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“ISSUES OF THE DAY” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H1487-H1490 on Feb. 8, 2019.
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:
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ISSUES OF THE DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2019, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized for the remainder of the hour.
Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, may I inquire how much time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Texas has approximately 47 minutes remaining.
Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I appreciate my dear friend and, actually, college friend for these many years, since we were in school together at Texas A&M, and the great tribute.
There was another superb tribute today paid to a giant of a man in more recent days. John Dingell had been reduced to a wheelchair, but having visited with him when his health was great and when he was in his wheelchair, Madam Speaker, I can confirm either way he was a giant of a man.
Now, make no mistake, we had some significant political differences of opinion, but I never, ever had to wonder about the integrity, the honesty, just the greatness of John Dingell. He shot straight. Sometimes they were things you didn't want to hear.
I loved his mischievous sense of humor, his way of making his point. I had no problem with the way he sometimes went after witnesses that he felt were being less than candid. He was a great man. He was a great Member of Congress.
One of the things that has brought prior comments of his back to mind, prior activity here, was the proposed Green New Deal. I disagreed with John Dingell's effort for some type of government-run or universal-type health insurance, but we both--and I know the man's heart. He wanted what he believed was best for the American people.
He was a man that staunch conservatives like me could talk to and could trust. He, as was pointed out by the majority leader earlier today and others, loved the Energy and Commerce Committee; and it was humorous, earlier, when it was mentioned the times when he thought that was the only committee here.
But after decades and decades of service and wanting to do something about the problem with healthcare--it certainly has problems. He was so looking forward, as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the committee of jurisdiction over such a healthcare bill as the ACA, ObamaCare, whatever you want to call it, he was looking forward to shepherding that through as the great chairman, as the great Member of Congress that he was.
At the time--this was between 2007 and January of 2011 when Republicans took back over the majority here in the House--he had appropriately become chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. He couldn't wait to shepherd through what he believed would fix so many of the ills with the healthcare system, health insurance system.
And I would certainly agree that the health insurance companies are not really in the insurance business; they are more in health management. I would love to see them back in the insurance business instead of the management, where we either have the government or the insurance companies telling us what healthcare we can have and not have.
But John Dingell wanted what was best for the American people. And Speaker Pelosi made it very clear, there were two important bills that she wanted coming out of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and one of them was a healthcare bill. If you are a Democrat, you should have wanted John Dingell to be chairman of the committee that would bring that out of committee and to the floor.
But the other bill was given the name cap and trade, and the cap-and-
trade bill included a carbon tax. It was an early form of a Green New Deal. It was going to get us off of any carbon-based energy--or make it very expensive to be on it. That appears to be a big purpose of the Green New Deal.
But earlier this week in our Natural Resources Committee, we had testimony regarding this Green New Deal issue, and there was a very sharp African American witness who made the point of something I understood he called energy poverty.
It was something that John Dingell had made the point about that got him fired by Speaker Pelosi as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Because John Dingell knew, when you run up the cost of energy, of electricity, of gasoline, of the things that people need to get to and from work or to and from healthcare or to and from important meetings, you run up the cost of that.
As one lower middle-class single mom told me back some years ago when the Obama administration had helped to run the price of gasoline through the roof, run up energy costs--in fairness, candidate Obama had promised, like with coal-based energy, he wasn't going to just necessarily make it illegal, but he would skyrocket the cost of that energy. So, in fairness, he was keeping a promise. He was skyrocketing the cost of energy.
And this single mom was desperate. She said: I can't afford the gasoline to get to work, and I am maxed out on my credit card. I can't get another one. And I have to pay just enough on my credit card so I can get gas on it so I can keep going to work. But the prices keep going up. I don't have room on the only credit card I have got to get gas so I can keep my job, and now I may be in danger of losing the job that allows me to pay a little bit on my credit card so I can get gas the next month and keep my job.
I mean, it was tragic to listen to somebody struggling, for all they were worth, to take care of themselves, their kids, and the government was intentionally running up the cost of fuel and electricity.
I mentioned before, one 80-year-old lady in east Texas had commented: I am afraid that, with the way the cost of energy is going up, I am not going to be able to afford anything, not even propane, electricity.
She said: I was born in a home that only had a wood-burning stove, and I am afraid I may leave this world in a home that only has a wood-
burning stove for energy.
