June 21, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 105 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Pages H5028-H5034]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           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 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I have comments about my giving remarks 
at the end of the week, so it might be worth setting a little history 
of these Special Order remarks.
  In 2005 and 2006, my first term, I was not prone to give any remarks 
in Special Orders, but I observed during those 2 years that one of my 
classmates that came in January 2005, like I did, Debbie Wasserman 
Schultz, and some other Democrats arranged each night, often taking 
both hours of Special Orders that their party was afforded.
  I was told by Republicans who had been here for a long time, ``You 
know,

[[Page H5029]]

nobody is paying any attention to what they are saying. They are making 
themselves look bad. They make us look good by what they say.''
  There were times I would say, ``But are you paying attention to what 
they are saying?''
  You could see on C-SPAN sometimes when the sound was off, it would be 
scrolling, and I would say, ``Look what they are saying. They are 
blaming us for all kinds of things. We need to respond. This isn't 
accurate.''
  And I was told, ``Look, you know, don't worry about it. It doesn't 
make any difference.''
  And over the course of 2 years, I saw that a group that called 
themselves the 30 Somethings--everyone that was probably in their 
sixties or seventies, but otherwise in their thirties--that they did 
affect national opinion. I mean, you could see over that many nights, 
they made a difference.
  After that, I endeavored to try to address some of the critical 
issues when I had the chance, if other Members of my party were not 
taking those opportunities.
  So on fly-out days, when so many are rushing and have to get to the 
airport by a certain time, they don't have time to come down here and 
address some of our critical issues, then I volunteer. I will stay an 
extra hour or two before catching a plane back to Texas in order to 
address some of these important things. And it is a great opportunity.
  I used to do more than one Special Order a week many times, but my 
Democrat friend, and I mean that sincerely,   John Garamendi, had 
referred to a new Democrat rule that was put in place this year that no 
one could take more than one Special Order during the week, my friend, 
John, referred to that as the Louie Gohmert rule.
  The good thing about that was that it enabled me not to just continue 
as I had been year after year encouraging other Republicans to take a 
Special Order and address some of these important national issues, then 
I was able this year to tell them, ``Look, I can only do one a week, so 
you guys have got to start signing up for Special Orders and taking the 
time, addressing areas that you know well that we need to communicate 
about.''
  So I have been very pleased with how many of my colleagues have 
signed up for Special Orders and addressed critical issues, helped 
educate on the matters before us, because you don't always get straight 
and accurate news even by some of the so-called fact-checkers.
  Often fact-checkers, as they call themselves, need fact-checking, 
because many times they are not accurate either.

