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.
“WEEK IN REVIEW” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H1350-H1353 on Feb. 27, 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:
WEEK IN REVIEW
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we are back in session. We were out of session last week. It was great to get all over east Texas. It is just good to be an east Texan and from around east Texas. I had occasion to talk to a whole bunch of folks from part of my district, even tonight.
As I think about the headlines, I think about this group called Indivisible demanding townhalls, and I keep coming back to last Monday at Jack Ryan's restaurant in downtown Tyler. Tyler Young Professionals had asked me to speak there. I knew the gentleman that had white hair and looked distinguished was probably not one of the Tyler Young Professionals but probably one of the Indivisible people, the Democrats that--yes, some of them say they are nonpartisan, but so much for that. But I knew when I called on him to ask the first question, he probably wasn't one of the Tyler Young Professionals.
I offered to him, I said: Look, I give you my word. You come, bring somebody with you. Let's sit down at a conference table and I will hear you out. I will give you a chance.
No, he said. That is not what I want. I demand a townhall.
So I keep coming back to that answer because that seems to make very, very clear this whole Indivisible movement. It is not about being heard. That can be best done, as the Founders realized when they put together the Constitution--a complete democracy is where you have mob rule, that a majority is always going to prevail; but they figured out that, far better than having a big mob rule so you don't end up with lynchings and crowds convincing themselves to do something dramatic that they would never, ever do individually--it would be too much of a violation of their conscience. But there is something about a group dynamic that people can get whipped up into a frenzy as a group that doesn't happen when you sit down one-on-one with them.
So this has never been about townhalls. It has never been about being heard. It has been about headlines, trying to intimidate some of us from keeping the promises that we made to our constituents before we got elected.
I think God has a way of preparing us for what lies ahead. Had I not been a felony judge for a decade and been threatened by all kinds of felons, then I might have been at least somewhat intimidated. But it all seems rather interesting, this frenzy. Really good, decent people get in a group and get worked up into a frenzy.
One of them did ask an interesting question there in east Texas on the east Texas Indivisible Facebook page: Well, what would be wrong with sitting down with him on an individual basis or something like that? That individual understood that, if all we want is to be heard, why wouldn't we just want to sit down and talk.
What that individual didn't understand is Indivisible is not about being heard. It is exactly about what is in the Indivisible playbook, the Guide. The idea is to disrupt those who won with a majority of the vote in congressional seats and Senate seats, disrupt those who won with a majority and prevent them from keeping their promises.
It reminded me somewhat of what happened back when George H.W. Bush was President. He had run saying, ``Read my lips: no new taxes.'' I wasn't in politics back when he was running and saying that, but I sure got involved in late 1991, I guess December, and in 1992. I guess that was back in the 1988 election.
It cost him the 1992 election because he kept saying, ``Read my lips: no new taxes.'' Then he had to deal with the majority of Democrats in the House and Senate. They kept luring, trying to suck him in: Come on, if we are going to reach an agreement, you are going to have to give up on that pledge just a little bit, just a little bit. We are not going to reach it. You are going to have to give up just a little bit. You are going to have to allow just a little bit of a tax.
After enough cajoling, they finally convinced George H.W. Bush that they were not going to allow the bill to go through unless he had at least a little bit of a tax increase. As soon as they lured him into that--kind of sounds like something that happened in the Garden of Eden. But as soon as they lured him into it and he agreed to a very small increase in taxes, then immediately the cries became: You are a liar. You broke your promise of no new taxes.
He got lured into it. He thought they were acting in good faith, when all they were trying to do was get him to break his promise so they could call him a liar. They lured him into it. They trapped him into it. He should have told them, ``Read my lips: no new taxes.'' But being a benevolent man, he thought they were acting in good faith, as he was, and he found out differently. It cost him the 1992 election.
So we have people demanding: Oh, yes, just give us the townhall. That is all we want. Just give us the townhall. They know and most of us, thank goodness, on my side of the aisle know, if we give the bullying mobs, what they are demanding when they are saying: We are going to harass you--as one man did--we are going to harass you at church, everywhere you go, until you finally give in, fine. No matter how big the mobs get, no matter how mean and frenzied they get, no matter how big of bullies they become, I know what I promised my constituents and I know what we have got to deliver.
