Congressman Smith addressing Republican Club of Lakewood

we've been very fortunate through a Mark's hard work to have great speakers this year we started off with Joe carrillos and we had the freeholders the next month and we had the sheriff and now to put the cherry on top of the Sunday I gave you our Congressman Chris thank you for inviting me here to be here uh Mary Jo and Mike Berman Mike Berman for years uh especially when I was chairman of Veterans Affairs committee was not only a source of inspiration but we worked so closely together on one veterans issue after another so I just want to publicly announce that we work together and and he he was just uh tenacious in making sure and in his prayers just a few moments ago about those who suffer uh the consequences of battle and we know you know with approximately 50 000 wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan and over six thousand combined killed in action uh the the enormous consequences of any War including those ones obviously still going on thank you Mike for your work on that Steve that was uh I should quit while I'm ahead uh thank you so much for that for the kind comments and all the kind comments frankly I'm not going to stay in bed 1A ever um mayor that was a good warning about what hospital was that I I you know dick work heard this the other day so I will be relatively brief whereas you know when I see the timeout sign Craig I I will know that you have to pull the plug but I um lessons and I have learned a very important lesson a few months ago when I spoke at a Lyme disease and I said this the dick Works uh when we were at in Manchester the other day but I was I work online I've worked on since 1992 when I had a tab meeting a woman from Jackson who runs the Lyme Disease Association of America Pat Smith asked me to get involved I got involved I've been working ever since I have a major bill that I think will become law uh very shortly but that said they said you have an hour and about five or fifteen minutes I forget which to give a keynote so I'm one of those who love to write I write ketos all the time I like to write op-eds I do like to write so I gave an hour and 15 minutes and I got into the Weeds about the disease it's devastating impacts and at the end this little girl because a lot of families in there out in the audience came up and she I'm standing by the podium a few people came up and she goes Mister your speech was long and boring I was just running around and walked away a few minutes later her father came up and said you know I saw you talking my little daughter Melissa I just want you to know she's just repeats whatever she hears so ever since then I I you know I am running as as Steve said a few moments ago for my 17th term I have never been more enthusiastic committed and aggressive in a benign way I hope but aggressive nevertheless in pushing human rights democracy rule of law a thriving economy care for our veterans and for his an orphan his or her because there are so many fatalities now occurring among our our females in the military but but just to take these issues and run with them and run with them every day uh I I my staff and I and uh yeah jeffy's here I came to see without my glasses Jeff's our district director and uh does a great job domestically domestically in the district working on on issues and um and so I thank him for that and and I just want to say that when somebody walks into our office we do we don't care if you're democrat or republican independent didn't vote no matter and they say I have a problem we roll up our slaves and we work night and day to try to resolve we've had over 80 000 individual casework problems and sometimes they occur like with the David Goldman case my wife and I were watching Dateline and we're sitting there watching at the end of this Dateline presentation David after four years of frustrating never even getting to see his abducted son says if there's anybody out there we can please help you know please it was just a you know my wife turns me goes Paul what are you going to do and I'm there but he's in Rush Holtz District we do have a gentleman's agreement that people usually you know stay within their parameters on on a lot of the case board so uh she says you're gonna let that stop you you know this guy is in Dire Straits what is all doing so they've long story short I called up Barry noon and my chief of staff that Friday night and said see if we can meet with David and his attorney or anyone involved with his case uh next week Monday at the meeting in the writing office we spend about two hours almost two and a half hours going over the case and I said David uh if if I could be of help I will go to Brazil and I'll spend time and we'll meet with government officials because right now it is David versus Goliath uh you you know you're you're not just fighting against an abductor you are fighting and and a legal team in Rio de Janeiro that used to be the people that our Embassy went to to get help on abducted children I mean talk about uh perverse 180. now if people know how the game is played are working to sanctify in abduction so I met with him on Monday and by that Friday I was in Brazil spent the better part of a week we met with members of the Supreme Court in Brasilia I went to his hearing uh when he tried to get access to his child and then went with a court order and it was one of many that this one got honored uh drove with him when he saw a son for the first time and it was an unbelievable transformational experience for me to watch him with his son I haven't seen him in five years and was this as if they had never been separated the hugs and and I took pictures those pictures were used later on in court cases uh Court the court case uh make a long story short he got his son back but one of the greatest Lessons Learned was just how indifferent uh probably because of the culture because a