                              {time}  1215

  So this is a great opportunity that we have in a legislative body to 
address issues so that information does get out to the public, unless 
they are reading the remarks in some article that has had the facts and 
statements twisted and edited to change the meaning. Otherwise, they 
can judge for themselves exactly what has been said and what is 
accurate and what isn't.
  I heard our Majority Leader Hoyer and our Minority Whip Scalise and 
their dialogue back and forth bringing up the critical issue of our 
border and the humanitarian crisis going on there. In their discussion, 
they did not get into what is causing--well, I guess they referred to 
it. People are trying to get away from terrible circumstances.
  Well, those circumstances in different places in the world have gone 
on for centuries. We have never had the kind of mass effort at entrance 
that we have seen in recent months.
  So, things haven't gotten worse in the world. Why the huge surge at 
our border this year? And the border patrolmen with whom I communicate, 
the people who are dealing with those coming in illegally, coming 
through places that are not legal ports of entry, the border patrolmen 
get information from immigrants exactly why they are coming.
  Sometimes immigrants are given pieces of paper--the immigrants coming 
in illegally--with addresses, names, and these are either approved or 
given by the drug cartels. Nobody comes into the United States across 
our southern border without permission of the drug cartels.
  The drug cartels are not interested in preventing humanitarian 
crises. Drug cartels are interested in helping create humanitarian 
crises. And since I have been there all hours of the night, which used 
to be the prime time for people coming across illegally--now they are 
just coming all the time--I got to see this so many times firsthand.
  I have even seen, numerous times, people that had their little piece 
of paper. It was supposed to be the address that they gave the Border 
Patrol and, later, ICE: Yes, this is the address where I have somebody 
waiting for me, somebody who knows me, a family member.
  Often that information was provided by the drug cartels: This is 
where you will go.
  This actually fit together to help answer mysteries of who is telling 
them where to go.
  But the immigrants would be asked by Border Patrol, and it wasn't on 
the list of questions they are required to ask: How much did you pay 
the gang or the drug cartels that are responsible for bringing you in? 
Because sometimes the drug cartels have gang members who will act as 
coyotes and bring people in illegally. And the answer is, normally, 
$6,000, $7,000, $8,000.
  And the question follow-up: Where did you get that kind of money? You 
don't have that kind of money.
  Well, we have got $1,000 or $1,500 here, and then people in the U.S. 
send us some money.
  Well, what about the rest of it?
  And the disturbing comment was, normally: They are going to let me 
work that off when I get where I am going.
  Well, these are drug cartels, and obviously the work they were going 
to be doing would be either drug trafficking or sex trafficking, both 
doing severe damage to our country. Yet we have not been able to reach 
passage of a bill, bipartisan or otherwise, that would actually help 
totally secure our border so we can control who comes in and ensure 
that they are not people who are wanting to do damage to the country.
  Now, some just want to come in the country, and they don't realize, 
by coming in, they will do damage, that they have not been educated on 
how you keep, how you retain a representative form of government and 
how with the liberties and freedoms come great responsibilities.
  The responsibilities portion has also been neglected in so many 
schools. It is all about rights without getting into responsibilities.
  But I will continue to bring up Ben Franklin's answer to the woman 
after the Constitutional Convention: Sir, what have you given us?
  A republic, madam, if you can keep it.
  Eric Metaxas has a book on this that I read recently. It is very 
difficult to keep a self-governing system going. Historically, any 
attempt at some type of self-government has not lasted normally more 
than 200 years. We are beyond that.
  The Constitution was ratified and first elected a Congress, 
President, and Vice President under the Constitution of 1787 that 
finished being ratified in 1789. So we are 230 years beyond that 
founding document being ratified. So we are beyond the number of years 
that a self-government has been able to last in the past, normally.
  The fact is there haven't been normal self-governments, and that is 
why, in Ben Franklin's speech at the Constitutional Convention, 
although kids are taught today in school that he was a deist, if 
Franklin is even mentioned at all--a deist believing there is maybe 
some force, some thing, some whatever out there that created things, 
and if such force or person or being or deity existed and still exists, 
it never interferes with nature or the things that were set in motion 
originally. That is, in essence, a shorthand rendition of a deist.
  But Franklin himself, we know what he said, because he wrote it down 
when people asked for a copy. He said: I have lived, sir, a long time, 
and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth. 
God governs in the affairs of man.
  This means he wasn't a deist.
  But he says: If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His 
notice, is it possible an empire could rise without His aid? We have 
been assured, sir, in the sacred writing, that unless the Lord builds 
this House, they labor in vain to build it.
  He said: I firmly believe this. I also firmly believe without His 
concurring

[[Page H5030]]

aid, we shall succeed in our political building no better than the 
builders of Babel. We will be confounded by our partial 
local interests, and we, ourselves, shall become a bower down through 
the ages.

