Constitutional Duty

Floor Speech

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Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Well, I really appreciate it.

I would like to thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. DeSantis), who has been such a great leader on constitutional issues in this body. And I'd like to say that, here you have a gentleman who went to Yale undergraduate and he played baseball. He got a law degree from Harvard, and then he decided to join the United States Navy. He has served bravely in the United States Navy as a JAG officer, and now he's serving in the United States Congress. So if there is anybody in this body who has the credibility to discuss these constitutional issues, it is my good friend from Florida, Ron DeSantis. And I appreciate your leadership on these issues.

When you think about the constitutional process, Mr. Speaker, there is one particular issue that is near and dear to me, that is near and dear to my constituents, that we have seen this body go through earlier this year, and that is the issue of gun control. I think it was back in April. The President had an agenda and Harry Reid had an agenda, and their agenda was to outlaw certain types of guns. These guns didn't operate any differently than other types of guns; they just looked scary, so they wanted to ban them.

Interestingly, that effort died in the Senate and it never came to the House of Representatives. So then they started another effort, and that effort was for what would eventually be a national gun registry. They called it ``universal background checks,'' but ultimately it would be a national gun registry, and that effort died in the Senate.

Now, the constitutional process, if the President wants his agenda enacted, he needs to go to the United States Senate or the House of Representatives and pass a law, in a bicameral process, and eventually it needs to go to his White House for signing. Ultimately, this bill did not have the will of the American people. This bill did not have the desire of the Members in this body to pass that bill. So what the President did recently--which I believe is egregious--is he decided to enter the United States of America into an international treaty to accomplish the very objectives that the House of Representatives and the Senate had rejected, and that's the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.

Under this treaty, anybody who purchases a gun internationally--if a gun comes from another country, maybe a Glock from Austria--well, then you have to enter into an international database. You have to enter your name and your address and your phone number. There will be an international database of anybody who buys a gun that was ultimately produced in a country other than the United States.

And let me be clear about this, because I've talked to a lot of gun manufacturers. Many parts of many guns are not made in the United States. You could have a handle that's made in China. You could have a trigger that's made in Mexico. If you look at most of the guns that are made in the United States, major parts of them are made elsewhere, which means that we are going to have a national gun registry that will have an international body overseeing our national gun registry per the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.

Now, for the President of the United States to have an agenda item that doesn't get through the Senate, that doesn't get through the House of Representatives, that never comes to his desk for signing, that he is ideologically committed to this--which is a violation of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution--for him to then enter into a treaty, an international treaty where there will be an international body responsible for overseeing this treaty, to me, is an egregious lack of leadership and certainly violates the intention of the Constitution. The President knows full well that the Senate will never ratify this treaty.

And this is another important point, I think. The President has had other agenda items. He wanted to sign us up for other treaties--the United Nations Convention for the Rights of Children, the United Nations Convention for the Rights of Women, the United Nations Convention for the Rights of the Disabled. There are all these conventions, and they're all seemingly very good conventions; but what I would say is this: The United States of America has laws, and those laws are far more stringent than these treaties.

For what purpose would we sign on to a treaty when our laws themselves are stronger at adhering to the principles that these treaties are trying to promote? Why would we sign on? Why would we turn over our sovereignty to an international body? I personally don't understand it.

The United States is a leader in the world. We can lead the world by example, but signing over our sovereignty so that there will be an international body that comes in and inspects our country because the President has an ideology that he couldn't get through the House, that he couldn't get through the Senate, that ultimately these treaties were not going to be ratified by the Senate, I think it is egregious.

Certainly the Second Amendment of the United States is, quite frankly, not up to debate by foreigners, and it is not up to debate by foreign bodies. Foreign governments cannot come into the United States and force us to overturn our own constitutional amendment--the Second Amendment.

That is, I think, another example of where this President has overreached beyond his constitutional authority in certainly passing laws--not actually passing laws, but creating treaties because he can't get his laws passed--that would violate our Constitution.

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Mr. BRIDENSTINE. I just wanted to ask you a quick question, which is, when you consider the fact that the media reporting is very different from what I have perceived in this body as a Member of Congress, I am more astonished every day at how the media reports the story. But the very last ask that we made before the government shutdown was about 1 o'clock in the morning, so I guess technically the government had been shut down for about an hour. That very last ask was simply a meeting. It was simply a conference so that people on their side and people on our side could come together and discuss ObamaCare and some of the problems that we have with it.

Now, when you talk about the Constitution and the constitutional process that we have and you have divided government--I would like to ask the gentleman from Florida--is that not a perfectly reasonable adult way of handling disputes?

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Mr. BRIDENSTINE. I appreciate that, and it is perfectly appropriate that we have the gentleman from Arizona here as well. The gentleman from Arizona, and when you serve in this body, you get to meet a lot of very interesting people that have done amazing things in their lives. The gentleman from Arizona who we heard from earlier had an opportunity to serve in this body back in the 1990s, and then he left. He had a term limit pledge. He honored his term limit pledge. And then he came back recently as a newly elected freshman with the rest of us, and it is an honor to serve with him. But in that hiatus when he was back in Arizona, he ran for the governorship of Arizona, and he darn near won. Interestingly, he ran against the person who won, who was Janet Napolitano, who became the Secretary of Homeland Security here in the Obama administration.

I would like to discuss some things about why it is so important for me personally. I am a Navy pilot, as the gentleman from Florida said, and I have flown combat. But interestingly, I have also flown counterdrug missions in Central and South America. And I can tell you without a doubt that the drug cartels that we fight down in Central and South America, they don't try to get the drugs into the United States of America anymore. Their only objective is to get the drugs to northern Mexico, where they are vertically integrated with gangs and other cartels who bring the drugs across the border without a hitch. Now, because we have these drug wars in northern Mexico--and, by the way, there are over 100,000 people who have been killed in the last 7 years in these drug wars in northern Mexico, but that exists because we have an open border policy on the south side of the United States.

So if you were to hand a 16-year-old kid a backpack with $1 million worth of cocaine and you say to him, Hey, go across this border and get to that point, you're going to be very well rewarded. A 16-year-old kid will do that in many cases in these impoverished areas in northern Mexico. Interestingly, another 16-year-old kid will see that backpack and want it for himself, and the next thing you know, you've got one killing the other, and then you get a third killing the second. And then you have these gangs form, and this is how you get to a point where you have cartels and gangs that are killing not only each other, 100,000 people, but they are also killing judges. They are killing police officers. They are killing politicians. And on top of it all, they are not just transporting cocaine, they are transporting young girls in the slave trade. And they are transporting weapons. This is happening in northern Mexico just south of our border. Mexico is on the brink of a failed state because of this, and it is the direct result of an open border policy.

Now the Secretary of Homeland Security, former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has been on record. What does she say? She says that the border is secure. That's what she says. I have just got to tell you that I know firsthand that it's not. And the people who live in Arizona know that it's not. The people who live in Texas know that it's not. The border is not secure.

But here's what we have done in this body. We have passed laws to secure the border. Has the border become secure? No. Have thousands of people died since those laws have been passed because we haven't secured the border? Yes.

The President's job per the Constitution is to faithfully execute the laws, not pick and choose which laws he wants to follow based on political preference, which is what he has been doing.

So if it is all right, I would like to yield to the gentleman from Arizona. You have been near and dear to this for a very long time. If you have some comments, I would love to have you share them.

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