And I said: I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this administration, the Obama administration, is trying to make it so you can't have a wood-burning stove in your room because that will violate emission laws they want. So you can end up actually worse off than the home in which you were born.
Well, thankfully, that administration is no longer in office to continue driving up the cost of energy. But let's face it, when the cost of gasoline goes up, jet fuel goes up. When the cost of electricity goes up, it doesn't hurt the rich. It hurts the middle class tremendously, and it hurts the lower middle class and the poor even more.
And my understanding of what was considered the final straw that caused the Speaker to fire John Dingell as chairman of the committee that he loved dearly and fire him from the chance to shepherd through a healthcare bill was when he said--and as I recall, these are his exact words--talking about cap and trade: That bill is not only a tax, it is a great big one.
And he made clear he knew that, if cap and trade passed, electricity would skyrocket, the cost of gasoline would skyrocket, every cost of energy would skyrocket.
The rich would be fine. All of those rich Democrats, some rich Republicans, fly around in their private jet, have two or three Suburbans. Al Gore would have more than one, with the engines running while he went and gave a speech or made an appearance.
Those kinds of folks, they wouldn't be hurt. They get to keep having their big, energy-guzzling Suburbans running even though they weren't in them. They would be able to keep flying their private planes. But the Nation's poor would be devastated if cap and trade had become the law.
But because John Dingell could see the damage that was going to do to the Nation's poor, he said: I can't, in good conscience, bring that bill, get it voted out of my committee.
So he got fired. He got fired from the chance to do what he had dreamed about doing for decades, and that was having a big healthcare bill that he believed would fix so many of the problems that especially the Nation's poor were facing.
Now, the irony was apparently not lost on John Dingell when we were having the last hour of debate on the healthcare bill that he had been prevented from shepherding through. He was put in the chair as Speaker pro tempore to preside over the last hour of debate on the healthcare bill before we voted on it.
He had long since been replaced as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee by Henry Waxman, who famously said to Republicans: We not only don't want your input, we don't need your votes.
That was the new chairman's approach, and it was the way he pushed the unaffordable ACA through. It was the way he pushed through cap and trade out of committee that would have been such a horrible blow to our Nation's core.
But he had been fired from the chance to get a better bill as chairman of the committee, and yet he got put in the chair as Speaker pro tempore to preside over the last hour of debate before the vote. I found that rather ironic.
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Mr. Speaker, I talked to the former Republican chairman of Energy and Commerce, Joe Barton, who said, long after ObamaCare had passed and we were finding out that the architect of ObamaCare knew it wouldn't work, knew that when the President said: If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance, the architect of that for the Obama administration said he knew all of that was not true, but they had to say those things to sell it.
But Joe Barton pointed out that John Dingell was such an amazing chairman of Energy and Commerce and was so adept at forging together bills, Joe told me that if John Dingell had been left as chairman of Energy and Commerce, he would have called us Republicans in and he would have said: Look, we are going to pass a healthcare bill, and I would like your support. I want it to be bipartisan. So give me a few things that you have got to have in a healthcare bill so that I can find some way we can make this a bipartisan healthcare bill and we can get at least a bunch of your party's votes so this truly will be a bipartisan bill, and that will make the bill a better bill.
As Joe pointed out to me, the thing is, if they had left John Dingell in as chairman of Energy and Commerce, he would have forged together a bill. As Joe said, it would have been a bill that some of us Republicans, if not all, we would have had to vote for it because some of the things he put in there that we just agreed to strongly with, we would have had to vote for it.
If John Dingell had been left chairman of Energy and Commerce, it would not have been a bill that would have cost the Democrats the majority in November of 2010. It would not have been a bill that Republicans could run on in 2010 and 2012 and say, we have got to completely repeal ObamaCare, the ACA, whatever you want to call it.
We wouldn't have been able to do that, because the master at bringing together parties and forging together a good bill, he would have been the one that brought it together and it would have lasted. We wouldn't have all been running to repeal it because too many of us voted for it.
So as we pause to honor a truly great man today, John Dingell, I can't imagine somebody breaking his record of 59 years in the House--I am sure not going to--but what an amazing man.
I recall that day--John Dingell was at that point relying heavily on a cane, that political congressional giant had to rely on that cane very heavily to get up to the Speaker's chair. He had to rely on it to come down out of the Speaker's chair that day that we voted on the ACA, and the majority leader appropriately called attention to the great man he was, and that day everybody rose in a standing ovation, and I am forever glad that we did--the majority leader pointed out that this had been a dream of John Dingell's for decades, that he wanted a big healthcare bill that would fix problems, and now we were finally getting to vote on it. So it was only appropriate that that great man, that great legislator, John Dingell, would sit in the Chair and preside over the debate in that last hour. So he asked unanimous consent that we all show our appreciation, and that is when we had the standing ovation.
