Above the Law

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate so much the comments of my friend Mr. Russell, a neighbor from an adjoining State. He is right. The American people have made clear that they did not want the TPA passed. They certainly don't want the TAA passed.

How ironic that we are told that TPA's passage will create a massive number of jobs; yet the people who have really looked at it on the Democratic side say, ``Huh-uh, this is going to cost a lot of jobs so that we have got to have more unemployment benefits and more government help for people who are going to lose their jobs,'' which is what the TAA basically does, ``or we can't vote for the TPA''--how ironic.

Also how ironic that President Obama seems to have worked harder on this bill than he has on anything since ObamaCare--he has come to the Hill; he went to the baseball game. He is really pushing people to join him. It is rather ironic because it is just hard to believe that he would be working this hard to limit his own powers. He has never done that before. He has never worked to limit his own powers.

It also strikes me as a bit interesting that some of the same people who pushed so hard to pass TARP, the Wall Street bailout, are also pushing for this. There was a former FDIC Chairman named Isaac, who came to the Hill with the support of many economists, saying: ``Please, don't get into this socialist activity where government partners with private business. Don't do that and certainly not for $700 billion. There is no justification.''

Look, we clearly have more than that, that American individuals and American businesses have overseas in banks that they will never bring into the United States. They have already paid a massive amount of tax on it overseas.

A far better, free market approach would be to just pass a bill and say, ``If you want to shore up any asset or any entity, like Goldman Sachs''--you could have saved Lehman Brothers, AIG, Chrysler, GM; you could have saved any of them if you had just said: ``Bring that money in from overseas, no tax.''

We could have made it very attractive to do that, and then we wouldn't have had to have given the government $700 billion with basically no limits on how the Secretary of the Treasury could spend his money.

He couldn't prop up a central bank of a foreign government, but I read the bill. I couldn't believe we were going to give that kind of power to one person. We have not done that since the Constitution passed.

It also should be noted, I think, that, if we had not passed that $700 billion Wall Street bailout--that giveaway--then President Obama would never have gotten $900 billion. He would never have been able to push so much more for bigger government and had gotten it.

We would have been able to have stood stronger against that, which could have prevented ObamaCare from even coming up or passing. It had terribly damaging effects. Some of the same people who wanted TARP are now wanting TPA and TAA. It is a bad idea.

I just want to just finish, Mr. Speaker, by noting that we have the Supreme Court taking up an issue--it is supposedly going to come out with an opinion before the end of the month--and ruling in a case involving same-sex marriage.

Neither the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights provides any power for the Federal Government to get involved in the issue of marriage. That has always been a State issue. It should be under the 10th Amendment; yet we have the Supreme Court potentially going to weigh in and take over that power.

We also know that the law is very clear: 28 U.S. Code, section 455, says that any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

Two Justices have made clear how they feel. They have presided over same-sex marriage ceremonies. If they do not disqualify themselves and if they rule on this case, they have shown a total contempt for the law. That should lead to impeachment, but America would have to rise up to make that known.

We will see here, in the 800th year anniversary of the Magna Carta, when it was made clear that nobody, not even the King, is above the law, if the Supreme Court will say, 800 years later: ``We are the Supreme Court, and we are above the law, and there is nothing you can do about it.''

I hope and pray they are not that arrogant in trying to bring down this constitutional Republic. We will see.

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