I am starting to hear from people on my side of the aisle: Well, maybe we shouldn't repeal. Maybe we shouldn't do what we did in 2015.
Everything we did in 2015 was consistent with the rules that are in play right now. We ought to be able to do the same thing again. We should. We did it in 2015. We ought to be able to do it now--we just should--House Members and Senate Members. We had a majority both places then. We have got a majority now. We need to do it again.
We don't have to have this huge government program as a replacement. That is the beauty of a free market. But in order to have a free market, you have got to have honesty and integrity in the system. That means nobody on my side of the aisle, nobody in the Senate on the Republican side of the aisle, and nobody in the White House should be intimidated no matter how frenzied the insurance lobby may become about what we can't do.
Those same people embraced ObamaCare, which was about to destroy them. Some of them said: Well, you have got to understand we had to have a seat at the table. I tried to explain, you don't want a seat at the table when you are on the menu. But no, they dove in. Big Pharma and those folks dove right in.
Now, I could understand AARP jumping in and endorsing ObamaCare even though it cut Medicare by $716 billion, even though it stabbed seniors in the back by dramatic cuts to Medicare. I could understand AARP endorsing ObamaCare. They were going to be able to sell more insurance than they had ever sold before.
I had seen 1 year before--I think it was 2007 or 2008--they had over
$4 million in profit, which is pretty good for a nonprofit, selling insurance or endorsing the policies that were sold. So, of course, then you get to the deal in ObamaCare that all these other policies are going to have an extra 2 percent tax on them, but not the kind of policies you sell.
I can understand AARP getting behind ObamaCare, even though it did so much damage to the health care of seniors because they were going to make a lot of money. No telling how much money they have made since ObamaCare passed.
I couldn't understand health insurance companies. I couldn't understand Big Pharma. I guess I could, because they were going to make tens of billions of dollars more in the short run than they had made in the past. That is why President Obama got them to offer to give billions of it back. You don't get billions given back unless you are going to make a lot more billions than you put back. I am sure they did, but that was short term. If ObamaCare continued into the future, it wouldn't be--probably within the next decade that you would see them heading toward their demise.
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But the big executives would be fine. They would have gotten their golden parachute and taken off with all the money that appeared to be rolling in at that point, even though the day of reckoning was going to come for them down the road.
But we shouldn't be listening to people who sold out knowing they will make money short term, but it probably will destroy them long term. People who were guided by the mentality that embraced that bill should not be dictating what is in the replacement plan. And I say plan, because when you are going to use free market to have a better healthcare environment, you have got to have free market; and you can't have free market unless everybody knows how much things cost.
I was seeing again tonight from constituents, people think they ought to know how much a medical visit costs. Whether it is Blue Cross, Aetna, Humana, Anthem, whether it is an HMO, whatever, they ought to know how much that costs, whoever is paying for it. Whether it is the government--whether it is the Federal Government, State government, whether it is an insurance company, people have a right to know what a medical visit, procedure, whatever it is--they have a right to know how much it costs.
Only when we have truth in treatment are we going to be able to fix so many of the wrongs in health care. Then we can move toward a free market, where insurance will have a high deductible. This is the ultimate goal, I think, where you have a high deductible, but you will have every dime of that deductible in a health savings account either put in there by your employer or by you. In a proper program, it ought to be every dime of it put in there pretax, no tax on that money that you put in there. I still believe that every dime that is put in there should then be marked for health care only. If the person owning that health savings account passes away before it is spent for health care, it ought to keep that healthcare designation and roll over into the heirs' health savings account. And if there are not heirs or it's not in the will, it could go to a charity's health savings account, as I feel sure you would have every worthwhile charity set up a health savings account that could be used to have people donate from their own health savings accounts to help the poor, help those who are chronically ill.
As a Christian, I believe God knew it blesses us, it helps us as individuals when we are charitable toward others. That does not mean when the government, with the threat of the IRS, some SWAT team behind them, or some threat to come take your home, all of your assets, says you will give so that we can give to who the government thinks should receive the charity--that is not charity. That is not charity at all. That is a much too powerful government.
What we find is that the United States has been the most charitable country in the history of the world. We have got a lot of benevolent Americans. Of course, that doesn't include George Soros. He makes his money. It seems like one of the ways he makes money is if he can topple an economy, bring it down; and through all of the suffering that is brought about, he makes money.
