greatest public step in world history, demanded the removal of an unconstitutional leader in world history. There has never been 30 million people go to the streets peaceably. It wasn't all peace. But the part that wasn't peace was caused by the Muslim Brotherhood. That is why they have been labeled as a terrorist organization, and that is why the United States should label them as a terrorist organization.
Regardless of what anybody thinks about President Trump, his order was an attempt to protect Americans against judges who think they are unaccountable because we haven't impeached near enough and who become dictators and seize power that was never given to them.
I have got a bill we are preparing that would eliminate any jurisdiction for any Federal court other than the Supreme Court to take up an issue involving immigration of refugees, other than immigration courts, but not on a constitutional level, not to issue an injunction to stop a congressional action or a Presidential action. That would have to come from the Supreme Court, and that is the way it ought to be.
When the Constitution was written, there was only one Federal court provided for. That was the United States Supreme Court. Any other court that is Federal in this country owes its life, its jurisdiction, to the U.S. Congress. As some have said in other applications, ``We brought them into the world and we can take them out,'' as far as their courts are concerned; and we need to do that. We need to take their courts out of the business of making decisions that overrule congressional and Presidential action on refugees and our national security when it is involved with those refugees.
At a hearing that Dr. Alid Perez and Steve King, my friend from Iowa, set up and held yesterday, there were very touching stories of Christians, Yazidis, the persecution of Jews in the Middle East. We heard from people that know what it is to be persecuted by radical Islamists. They see how stupid the policies have been in this country.
We heard from one of the people in the Homeland Security Department that with the massive millions of dollars that Congress appropriated to be used in countering violent extremism, an inarticulate euphemism, that we have spent millions on things like teaching young school choirs Muslim songs. Now, that is one of the contributing factors to the senseless Orlando killings, the San Bernardino killings, the Boston marathon killings--choirs. A contributing factor is that we have wasted millions of dollars, maybe billions, on outreach programs that should not necessarily be the role of some parts of our law enforcement.
I challenged FBI Director Mueller that they had not even gone to the mosque where Tsarnaev went to find out if his pattern had changed, if his behavior had changed, you know, if he was memorizing more and more scripture than he ever had.
We often hear after these shootings, these killings, or these bombings take place: Well, he was becoming more and more religious.
Well, that can be an indication that somebody has become radicalized. There are a number of factors.
Kim Jensen from the FBI, who prepared 700 pages or so on training people how to spot radical Islamists, well, he had his 700 pages purged from training materials for a long period of time. Finally, they realized somebody really needs to know what radical Islam is. They allowed some of the training materials to be used again--maybe all of them--but only for a limited number of FBI agents, as I understand it. We had material that was removed during the purge of our State Department, Homeland Security Department, intelligence departments, agencies, during the purge of their training materials, removed what our Federal agents need to know in order to be able to spot if somebody is no longer a peace-loving Muslim but now has been radicalized and wants to kill American infidels.
There are things that can be spotted if you know what to look for. We have people that know how to train for those things. Phil Haney with Homeland Security knew. With this scientific methodology of finding the connections between radical Islamists, as we have heard publicly, he had identified 800 who may have terrorist ties--reviewed 400, where nearly every one of them ended up being named on the terrorist watch list, but the other 400 were not ever analyzed.
{time} 1315
No telling how many of those potential terrorist individuals may actually kill people, kill Americans some day, if they haven't already.
Although Secretary Napolitano said we get pinged and we connect the dots, yet she was Secretary when somebody high--maybe her, but probably someone else--was eliminating the dots, thousands of pages of dots, dots representing terrorist ties. They wiped them out. They erased them.
Phil Haney saw it as it was happening, was able to capture much that was being deleted, that would allow us to know who in the United States has terrorist ties. Under President Obama, our ability to identify our enemy was greatly weakened, and now we have judges that will put us even further at risk.
But you see it repeatedly through history. When a nation's leaders begin to think they are so wise, so above the fray that they refuse to recognize a direct threat to the nation, then the nation is--it speeds up its trip to that dustbin of history. My continued hope and prayer is that this administration will reverse that slide.
I know there are many that say that you have a cycle--whether it was ancient Greece, Rome, other societies--where they pursue freedom, they have some freedom, they begin to lose freedom, they fall under a dictatorship, a totalitarian regime, and then the cycle goes on. But my reading of history leads me to believe perhaps it is more like, can be like, bell-shaped curves where you can go up, create more and more freedoms, have periods where you lose freedoms, but if you have a generation or two that stands up and recaptures those freedoms, you could have another bell-shaped curve. It doesn't have to be a cycle where you completely lose your freedom. But the way we are headed, this will happen.