  Because Franklin knew. He studied history along with science and 
other things, but he knew from history this is not something that had 
been effectively done the way they were wanting to do it.
  Sure, the Romans had had a Senate. The Greeks had made an effort at 
democracy that worked for a short time--not well, but worked for a 
short time.
  The British, from whom we separated, they had a Parliament, but they 
also had a king. This was going to be a new thing. And the ``Novus ordo 
seclorum'' that is under the pyramid on the two-sided Great Seal that 
was adopted over 200 years ago, ``Novus ordo seclorum,'' Latin, 
meaning, ``new order of things,'' ``new order of the ages.''
  Some have tried to say: A-ha, new world order.
  But if you look at the Founders' own remarks, they make it clear that 
they knew nobody had really gotten this self-government thing right. 
But if they could do it right--and as Franklin said, it wasn't going to 
happen right without the Lord's concurring aid.
  But if they could get it right, this would be a new order of things. 
This would be what people around the world, for the rest of history, 
would probably try to emulate, if not outright imitate.
  But if they didn't get it right, since they had the opportunity and 
failed, as Franklin said, they would become a bower down through the 
ages. They would be ridiculed. They had the chance to do self-
government right, and they blew it.
  But even though they got this thing incredibly right, the founding 
document and the agreed upon 10 Amendments, the Bill of Rights, 
obviously it has taken a couple hundred years to get the Constitution 
to apply and mean what it says. It took a Civil War. It took a civil 
rights movement. But here we are today, and we have not continued to 
educate people on what Franklin knew would require education in order 
to keep the Republic.
  Oh, sure, we have got more schools now than ever, but because of the 
heavy-handedness of the Federal Government Department of Education, 
even though that education is something that is not an enumerated power 
in the Constitution and, therefore, under the Tenth Amendment was 
reserved for rights only of the States and the local government, the 
Federal Government got involved and, as a result, not many students are 
being taught the complete history that they should know and they need 
to know in order to sustain this little experiment in self-government.
  So when people come in and they have not been educated at all on what 
it takes to keep a self-governing system, they are just told in their 
own language about all of the free things they can get, they are not 
told about the important responsibilities that come with those free 
things and opportunities, that keeps up for so long, and there is no 
bright light on a hill that draws people from around the world.
  Then, as some West Africans told me, when America gets weak, we 
suffer. And we are seeing that around the world.
  Iranians are suffering tremendously under a heavy-handed, even 
criminal, terrorist regime in Iran that came into place because we had 
a President who didn't understand radical Islam, did not understand 
that when he turned his back on the Shah, who was not a great guy--he 
apparently did not treat his people as well as they should have been--
nonetheless, things certainly got worse.
  When the Ayatollah was welcomed into power by President Carter as a 
man of peace, well, the world soon found that Iran, now that radical 
Islamists who wanted a new caliphate for the world to subjugate 
Christians and every other religious group under their mean-spirited, 
actually, dictatorship as a religious dictatorship, the people of Iran 
suffered. The world has suffered from the failure during the Carter 
administration to understand the dangers that were lurking there. Well, 
those dangers are no longer lurking there. They are being spread around 
the world.
  I was amazed to hear people on television say, well, they couldn't 
really say if Iran had caused the death of any Americans. Certainly 
they have.
  Not long after the Ayatollah Khomeini took over in Iran, our Embassy 
was attacked and over 50 individuals were taken hostage. But they have 
continued to support terrorism, unabated, over all these years since 
1979.

                              {time}  1230

  They are responsible for the deaths and the explosions at the Marine 
barracks in Beirut in 1983. And the message that was sent by the 
Democratic majority in the House and Senate was to force the complete 
withdrawal of troops in the area.
  So that was a great encouragement to the Ayatollah and to the radical 
Islamists that want to destroy self-government. They think that they 
need a dictator who is really a religious bigot in control of things to 
dictate to people what they can or can't do, and that is such a foreign 
concept after 230 years here under our Constitution.
  But anybody who studies history, who is up on his history, knows 
there is a lot better chance that a dictatorship will eventually 
prevail, whether it is a religious extremist like you have ruling in 
Iran or it is just a dictator like you have had in the Soviet Union.
  So having been in the Soviet Union for a summer as an exchange 
student between my sophomore and junior year of college, I saw the way 
people suffered. I saw the way the government spied on its people; I 
saw the mean-spirited things the government did to people that weren't 
being manipulated the way they wanted them to be; I saw suppression of 
free thought and free exchange of ideas; and I came home literally 
thanking God that we didn't have that kind of suppressive government.
  But in the intervening years, we have seen a government get so 
powerful that it can spy on its own people, and we saw with what was 
released by WikiLeaks, the FISA application, the underlying affidavit, 
and the order that--holy cow, the FISA judge just basically ignored the 
Fourth Amendment, the protections against unwarranted searches and 
seizures.
  The application, my interpretation, was basically it said: We just 
need all of the information Verizon has on every customer they have and 
an underlying affidavit saying, basically, yeah, we just need every bit 
of information Verizon has on every customer.
  And then the judge--even though a Federal, Senate-confirmed judge, it 
is a secret court--he just signs off on it: Oh, you want every bit of 
information Verizon has on every single customer? Sure, yeah. Why don't 
you provide that? Here, here is an order to provide it.
  That scared me because it actually confirmed what some of us had 
feared back when the Patriot Act was being reauthorized in my first 
term: Wait a minute. This is giving the Federal Government power that 
could go too far. There is language that is too loosely written that 
could allow the government to spy on people without proper authority.
  We have got to revisit those issues.
  And that has been further brought to a head with what we are learning 
about the abuses of the FISA court when one administration wanted to 
spy on a campaign and then spy on--and, hopefully, eliminate--the 
selection of a majority of the electoral college.
  The electoral college itself underwent some evolution back in the 
early days, because, originally, it was a brilliant idea. It was a way 
of ensuring that both heavily populated States and lesser-populated 
States would all be relevant in a national election for our President 
and Vice President.
  Unfortunately, in the beginning, the second highest vote getter 
became the Vice President, and that became apparent as a failure and a 
bad idea under the Presidency of John Adams, when Jefferson, his dear 
friend, became Vice President with the second highest number of votes. 
By the end of the fourth year, as McCullough points out in his book on 
John Adams, Jefferson even hired a notorious newspaperman to make up 
some lies about Adams to help him defeat him, which he did, which 
probably explains why Adams is the only President who didn't stick