But I was thinking I know this guy. He is not only a righteous and honorable man of integrity, honest, he is really, really smart. He is not stupid. Anybody that ever tried to match wits with him soon learned that they were going to feel like an unarmed man in a war of words. They tried to do combat with words.
I just knew there is no way this brilliant man has lost the irony of getting all this great praise and recognition as he presides for an hour over debate with really no control over what goes in the bill during that hour when they fired him from the chance to forge together a much better bill.
And it was that overwhelming sense of irony--sometimes I should keep my mouth shut when I don't--but the majority leader had asked for that unanimous consent recognition which was entirely in order, so I came over and grabbed that microphone and when the applause died down, I said: Mr. Speaker--to the Speaker pro tempore that replaced John Dingell in the Chair--and basically I said in that same sense of love and admiration for a great patriot, a great man, a great Congressman, something like that, I would ask unanimous consent that we give him his chairmanship back.
Anyway, it took a couple of seconds or so for people on this side of the aisle to realize the irony and just die laughing. And I know so many of the people across the aisle, great people with great senses of humor. We kid around, joke around about things.
I was surprised nobody was laughing across the aisle because they knew. They liked Dingell. They knew that Speaker Pelosi fired him because he wouldn't push through the cap-and-trade bill that would have been so detrimental to the Nation's poor. But they weren't laughing. I couldn't believe they were not laughing.
But I had one of the Capitol Police tell me afterwards--actually, there were two of them that came up when I was leaving in the Speakers lobby, nobody else out there--they said, I know there weren't people on the other side of the aisle from you laughing at what you said, but you should have been out here in the Speaker's lobby as they left.
So many of them were saying: Wasn't that the funniest thing you ever heard? I know, but did you see the Speaker looking around for anybody that was laughing? I couldn't laugh. She was looking toward me.
So anyway, it was an amazing moment. I thought it was not just ironic, but humorous. The next day, John Dingell, who it was not easy for him to get around at that time--it became even tougher--but he had sought me out at the back of the Republican side of the floor here, and he said: Louie, I wanted to thank you for what you said yesterday.
I said: John, the irony, I just couldn't stay quiet. The irony overwhelmed me.
And he said: I know. That is why I just wanted to say thank you.
Well, that is a thanks I will treasure for the rest of my life. John Dingell was a great man. He was a great legislator, and one of the best committee chairmen this Chamber has ever had in any committee. I got to serve side by side for 2 years on a subcommittee with his wife, Debbie, now a widow, and I came to find out that so much that I liked about John Dingell existed in Debbie.
She was the ranking member of that subcommittee when I was chairman, back when they let me have a chairmanship on our side of the aisle, and I loved working with her. I still do. She is a treasured friend. She is a great American, and she is hurting.
So for those who believe in the power of prayer, I hope, Madam Speaker, that they will remember all of John Dingell's family and lift them up in prayer for the peace that surpasses all understanding because we have lost a great man to this world.
I rushed over here from a hearing in the Judiciary Committee, a strange hearing. The Acting Attorney General that is going to be acting for another week maybe had a big circus about having him come in and testify in a long hearing, where everybody gets to go after him that wants to.
But in that hearing, as well as in media in the past, as well as in other hearings in the past, I kept hearing friends across the aisle talk about these great career officials in the Department of Justice who were giving great advice to Jeff Sessions, like to recuse himself, and Jeff Sessions himself said: I listened to the career officials at the Department of Justice who recommended that I recuse myself on the Russia investigation.
Some of us heard--it was understood who he was referring to as giving him this great advice to recuse himself--and you could say they were in career positions. But these were not the career positions or officials of days gone by when a U.S. attorney or even somebody in the Justice Department here in Washington could be trusted to give nonpolitical advice.
But as we have seen in the Department of Justice and FBI scandals of the last few years, we have people who were disastrously political that were seeking political victories through the Justice Department and certainly were not the nonpartisan, bipartisan people of the past.