lot of good people in the state department but just how indifferent the administration was in taking up the cause of an abducted child and his father uh and there are females one of the bombs who have had the same thing happened to him and I've had him in earrings since and they didn't get this and we just monitor the situation U.S Department of State monitors it fast forward to to Jacob ostricher uh the same thing now more more than 500 Days in Palm desero prison uh a hell hole in Santa Cruz Bolivia uh and here's this man who has been accused of nothing killed by some Association that is a stretch uh who our department State Department monitors where's the advocacy I've had two hearings we've had Jacobs daughter right from here come and testify who was outstanding his wife his legal team we've asked the embassy we've asked Hillary Clinton we've asked President Obama to pick up the phone and talk to Abel Morales uh and say there's an American here matter of fact it's prescribed by our our national statutes that the president needs to fight for we've quoted the statute for the president the United States if you asked Obama tomorrow I don't think he'd have a clue what you're talking about uh same thing they have with David Goldman we tried repeatedly to get a meeting so that he would talk to in that case it was President Lula of Brazil and nothing zero zilch indifference uh mentioned to a foreign minister a mention but no real F behind that effort to get Sean gobin back and we're seeing likewise Deja Vu and it happens all the time there's 2500 kids American Kids uh who have been abducted I went to Japan on behalf of a of a a veteran of Iraq from from North Jersey who married a Japanese national unfortunately the marriage would awry that happens in real life the judge said no passports pulled the passports and lo and behold since you worked for the consulate office in New York she went to Chicago got two replicas made jetted off to Japan and now going past three years he has not seen his kids so I went over there I pressed it uh and there has been even our assistant secretary for Asian Affairs testified to what am I hearings it actually apologized to the families the Left Behind parents and yet we haven't seen a change in policy we haven't seen what I believe ought to be I have a bill you know called the Sean and David Goldman International child abduction prevention and return act which would finally do what I did on trafficking in 2000 I wrote a law called the trafficking victims protection act it was opposed by the Clinton Administration in most of its aspects they liked a few aspects but most of it they're against which combats modern-day slavery sex to labor trafficking that legislation now is I think the quintessential example of when you want to push human rights you say there's a penalty phase if a country is lacked indifferent or enabling of the human rights abusers every country in the world now has human rights laws on trafficking that look remarkably like the trafficking victims protection matter of fact I gave it to members of the Duma in Russia friends of mine who work in the Russia uh it was a woman named misalina who was a member a deputy at the time translated in Russian she got much of it tasked uh in the Russian Dublin we need to work in a global way to combat modern-day slavery because it is one of the cruelest exploitations on the face of the Earth but Clinton opposed it he ended up signing it at the end of the day and I'm always grateful for that um but now we're seeing that same kind of stop sign going up on on abduction cases on Jacob's law which is what we've named the law which borrows heavily from the trafficking business protection act to say if there's an American in prison anywhere in the world we're your Advocate now if you've committed crimes you got to pay the time but if you are innocent and you're in a dictatorship like Bolivia or China or so or or Venezuela or or many of the countries around the world we're going to be your Advocate we're not going to go in and say how's the food are you getting your medicines uh which is basically what we've done with Jacob and Jacob I talked to him last week I talked to him often he does have a cell phone and thankfully the embassy has tried to make sure that he has an ability to communicate but but you know he is very disheartened about the State of Affairs of what his government our government has not done for him so I'm going to push the Jacob's law until that is enacted and I'm already talking to the Romney people God willing he wins this election uh they understand and they need to be advocates for Americans and they're not and you know this he was a successful businessman I've said to the Embassy why aren't you warning other business persons in Bolivia American uh that this too could happen to you I know several members of the parliament the Congress Bolivia who are the opposition one of his name Pinto there are many others they have been held they have been threatened with lawsuits just like Jacob and one of them went to the the the Brazilian embassy seeking Asylum because he had so many threats against him that's how they do business I met with the minister of governments who was the minister of interior the prosecutors these are the people that are doing it to Jacob and and um they said he doesn't want you know bail I said are you kidding I was at the bail Harry and you intimidated the judge and said if you grant him bail relative Freedom out of that hellhole called Palmer Sarah prison we will bring charges against you judge so they use that intimidation it is prosecutors gone wild Rogue prosecuted and I asked the minister what are you doing you have Rogue prosecutors and it was like a question you had never even been asked thought about and certainly did not want to answer so we're pushing hard on that but it's systemic it's indicative of a larger problem within State uh