[[Page H5031]]

around for the inauguration of his successor. But that got changed to a 
constitutional amendment, and so we have the electoral process.
  If you do away with the electoral college, then it would mean most 
every State that is not a heavily populated State will never see a 
candidate running for President, because it would be a waste. They will 
want to spend their time in the heavy population centers and mainly 
disregard what some people refer to as flyover States, which many of us 
feel are the real guts and the heart of the country.
  So it is an important thing to have, but people are not getting 
education on these things these days, and why things were created the 
way in which they were, what succeeded, what failed.
  When I do tours around the Capitol, sometimes they go a lot longer 
than I think they should, but I am ready to stop any time the people 
are, but they still have questions. We find so many people haven't 
gotten the education.
  I hear so often: I never really liked history in school.
  Well, that doesn't tell me anything about them. It tells me a lot 
about their history teachers, that they had history teachers who didn't 
understand the importance of history, so they had true/false, multiple 
choice, or fill-in-the-bank questions rather than emphasizing that the 
real importance in history is the stories, what went right, what went 
wrong.
  Yes, it helps to have them in chronological order, but the more 
important aspect is what worked and what didn't. And that is not what 
so many American students are getting anymore.
  And certainly those who are rushing into America illegally, they 
certainly haven't gotten that. They know America is supposed to be a 
better place, but they don't know why. They don't know that they are 
jeopardizing that country's ability to continue as an attractive place 
for people to want to go, the most attractive place for immigrants to 
want to come in the entire world.
  So we have got more education to do. And I am hoping that our 
colleagues here in this body will begin to understand that, when we 
take up legislation that will ultimately legalize illegal activity--
like coming into the country illegally or giving benefits for coming in 
illegally--it becomes a lure for more and more people to come 
illegally, which means it is going to make more money for the drug 
cartels. It is going to have more young women raped.

  We are told that is occurring. About one in four girls coming to the 
United States through Mexico will end up being sexually assaulted, 
little boys at a lesser rate. I think I read 17 percent, something like 
that--just human tragedy.
  It happens when well-meaning individuals in Congress think: Let's 
help those less fortunate by luring them to our country, not 
understanding that there is a tremendous amount of human suffering that 
goes on, in addition to undermining the very foundation of what was the 
freest country in the world.
  So everybody is now indicating that America is not the freest country 
in the world. We continue to add laws that keep taking more and more of 
our freedoms away. But I heard the majority leader ruing that we 
haven't had comprehensive immigration reform.
  Well, in my time in Congress, what I have come to understand is, when 
you hear the term ``comprehensive immigration reform,'' it normally 
means we want a bill that is so big and so massive that people who will 
vote on it won't have a chance to read it all and will be able to stick 
things in there that a majority would never agree to if they knew they 
were there. That is what I have come to see ``comprehensive'' meaning 
when it comes to legislation.
  We are better off if we take subjects up individually, let people 
have a chance to read and know what is there, let them have a chance to 
analyze the language. Is this something likely to be struck down? If we 
don't have that opportunity, we pass legislation that is not what we 
want as a majority.
  And as a majority--obviously, I am a Republican. We are in the 
minority. But I am talking about a majority of this body.
  So we have these ongoing offers, which is what it is every time we 
pass a piece of legislation, even if it doesn't become law. That word 
is used by the drug cartels to encourage more people to pay them, to 
bring them in. That means they are going to have more employees--
really, more like indentured servants--in the drug trade, in the human 
trafficking, sex trafficking trade, and people suffer as a result of 
well-intentioned but poorly thought-out legislation. We have got to do 
a better job on that.
  Unfortunately, in the last term of Congress when Republicans had a 
majority in the House and the Senate, had a Republican President, we 
had leadership in both Houses that was not interested in securing our 
border or we could have passed a bill to do that. We could have passed 
a bill and gotten it into law.
  But there are monied interests out there that contribute heavily and 
encourage people not to secure the border. Of course, I said before 
from this lectern, if you hear somebody who is elected in Mexico say, 
``We don't want the border secure; we don't want a wall anywhere on our 
border with the United States: Then you know that is someone who is 
getting money from the drug cartels. You can take that to the bank.
  But you also heard well-intentioned but uneducated or miseducated 
individuals talk about what is happening on our border and even refer 
to the efforts to care for those who have come in illegally as 
concentration camps. If that were so, it would be the first time in 
human history that people have flocked by the hundreds of thousands to 
voluntarily go into concentration camps, because that has never 
happened in the history of the world.
  The Jews, during the 1930s and 1940s did not go flocking by their own 
choice into concentration camps that resulted in over 6 million deaths. 
They were forced into those.
  The people who are coming voluntarily and illegally across our 
border, they are putting themselves at risk of sexual exploitation but 
also even for their very lives, because we constantly get reports about 
people dying trying to get in or getting in illegally and then being 
left by coyotes out somewhere to die.
  We constantly, if you pay attention, get reports of our Border Patrol 
saving the lives--ICE agents--saving the lives of people who have come 
in illegally but have been abandoned by the drug cartels' coyotes.
  So it is also interesting when you think about the facilities on our 
borders.

