Constitution

I want to thank the Ways and Means Committee for taking up my HR 187, the Default Prevention Act.  Similar bills I have introduced passed the House in 2013 and 2015, and I am gratified the Committee would take it up in this session.  The bill simply provides that even if there is a fiscal impasse in our deliberations over the debt limit, the debt of the United States will always be paid in full and on time.

In order to enforce our laws, we have given terrifying powers to such agencies as the FBI, the IRS, and the CIA, among others.  The misuse of these powers to affect political outcomes would be fatal to freedom and it is the hallmark of any dictatorship.  This, our Constitution was written to prevent – whoever is in power.

Two irresistible forces are converging over the election of a Speaker of the House. One is simple math; the other is the full weight of history.

Racism is the practice of according rights and privileges to an individual not based on equality under the law, but rather according to what race that person was born. It is antithetical to every principle our country was founded on, from the promise of our Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” to the equal protection clause of our Constitution. It was a malignancy we fought a Civil War to remove. For generations, it has been denounced by every American of good will for the evil that it is.