When we heard tape recordings made in the past year by people who were saying, ``Oh, yeah, we funded the violence at those Trump rallies,'' or ``We funded violence here, there or yon,'' or ``We funded efforts to help bring down this activity or that activity,'' then it sure seems like that is worthy of investigation, because what you have when you have people giving money to create violence at events, some people would call that basically a racketeer influenced and corrupt organization, RICO. It ought to be worthy of investigation. If people are giving money when they should know that money is going to be contributed to create chaos, get somebody hurt, then it sure seems like that is the kind of criminal conduct people have gone to prison for.
I hope our new Justice Department will continue its trend toward getting out of litigation that they never should have been in in the first place and getting in where there is corruption. We know under the Attorney General Eric Holder that as long as the people who were carrying billy clubs and threatening voters outside of polling places were Democrats, then certainly they did not need to be investigated, nothing needed to be done to them because they are Democrats. Apparently under that old Department of Justice that was just about them, just us, then as long as it is one of us, we don't need to prosecute them. But, whoa, if it is a Republican, yeah, we need to go after them.
But the great irony is there could be no greater dissolution of the right to vote when then loading the deck with people who have no right to vote, who vote and completely dissolve law-abiding people's right to vote, you just canceled out their right to vote with illegality. So it seems strange to some of us that you would have a Justice Department that would say: No, no, no, don't you dare purge those records of the dead people. You have got to leave those dead people in. Some of those dead people may want to vote. It is important to let dead people vote if they feel like voting.
To have a Department of Justice that doesn't want counties to clean up their voter registration so that there can't be fraud, people that are dead, people that are living in other States or other voting districts don't come and also vote there. It just was incredible lawlessness to have a Department of Justice fighting against cleaning up voter registration rolls so that only people alive and living in that district could vote.
Why would anybody do that? Why would anybody fight against cleaning up voter registration?
The only reason I can think of conceivably would be they must still want people who are dead or don't live there to vote illegally. What else could there be?
I mean, there are some people willing to have the Department of Justice: We are even okay if you supervise to make sure we don't throw out somebody who is alive. But this Justice Department under President Obama's administration, they didn't want voter registration rolls cleaned up.
The lawlessness, thankfully, has come to an end. I know that there are people who have been stirring up fear in American hearts about Jeff Sessions, but Jeff Sessions is a good man. He is a good person. He will enforce the law fairly across the board, and I am grateful that we finally have a Justice Department that will be about justice.
In the meantime, I saw this story today from Peter Hasson from The Daily Caller:
``Leaked audio from an anti-Trump protest group meeting reveals activists with anti-Trump group Indivisible plotting how to best manufacture a hostile environment at a town hall with Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. . . .
``The audio, obtained by local radio station KPEL, reveals a coordinated effort to create the public impression that Cassidy's support for Trump is unpopular with his constituents. The activists, who describe themselves as liberals in the audio, can be heard strategizing how to best turn a local town hall into a political victory.
``The activists split up into an `inside team'--tasked with occupying
`as many seats as we can' and an `outside team,' whose job was to `give the media the coverage they want' before joining the others inside. Activists were instructed to dress like conservatives and leave at home
`any signifier that you're a liberal' in order to blend in with constituents.
``The leftist activists strategized how best to `dominate' the question-and-answer section of the town hall and keep anyone
`sympathetic' to Cassidy from asking a question.
``The audio also reveals the activists laughing about `the poor people of Breaux Bridge'--local constituents--who might get stuck behind them. Local news coverage of the town hall said that `many attendees were turned away' from the town hall due to `capacity restrictions.'
``'Game plan number one is to fill as many seats as we can, right? If it's all of us in there and the poor people of Breaux Bridge are sitting behind us, well then tough luck for them,' said one organizer, identified by KPEL as James Proctor. His `poor people' comment drew laughs from the other activists.
`` `If we can arrange it so he doesn't hear one sympathetic question--great. That only magnifies our impact,' Proctor said.
``KPEL identified Proctor as the leader of Indivisible Acadiana, a local branch of the national Indivisible organization, which has organized hostile Republican town halls all around the country.