                              {time}  1245

  The concentration camps of World War II did not have Germany 
appropriating billions of dollars or their equivalent for them to have 
a more comfortable existence. That didn't happen.
  That is why, clearly, they are not concentration camps, as people 
continue to flock there by the hundreds of thousands knowing what they 
are going into. But as they continue to hear that we are passing laws 
that will eventually allow them to be legalized if they come illegally, 
we are going to have the numbers that we are seeing there at this time.
  In the past, we have been told that they feel like they are catching 
most of the people coming across. But if my colleagues spend a lot of 
time on the border as I have, the Border Patrol will say that what 
scares them is that they don't know what they don't know about the 
people coming in.
  They do know that every time a big group comes across our border 
illegally and makes themselves available to be picked up and detained, 
that the drug cartels know. We have to put all of our people on duty 
trying to in-process these folks, and that is when the drug cartels 
know they can bring in big shipments of drugs, bring in people who 
otherwise may be a threat to our country.
  We continue to hear from Federal officials about people coming. We 
just had a report in the last couple of weeks about the ISIS member who 
admitted that they are continuing to get radical Islamists who want to 
destroy our country into our country through our southern border by 
paying the drug cartels to bring them in with other people. That is all 
going on.
  Then comes this article yesterday from The Washington Times, Stephen 
Dinan, that says, ``The Border Patrol has documented more than 100,000 
immigrants who they know managed to

[[Page H5032]]