I was hearing from my friend Secretary Tom Price yesterday that there are 76,000 employees in Health and Human Services, and we are not talking about people that even put Band-Aids on those who need medical care. We are talking mainly about bureaucrats. That is one of the things that contributed so mightily to the increased cost of health care: so many more bureaucrats were being hired, had to be hired, more and more regulations.
You had IRS agents, by the thousands, that had to be hired in order to implement ObamaCare. They weren't going to help anybody's health. They might actually cause problems with people's health--ulcers, at least.
But this Nation is at risk. We have gotten a reprieve, a chance to catch our breath, restore freedom.
As I have said before, for those who have read ``Nineteen Eighty-
Four'' by George Orwell, the main thing that Orwell got wrong was the date, because we now have eyes in our homes wherever we are that are staring at us, allow the government to stare at us through our own computers, through our own smartphones. When watching the movie of
``1984,'' it actually is an eye like a picture, but what it really is these days, they are computer screens, smartphone screens. The government can watch any time it wants.
We were assured that the government would not be watching like that unless they followed the law or got a FISA court warrant, but Edward Snowden showed that--those of us who heard testimony and heard statements from people in authority about what they would do and not do--has been proven to be false.
That became clear to me when I saw the affidavit seeking a warrant for all of Verizon's data on all of their customers, all of their calls, all of the information, because the Fourth Amendment says it has to be with particularity. You have got to be specific, what it is you are seeking, make sure there is probable cause to believe a crime is being committed and this person committed it, and that there is evidence to show that that is being sought, and then you get the warrant.
That is the way I reviewed applications for warrants repeatedly when I was a judge, but not anymore. No, no. A guy comes in, swears to a FISA court judge that at one time I had great trust in because we were assured, hey, these are appointed--nominated, at least--confirmed Federal judges. They would never violate the Constitution. Well, we found out that is just not true. They became a rubber stamp.
So the particularity in the affidavit we saw was: We need all the information on all the customers Verizon has. The FISA judge, supposedly out there to protect Americans' private information, said: Oh, well, that is particular enough. You want everything, all of the numbers, all of the information. Okay, here is the order. Here is the warrant. Verizon, turn over everything you have got on all the numbers you have.
Well, so much for protection of our rights by the FISA court. We now know we are not protected by the FISA court. We can't trust the FISA court.
As I said in our hearing last week--well, I have said it publicly--
unless our intelligence agencies produce the culprits who violated the law and did not follow the law in masking the name, minimizing the transcripts, unless our intelligence agencies can root out the people that have been violating the law, I will vote against a reauthorization of 702.
I know they say: Well, we need all of this power to keep us safe. But we have competing interests here. On the one hand, we have a government that yearns to be bigger and bigger and know more and more until it knows everything about everybody; and on the other hand, we have got people wanting to be safe and wanting their government to protect them. So there has to be a balance.
But when government officials can get every bit of information about your private life, then why do we even need a Congress? You have got bureaucrats making your decisions, know all about you. Might as well let them make the rest of your personal decisions. They know everything else you know.
So we are living in a dangerous time, but the judges have got to be reined in. I hope that my colleagues will join us in restricting the ability of a district or circuit court, any Federal court other than the Supreme Court, taking up these types of national security issues involving refugees or immigrants, because it looks like that is the best thing we can do at this time.
In the meantime, I do intend to review more information about these two judges from Hawaii and Maryland--any others that may join hands as they jump off the cliff--and see if their conduct seems to be sufficiently bad conduct to require their removal from office.
I know this will be looked at as a political thing, but it is not. We are talking about the freedoms of every Democrat, every Republican, everybody that is not identified with a party--every American. The judges have overtaken the Constitution.
In the name of political correctness, we have ended up, apparently, according to the information that is coming out, allowing people who happen to be Muslim to have total access to our congressional computer systems. This article from March 15 in the Conservative Review by Luke Rosiak--and apparently, he has done a great deal of digging on this story. He seems to have more stories about it.
Well, let me touch on the one from March 13:
``Congressional IT staffers who are the subject of a criminal investigation into misusing their positions had full access to Members'
`correspondence, emails, confidential files,' and there was almost no tracking of what they did, a former House technology worker said.
``Imran Awan bullied central IT to bend the rules for him so there wouldn't be a paper trail about the unusually high permissions he was requesting. And their actions were not logged, so Members have no way of knowing what information they may have taken, the central IT employee said.
``Awan ran technology for multiple House Democrats, and soon four of his relatives--including brothers Abid and Jamal--appeared on the payroll of dozens of other Members''--of Congress--``collecting $4 million in taxpayer funds since 2010.
``U.S. Capitol Police named him and his relatives as subjects of a criminal probe on February 2, and banned them from the complex's computer networks. But Members of Congress for whom they worked have downplayed their access or publicly ignored the issue.''