I know from working with U.S. attorneys and assistant U.S. attorneys in decades past, we knew how they voted. We knew party allegiance, whether they were Republican or Democrat, but when it came to criminal law, criminal violations, those things, they may have different personal philosophies, but justice was justice. And if somebody violated the law, they were going to pursue it. They were not going to let party affiliation or their regard or lack of regard for the President or anybody else keep them from pursuing justice.
But this has been an extraordinary time in American history when we have found a Department of Justice had officials to the very top who were far more political than they were just; where people, even an Attorney General, would say they had a chance meeting on a tarmac, when the facts of the day indicate it really could not have been a chance meeting on a tarmac. And if it hadn't been for a reporter spotting what he thought might be former President Bill Clinton, nobody would have ever known about that meeting while, supposedly, Hillary Clinton was under investigation.
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We now know there was never going to be any prosecution of Hillary Clinton, no matter how grievous or egregious any criminal violation may have been, even if it meant obstructing justice by destroying emails that had been subpoenaed and destroying with a hammer or with BleachBit cellphones or computers.
This is clearly obstruction of justice. Those would have been lay-
down cases to get convictions. But it was now clear those were never going to be pursued because the people who were in position, supposedly career, some political appointments, they were not going to let that happen.
Now, people like Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok--the guy is the head of FBI counterintelligence, and he has no problem lying over and over and over again. Then he has the gall to come in and basically say, as his deposition testimony ended, oh, he always tells the truth.
Any good lawyer knows you don't ever say, ``I always tell the truth,'' because you make mistakes. But he did, and that was a lie. He just couldn't help lying.
There were stories after the shock to the Obama administration in having Donald Trump win, the arrogance that existed in the Democratic Party that, gee, there is no way Donald Trump could win, even though it certainly appeared to be funny at the time when President Obama--I think it may have been on Letterman where he read something about a comment that Obama would go down as the worst President, and he said: Yeah, at least I will go down as having been President.
Everybody laughed because, gee, how could he ever get elected President? Well, he did.
So there were articles written and word spread that in the remaining days of the Obama administration after Donald Trump was elected President, there was a flurry of activity in November, December, and early January to move people from political appointment positions into career positions in all these different government departments and agencies, including the Department of Justice.
If you look at the person who answered to Rod Rosenstein, Tashina Gauhar--she was the liaison between the National Security Council and the Attorney General, but she answered directly to Rod Rosenstein. That was a change I understood that occurred in the organizational chart for DOJ some time back.
I tried to tell Jeff and persuade him: You need to reorganize. You need to have critical positions answering directly to you.
He didn't know why he kept getting such late notices to NSC meetings. Everybody else got them timely. What I heard was Tashina Gauhar was getting them timely like everybody else but delaying Jeff Sessions getting them, so he would either develop a conflict or he would not have time to properly prepare. He would go into the meetings looking bad before the National Security Council, because he wasn't as prepared as others were because he didn't get his notices timely as he should have because a person who was more--or certainly appeared to be much more--devoted to Sally Yates and her obstruction of the Trump administration was the one who was supposed to pass on those notices to Jeff Sessions.
As we are seeing, there were people who have been forced to leave the DOJ and leave the FBI in scandal for lying. I understand Andrew McCabe supposedly is currently being investigated for criminal violations. This is a guy right there close to the top, nearly the top, and he had become a political hack and a political operative.
Others would look at somebody like him or Peter Strzok and say these are career people, so we can trust them, without realizing, oh, no, they are politically motivated, and they are going to use their job for political purposes to try to keep one party from winning the Presidency and try to help another to win the Presidency.
It is shocking what is going on. I believe that if the roles had been reversed and that was a Republican FBI, Republican DOJ--it shouldn't be political at all, but it has been. But if that had been them, and they were the doing to a Democrat President what has been done to this one, I just feel sure I would have objected.
This is wrong. I don't care what the party is, you don't abuse a justice system for political purposes. I think I would--I really believe it is one of the things that makes some in my party so mad at me sometimes when they are not doing the right thing, and they are not keeping their word.
It is still my hope and prayer, literally, that we will come together to recognize what John Dingell did.
We work better when we work together. Apparently, at times, he called Republicans in. He was so skilled at negotiating, but making clear: We are going to get this bill passed, but we want your buy-in. We want you involved. We want you to have things in it that you are proud of. So what do you got? What do you need? What can we work out?
That kind of diplomacy is going to be sorely missed here. But one comfort is I see so many of those traits in Debbie Dingell. John Dingell will be missed.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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