illegally sneak past them and get into the interior of the country, the 
agency's Chief told Congress on Thursday, saying it's the most in 5 
years.''
  Just for reference here, we do have balloons that can be floated up 
that have infrared or thermal technology, night vision. We have people 
on the border with night vision, thermal technology, so they can see 
the outline of individuals who get in, even when they are not caught.
  But going back to the article: ``Known as `got aways,' the migrants 
are ones who agents detect but know they didn't manage to stop from 
crossing the border.''
  I need to insert here that our Border Patrol for a number of 
administrations has not been allowed to prevent people from coming into 
our country. We need to fix the law so they can prevent people from 
coming into the country using reasonable means.
  I know when the Texas Department of Public Safety has their boats out 
on the Rio Grande where people are crossing, they don't cross because 
Texas DPS doesn't allow people to cross into Texas illegally if they 
can stop them.
  The Border Patrol, on the other hand, has their hands tied. They have 
to allow them to come in illegally and then try to in-process them.
  This article goes on. It says: `` `This high level of ``got aways'' 
is a direct result of agents being reassigned away from the front line 
to provide humanitarian support to the unprecedented numbers of 
individuals and families in custody,' Chief Carla Provost told the 
House Homeland Security Committee.
  ``The panel was meeting to hear how President Trump's orders to send 
National Guard and Active Duty troops to the border is playing out. 
Chief Provost said they've been a major boost, suggesting the got-away 
numbers might have been worse without the troops there to fill gaps 
left when her agents get pulled away to do babysitting duties for the 
families and unaccompanied children.''
  I have gotten pictures from our border of our actual Border Patrol 
pushing baby carriages, literally babysitting because these folks have 
been lured in by what we are doing here, what we are talking about 
here.
  Chief Provost goes on to say, `` `That support as my agents are being 
pulled away to deal with the humanitarian crisis is key to us having 
situational awareness on the border,' she said.''
  The article says, further down: ``In one example last month, National 
Guard troops in Texas spotted a group of migrants rafting across the 
Rio Grande and reported it to Border Patrol agents. Agents, with the 
help of local police, corralled the group, whose members had paid up to 
$10,000 to be smuggled into the U.S.''
  It says they corralled them, but what I didn't get until I started 
spending a lot of time on the border is that that doesn't mean they 
stopped them. It means they in-processed them into the United States.
  Anyway, this article makes clear it is not even just the people who 
are coming in at a record pace this year. But just in 1 month, they 
think there may have been 100,000 people who came in that were not in-
processed. They just came into the United States. Who knows if they 
want to do evil or good, but they certainly wanted to engage in illegal 
activity.
  Another article here from Adam Shaw, ``Illegal Immigrants from 52 
Countries Crossed the U.S.-Mexico Border this Year.'' That is just so 
far. We are in June.
  ``The U.S. Border Patrol Chief testified Thursday that migrants from 
52 countries have illegally crossed the border this year as she 
described an agency `overwhelmed on a daily basis' by the escalating 
crisis.''
  She said, `` `While smugglers primarily target the Northern Triangle, 
family units from 52 countries have illegally crossed the southern 
border so far this year.' ''
  Further down, it says: ``A Senate panel on Wednesday approved a $4.6 
billion request for funding to tackle the humanitarian crisis at the 
border, but only after including a condition that none of the money be 
used for a border wall.''
  As I understand our majority leader's discussion today, they are 
talking about emergency funding to deal with the humanitarian crisis, 
but actually, the way it is being talked about, it will contribute to 
the crisis because it will encourage more people who we are spending a 
new $4.5 or $4.6 billion on, to provide food and comfortable shelter 
for people who come in illegally.

  That language is being drafted to ensure not only that it not be 
spent on the wall, but that it is not going to be spent at all on 
preventing people from coming in illegally. It is just going to be 
spent on the more and more volumes that are coming in illegally, which 
will, in this cyclical, worthless effort, encourage more to come in. We 
will have to appropriate billions and billions more for a bigger 
humanitarian crisis, and that will encourage more.
  At some point, we have to take seriously, and I know there are a lot 
of people who don't like Biblical references--not very many, but some--
but the fact is that it is the most quoted book in the history of our 
country. It was the most quoted book during the Constitutional 
Convention, and it continues to be the most quoted book in Congress.
  If my colleagues look back in the Old Testament references, in 
Psalms, Proverbs, and other places, the best that we can hope and pray 
for is justice where the rich are treated like everybody else. They 
don't get any special consideration. And the poor are treated like 
everybody else and not given any special consideration. Everyone is 
treated fairly and equally under the law.
  Yet, what we are seeing in this effort is that we are going to treat 
people who are trying to come into this country legally, we are going 
to penalize them. We are going to make them take 7 to 10 years, as some 
have, that we have tried to help family members with before.
  But if they will just come illegally, we are going to treat them 
specially. We are going to ship them to a place the drug cartels want 
them to be to work as their employees or indentured servants. We are 
going to treat them specially. We are going to give them all kinds of 
things that people who are still waiting in foreign countries to get 
approval to come legally are not getting and will not get because they 
are trying to do things the legal way, while others are flooding the 
zone illegally.
  That is not a good scenario for a country to continue to keep a self-
governing system. Of course, we have billionaires that have donated 
large amounts of money to try to push us into being a socialist system. 
Of course, Marx didn't foresee the growth of a middle class the way we 
have had it here in the United States.
  I continue to think that is the real strength of our country, the 
huge middle class. It shrank during the Obama administration when, for 
the first time in our history, 95 percent of the new income one year 
went to the top 1 percent income earners. The middle class shrunk. The 
poorest got poorer; the rich got richer; and the middle class shrunk.
  That could end up leading to a communist revolution once we get to 
having that small ruling class and then the much larger poor class. 
Unfortunately, for the billionaires that contribute to help take us to 
a socialist system, they haven't been educated in history adequately to 
understand that if we go to a socialist system, normally, the 
billionaires' money is taken. They are put in prison or killed, and 
they don't end up being part of the elite ruling class as they had been 
so hopeful of.
  We do have a crisis on our southern border, but it needs to be while 
we deal in a humane way with people who are here, that we also secure 
our border because otherwise, we are not a nation. If we don't have a 
border that is enforceable, we are not a nation. We are just a 
transient area. And if there is wealth in the area, it will not 
continue on for many more decades.
  We had a hearing this week, changing gears, on the issue of 
reparations. It has been amazing how miseducated people have been on 
slavery, who supported it, who was against it; on civil rights, who 
supported it, who was against it. It has really been amazing.