And, of course, the reason is no one wants to be seen as a racist. Islam, being Muslim, is not a race; it is a religion. And for some, it is not only a religion, it is a form of government that some--
fortunately, a minority--think should replace our own Constitution.
Anyway, the article goes on: `` `They had access to everything. Correspondence, emails, confidential files--if it was stored on the Member's system, they had access to it,' the former House Information Resources technology worker with first-hand knowledge of Imran's privileges told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
``Technology employees who work for Members must initially get authority from HIR, a component of the House's chief administrative officer, which maintains campus-wide technology systems.
``There were some things--like access to the House email system that were totally controlled by the technicians at HIR. In order for certain permissions to be granted, a form was required to ensure that there was a paper trail for the requested changes. Imran was constantly complaining that he had to go through this process and trying to get people to process his access requests without the proper forms. Some of the permissions he wanted would give him total access to the Members' stuff.''
And again, he used the threat of calling someone bigoted because he was Muslim if he was not given the total access that this person now being investigated as a criminal said he needed.
And it is amazing how many people gave him the full access he wanted without the proper credentials, without the proper background investigation, because no one wanted to be called bigoted since he was Muslim.
{time} 1330
`` `IT staff at HIR can be tracked for every keystroke they make,' the worker said. But by comparison, `when these guys were granted access to the Member's computer systems there is no oversight or tracking of what they may be doing on the Member's system. For example they could make a copy of anything on the Member's computer system to a thumb drive or have it sent to a private server that they had set up and no one would know.'
``That raises questions about why Members are so quick to brush off the seriousness of the investigation.''
Mr. Speaker, as you know, we are not hearing a lot of people talk about it. We are not seeing a bunch of stories about it. But this is critical to the ongoing of Congress' actions. You can't have privileged communications that allow us to know what is going on in the departments, agencies, over which we have oversight--you can't have access to that kind of information.
The wrong people know everybody we talk to, everything that is said. They know how to fend off and best come after America. They know how to manipulate us and do so so much easier and better. You don't have to be Russian, apparently, to get access to the Democratic National Committee's emails.
I am still really interested to know if any of these five who didn't have proper background investigations, that worked on so many of our Democratic friends' computer systems, if they possibly helped set up the Democratic National Committee's computer system.
`` `After being notified by the House Administration Committee, Abid was removed from our payroll.' '' This is a quote. `` `We are confident that everything in our office is secure,' Hilarie Chambers, chief of staff for Democratic Representative Sander Levin of Michigan, told TheDCNF.
``Multiple House IT workers said it is impossible for Members' offices to make that judgment, and that Capitol Police--who are running an investigation that involves cybercrimes and current and potential international fugitives, despite their primary duties being providing physical security--aren't capable of determining what actually occurred either.
``The Capitol Police web page listing their authority, scope of work, and expertise does not mention the word `computers.'
``A Fairfax County, Virginia, police report shows that the brothers' stepmother called the police on them in January, and a relative said Imran has been out of the country attempting to access assets stored in Pakistan in his deceased father's name. The relative said they forced her to sign power of attorney documents against her will.
``After naming them as suspects in a criminal investigation, the Capitol Police have not taken their passports or arrested them. The brothers previously took a $100,000 loan from a fugitive wanted by U.S. authorities, Dr. Ali Al-Attar, who has fled to Iraq and been linked to Hezbollah.''
Just gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling, Mr. Speaker, that we have got people with ties owing money to known associates of the Hezbollah terrorist organization and their having full access to Members' computers.
This says: ``Imran ran technology for Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz--who resigned as head of the Democratic National Committee after a disastrous email hack that was blamed on Russians--and had the password to an iPad used for DNC business.
``Politico described the investigation this way: `Five House staffers are accused of stealing equipment from Members' offices without their knowledge and committing serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network.'
``But it later said Hill staffers were downplaying the information security component, writing, `Sources close to the House investigation said the former staffers, while able to view some Member data, did not have access to any classified information.'
``That description rankled multiple House IT workers, who told TheDCNF those semantics misleadingly made it seem like they didn't have access to extremely sensitive information.
`` `Classified' is a terminology used by spy agencies and other executive branch agencies, not generally Congress, with the exception of the Intelligence Committee. The full email correspondence and hard drives of Members of Congress are nonetheless sensitive, extremely private, and likely to contain privileged information of the utmost import.
``And an email need not deal with national security to open that Member to blackmail or extortion. All a rogue IT staffer would need to do was threaten to release emails that were politically embarrassing.
``The central IT staffer said any suggestion that the brothers' access didn't span the full gamut of congressional intrigue was silly because they were the ones giving out permissions.