`` `The Indivisible Guide does say that when you start to lose the meeting, that's when you boo and hiss,' one unidentified activist can be heard saying. `Right, I was going to say that,' another activist replied. Local news outlet The Advertiser reported that members of the crowd `frequently interrupted, expressing disagreement with some of Cassidy's positions and shouting out their own questions.'
`` `The outside team will join the inside team in the hall after media coverage'. . . . `So what we'll do is we'll try to dominate enough, because--remember, the camera people especially are looking for some `b-roll' and some quotes.'
`` `They've got three or four things to cover that day, this is just one of them'. . . . `So we make sure we give them the coverage they want, and then everyone breaks and goes inside.' ''
That reminds me of an article that was written in Gregg County, the largest newspaper. Obviously they know what Indivisible is, and they were demanding a townhall belittling me. It just shows how partisan, how malicious. They showed their malice toward me repeatedly. Fortunately, for the people of east Texas, they don't count for a whole lot. Their opinion is so biased; it is what it is. They know that these people are doing just what is talked about here, what is talked about in the Indivisible handbook, and that is what they want. They want me out of office, and there is such a problem with envy, with emotions that I have just never had like that. They can't stand it.
So, anyway, here is one, Todd Starnes from FOX News, today's article:
``A group of enraged protesters exploded in anger after a chaplain prayed in the name of Jesus at a town hall meeting in Louisiana hosted by U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy.
``The verbally-abusive crowd''--and it is talking about this same townhall that this tape came from, where they were plotting and planning to disrupt and to keep the people from Breaux Bridge from actually being able to participate in their own townhall.
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Anyway:
``Louisiana State chaplain Michael Sprague and the unidentified Vietnam War veteran should be commended for maintaining their composure in the face of verbal barbarism.
``The February 22, town hall meeting in Metairie, was quickly overrun by the angry mob--much like other town hall meetings hosted by Republican lawmakers across the country.
``The mainstream media would have us believe the unruly demonstrations are part of an organic, grassroots effort.
``But I sincerely doubt many in the mob were actually residents of Louisiana--because I know the good people of Louisiana and nobody behaves like that in the Bayou State.
``Folks are raised right in Cajun Country. There's no way anybody would embarrass their mommas by acting the fool in public.
``I'd be willing to bet a cup of Community Coffee that the Jesus-
hating rabble-rousers were shipped in from some God-forsaken place like Berkeley or Brooklyn.''
Now, I don't agree on Brooklyn.
Anyway:
``Chaplain Sprague had barely invoked the name of the Almighty when the heckling began.
`` `Pray on your own time. This is our time,' someone shouted. `Amen. Let's get on with it.'
``Others chanted, `Separation of church and state' and so on and so forth. Someone filmed the prayer and words do not do justice to the amount of hate directed at the chaplain.
`` `I've never been shouted down throughout a time of prayer like that,' Chaplain Sprague told me. `I've never been in a situation like that. It's sad there wasn't honor and respect for God.'
``But they became absolutely unhinged when he concluded his prayer in the name of Jesus.
`` `Wow, they booed the name of Jesus,' Cassidy said in remarks reported by the Times-Picayune.
``I thought several of the agitators were going to spontaneously combust.
``The chaplain said the overwhelming majority of people in the room were causing a disruption--but he harbors no ill will toward the mob.
`` `I'm not mad at people. My heart is bigger than that,' he said.
`My heart's prayer is that everybody be treated with dignity and respect.'
``The chaplain was especially disappointed by how the mob insulted the Vietnam War veteran.
`` `There was a lot of shouting. Some turned their backs. Many didn't stand or put their hand on their heart,' he said.
``Infuriating, but not surprising.
``As I wrote in `The Deplorables' Guide to Making America Great Again' liberals have a strong aversion to President Trump, Jesus and Old Glory.
``But I still have hope in America.''
And I share that.
There is a lot to be grateful for, but one is not this article from CBN News in Jerusalem, Israel:
``A Palestinian Arab terrorist convicted of murdering two Israeli university students is one of the leaders of the feminist protest movement against U.S. President Donald Trump.
``Rasmeah Yousef Odeh, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is helping to organize a `Day without a Woman' on March 8, Arutz Sheva quotes reports in The New York Post and The Guardian.''
In 1969, Odeh was sentenced to life in prison for planting explosives that kill people and is now out leading organized resistance to the President of the United States and to law and order. It is tragic.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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