                              {time}  1300

  There is an article here from Jeffrey Lord in The American Spectator 
from June 21.
  It says: ``So amidst the chaos of that congressional hearing on 
reparations for slavery, former NFL star Burgess Owens got straight to 
the point, saying this, as reported by BizPac Review:

[[Page H5033]]

  `I used to be a Democrat until I did my history and found out the 
misery that that party brought to my race,' Owens said.
  ``He added, `I do believe in restitution. Let's point to the party 
that was part of slavery, KKK, Jim Crow, that has killed over 40 
percent of our Black babies, 20 million of them. State of California, 
75 percent of our Black boys can't pass standard reading and writing 
test, a Democratic State. Let's pay reparation. Let's pay restitution. 
How about a Democratic Party pay for all the misery brought to my 
race.' ''
  The article by Mr. Lord says: ``Bingo. Yet somehow, some mysterious 
way, the hard facts of history are blithely ignored by members and 
sycophants of the Democrats, the latter without doubt the party of 
race.
  ``Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas had the audacity to 
quote from a 2008 article of mine that originally appeared in this 
space and was reprinted in The Wall Street Journal. Among other things 
in that article I noted these hard facts about what was missing from 
the website of the Democratic National Committee as it tried to portray 
itself as the champion of civil rights by leaving out the hard facts of 
the party's horrendous actual history on race.''
  Madam Speaker, these are the things he correctly notes that I read 
into the Record at our hearing.
  This is from the Democrats' ``Our History'' section of their website.
  He said: ``There is no reference to the number of Democratic Party 
platforms supporting slavery.
  ``There were six from 1840 to 1860.
  ``There is no reference to the number of Democratic Presidents who 
owned slaves.
  ``There were seven from 1800 to 1861.
  ``There is no reference to the number of Democratic Party platforms 
that either supported segregation outright or were silent on the 
subject.
  ``There were 20, from 1868 through 1948.
  ``There is no reference to `Jim Crow' as in `Jim Crow laws,' nor is 
there reference to the role Democrats played in creating them. These 
were the post-Civil War laws passed enthusiastically by Democrats in 
that pesky 52-year part of the DNC's missing years. These laws 
segregated public schools, public transportation, restaurants, 
restrooms, and public places in general, everything from water coolers 
to beaches. The reason Rosa Parks became famous is that she sat in the 
`whites only' front section of a bus, the `whites only' designation the 
direct result of Democrats.
  ``There is no reference to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan, which, 
according to Columbia University historian Eric Foner, became `a 
military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party.' Nor is 
there reference to University of North Carolina historian Allen 
Trelease's description of the Klan as the `terrorist arm of the 
Democratic Party.'
  ``There is no reference to the fact Democrats opposed the 13th, 14th, 
and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. The 13th banned slavery.''
  Madam Speaker, on further down: ``There is no reference to the fact 
that Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It was passed by 
the Republican Congress over the veto of President Andrew Johnson, who 
had been a Democrat before joining Lincoln's ticket in 1864.
  ``There is no reference to the Democrat's opposition to the Civil 
Rights Act of 1875.''
  Anyway, Madam Speaker, it goes on and on here. But it was amazing to 
me and this article points out: ``Tellingly, when Congressman Gohmert 
was finished reciting these hard, cold, and quite accurate facts of 
history, someone in the audience yelled out, `You lie.' An unwitting 
admission of absolute historical ignorance or maybe just plain denial. 
And over at the website Splinter writer Samantha Grasso assailed 
Gohmert as the `dumbest Republican in the room' for daring to cite the 
Democrats' appalling historical record.''
  So anyway, Madam Speaker, it is an interesting time. Education is 
important, but it has got to be accurate education.
  One other thing I would like to quickly reference is the need for 
criminal justice reform within our military. There are some aspects of 
military justice that are very good.
  In the grand jury process in the civilian sector, constitutionally 
the defendant, potential defendant, is not allowed to be there, nor to 
have his attorney there or her attorney. Attorneys are not allowed to 
be there for a potential defendant when that potential defendant is 
actually testifying before the grand jury.
  Whereas, in the military system of justice, under the Uniform Code of 
Military Justice, there is what is called an Article 32 investigation 
which is sort of the equivalent, except a potential accused, as we call 
them in the military, is allowed to be there and have an attorney there 
to see what is being said against him and to give a chance to present 
evidence to the Article 32 investigating officer.
  But one of the problems--and it is a very, very serious problem--is 
that the charges are sent to a court-martial by the commander, normally 
a commanding general or admiral. He is called the convening authority. 
He puts his signature on there saying: I want this individual charged 
and tried in a court-martial for this offense. That is after reviewing 
the results of the Article 32 investigation.
  But where it becomes rather unfair is that to get a jury--I saw this 
during my 4 years at Fort Benning--the commanding general has each 
unit--we have platoons that make up companies. Platoons would offer 
suggestions of hard-nosed guys that would convict anybody who was sent 
if they were on the jury, and they were referred up to the company 
commander. The company commander would choose those that he thought 
were the very best out of those nominated, and he would refer them up 
to the battalion commander. The battalion commander would winnow that 
group down to the very toughest who would follow what the commander 
would want them to do and send those up to brigade. The brigade would 
take them and review them and decide to get it down to a number that 
they would send up, and eventually it would get to the commanding 
general of installation, and he would pick maybe up to 15 people who 
would sit, sometimes for 6 months, on every court-martial during that 
time.