`` `When a new Member begins, they guide them on everything from which computer system to purchase to which constituent management system to go with and all other related hardware purchases. Then they install everything and set up all the accounts and grant all the required permissions and restrictions,' the staffer said.
`` `In effect, they are given administrative control of the Members' computer operations. They then set up a remote access so they can connect from wherever they are and have full access to everything on the Member's system.'
``Numerous Members of Congress who employed the suspects wouldn't say whether they've been fired or what steps they've taken to examine whether their information is safe.''
Spokesmen for a number of Members of Congress ``all ignored requests or refused to say.
``The central IT worker said they were ignoring the problem in the hopes that it will go away, but that their apathy speaks to the problem.
`` `Unfortunately, as the recent election has shown, security of computer systems on the Hill is not really taken seriously.' ''
So we are told now, this article from March 15, says that the Capitol Police are getting outside help. We will see.
Might I inquire how much time I have?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Texas has 5 minutes remaining.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, in my remaining time, I want to address the question of ObamaCare.
Two years ago when Joe Biden was Vice President, making him President of the Senate, there was a compromise. Instead of doing complete and full repeal of ObamaCare as Republicans have been promising for years, there was a compromise: All right. We will take out all but the regulatory authority, those things that actually caused the greatest increase and expense.
But it didn't change the fact, Mr. Speaker, that we had made a pledge to America that I didn't help write but our leaders of the Republican Party in the House did, and it said: Because the new healthcare law kills jobs, raises taxes, increases the cost of health care, we will immediately take action to repeal this law. Then it goes into some detail about that.
Then we know we had A Better Way, Speaker Ryan, our leadership, current leadership's Better Way. And this was from June 22 of 2016.
The plan begins by laying out five principles. It begins by repealing ObamaCare. That is all of it as its first principle. And the last sentence of the paragraph says: ``We need a clean start in order to pursue the patient-centered reforms the American people deserve.''
That is exactly right, and I was glad that our leadership of our party put that in there because we needed a full repeal.
But 2 years ago, it wasn't a complete repeal. More so than what is being done now, in what we are being told is the new bill. It was more repeal then. But even then we wanted to do a full repeal, but we were told because Joe Biden could come over from the White House, come down Pennsylvania Avenue and take the presiding officer's seat straight down the hall, that he would likely rule that other part was not in compliance with the Byrd rule.
In essence, the Byrd rule basically means, if something is merely incidental in its effect on the budget instead of a direct effect on the budget, then it may not be considered under the procedure that was being used, and that procedure only requires 51 votes.
So the thing that everybody knew back then is, if it were a Republican in the presiding officer's seat, of course, would say all of this, especially the part that was taken out, would survive the Byrd rule because it is not just an incidental effect on the budget. It is the most dramatic effect on the budget of most any bill that Congress has ever taken up--dramatic and not incidental, dramatic.
And so now we are told: Look, everybody needs to get on board with this new bill that doesn't go as far as the one 2 years ago, and it leaves all these regulations and things, all that power. 1,400 times it says the Secretary will make the rules, regulations to implement the bill. But we are being told it is okay; you don't have to knock those out because now we have Secretary Price that can do that.
Well, for one thing, if he could, then that would mean when the next Secretary of Health and Human Services comes along and it is a Democrat, you can put them all back. We hadn't done anything. We didn't accomplish anything. We just had a little breather.
But we are also told the prices will likely continue up. There may be a 10 percent drop of the two to four times the healthcare costs, health insurance costs, at least, are increasing.
But since we know it will be a Republican in the chair, then the Republican in the chair in the Senate will be free to do the right thing and say, honestly, truthfully, absolutely, the repeal of all this regulatory massive mess is dramatically going to affect the budget, not incidentally. So it survives the Byrd rule. It stays in.
There are things that are in the new bill that probably won't survive that analysis that have been added.
Why don't we do what we promised for 7 long years, repeal all of ObamaCare? But we are told there is a second bucket, a second stage, where Secretary Tom Price--in whom I have got great faith because he knows health care, he knows healthcare law--can change those regulations.
Well, we also know that this is going to be taken to court very quickly. And even I, as the conservative appellate chief justice that I was at one time, would probably look at that and say wait a minute.
The law gives you the power to create regulations to implement the bill; it doesn't give you the power to make regulations that will destroy the bill. So it won't have to be a liberal judge that can knock down regulations.
I remember my late friend Justice Scalia not talking about a particular case, but talking about the issue of when Congress doesn't do something and has a lawsuit to do it instead, Justice Scalia said: If you guys in Congress don't have the guts to stop something you have the power to stop, don't come running over to the Supreme Court to demand we do it. You do your job. That is not our job.
{time} 1345
And this is the case with ObamaCare. It needs to be repealed--as Mitch McConnell said, root and branch. And it survives the Byrd Rule, and then we really help America.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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