  They knew why they were there. They knew why the commanding general 
put them on the jury. They were sent there to convict the guys that the 
general sent to be tried.
  There were a number of acquittals, but I can tell you every time 
there was an acquittal in a court-martial, you never saw that jury 
panel again. They may have been new, but if they acquitted somebody, 
found them not guilty, the general immediately disbanded them as a jury 
panel. It is not like you have jury selection where you can challenge 
somebody and have them taken off the jury.
  I remember one court-martial where virtually all of the jury said 
that if a defendant did not testify, they would hold it against him and 
find him guilty just because he didn't testify.
  The judge said: Hey, we are all part of this man's Army, and if I 
instruct you--and I will instruct you--that you will not hold it 
against the defendant that he doesn't testify, will you follow my 
direct order not to consider it against?
  Oh, oh, okay. Sure. We didn't know you were going to instruct us not 
to.
  But they had already made clear that, yeah, they are going to hold it 
against him.
  So a defendant's constitutional rights in a military court-martial 
can sometimes be illusory. I think we are seeing that with Eddie 
Gallagher out in California. Even after a witness came forward and said 
that he is the one who asphyxiated the deceased who was wounded, he was 
an ISIS member, that Eddie Gallagher didn't kill him, they still 
continue on with the court-martial.
  From what I saw at Fort Benning, if you had somebody come in and say: 
``I am actually the one who did it,'' I have seen a good military judge 
say then: Mr. Prosecutor, do you have a motion to dismiss at this time?
  And they would make a motion to dismiss.
  But, really, I have a great deal of concern. I saw in a brief that 
someone had prepared for a parole matter that there was out of World 
Wars I and II, Korea, and Vietnam, it said there were seven American 
military members convicted of war crimes, but since then,

[[Page H5034]]

the Iraq war, Desert Storm, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, we had over 200.
  This is something that needs to be looked at. We should not have our 
military members risking conviction simply by trying to defend 
themselves and those around them. So I am hoping that we can come 
together in a bipartisan way and make some changes, some corrections, 
and some improvements to military justice so that our heroes don't get 
killed trying to avoid being seen as criminals by people who don't 
understand what they are going through.
  So, in any event, I am hopeful that we will do something next week to 
help fund border security, but it sounds like from what we have heard 
on the floor all we are going to do is help attract more people to come 
in illegally because we are going to send $4 billion or so down to the 
border.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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