and I hope if I get a chance to be chairman or if I don't I will pushing that issue issue aggressively every day on the economy we are in Dire Straits we all know it with the debt crisis and the debt crisis has been so exacerbated by President Obama and his unbelievably Reckless spending 16 trillion dollars you know a trillion dollars is a thousand billion these are numbers that are that are incomprehensible and we're spending four billion dollars more in debt every single day and over 40 cents on every dollar that we spend now is borrowed either through Federal Reserve buying things that you know out of a fund and where do they get the money bringing dollars or selling our debt overseas to places like China so it is totally unsustainable and it puts my grandchildren we have two of them now and we put one in our our little Grace who just saw the picture today and told my wife or her grandmother and her mother she was all smiling and she saw the picture but we put her at risks we put our kids at risk uh and even amagina dad said uh this week look at the United States in their debt problem how long can they last fortunately for a man who was anti-semitic and had a monster like armaged is an element of Truth in what he's saying about our sustainability economically and if the economics aren't working they all know our ability to project power and to be you know truly a force for the world becomes uh at risk and so we've got to be concerned about it I think Romney gets it uh Governor Romney he knows how to run things uh you know with the tough but fair uh President Obama has been how many checks do I write and of course so much of it is geared to helping the Democrats and Democrat districts and Democrat States Obamacare and I'll just do a couple more otherwise I'll have that little there's no little girl here Obamacare as the Wall Street Journal so athlete put in is the worst piece of legislation ever uh our hospitals and I mentioned this earlier you know it was in when I was in uh um when I was in bed um um the hospitals in New Jersey 4.2 billion dollars over 10 years you know we've heard in all three debates 716 billion dollars when you break that out uh 405 billion if it comes out of America's hospitals hospice gets hit uh Home Health Care gets it uh big time and you know Home Health Care is a great way of keeping people out of nursing homes and trying to promote a situation where you're you know you're healthy or you're at home out of a hospital saves money it's also or you made it out damage uh many of our hospitals are going to take it right on the chin losing tens of millions in some cases like Jersey Shore 125 million plus over 10 years they can't sustain it they've been all in crisis and talking about life support with bed 1A they've been in butt bed 1A uh for years merging Acquisitions doing all kinds of creative things become more effective uh and and you know they've cut the fat out it's all down the bone and syndrome now how much further can they go now they're going to take another hit uh it's it's very troubling and if you you know remember President Obama said if you like your health care the way it is you can keep it nothing could be farther from the truth from that Distortion um we're already seeing 30 plus businesses saying that they're going to dump their employees into the exchanges uh small businesses the you know the PowerHouse of creating new jobs are are holding up how can I hire somebody new you know what does this all mean to me so it's had a chilling effect on new jobs and some of the industries are already saying uh that we'll just have people work less than 30 hours so I'm not liable for the 3000 plus fine that Obamacare imposes on me uh everything's done with fines you look at Obamacare it is filled with with punitive sanctions against employees and employers if you don't do as uh President Barack Obama orders you this is America we don't do those kind of things until finally in terms of foreign really goes for it and points out the the the weaknesses of this Administration which are legion um I remember when when the so-called Arab Spring was breaking forth uh and this Administration was waxing euphoric about what was happening in Egypt it was like are you kidding the Muslim Brotherhood is in ascendancy and you're happy about it president Mubarak you know really turns out he took money and that's awful we could have been talking about that every time I met with him and the first time was back in 1994 in no no 1996 in Cairo and every year when he would come into Washington we'd have a meeting of Foreign Affairs members and I pressed him on two major issues and I wasn't the only one but I always pressed them the anti-semitic nature of his state-run media which unfortunately had much anti-Semitism in it but he did honor the peace treaty with Egypt uh and secondly the the cruelty of of some that didn't go punished towards the Coptic Christians burning down churches but it was the pope of of the cops you know supported Mubarak because they had a two-way exchange and things would happen uh to to ameliorate problems when they Rose but it wasn't perfect in comes the Muslim Brotherhood not only is a very very strong Sharia law uh and Constitution and policies being promulgated uh but you now have a situation which they missed by a mile of the peace treaty being at risk yes our foreign aid is linked to that if they if they break the peace treaty with Egypt it's severed 1.3 billion dollars goes out the window but to show you their lack of concern for Religious Freedom three of us in the house insisted maybe it was a few more but we insisted Frank Wolf uh and I and Trent Franks that religious freedom be put in as conditionality to our foreign aid for the fiscal year 2013. our ambassador and the state department that's Obama objected to it and fought us on it we put it in anyway in comes the president uh they waived it and even though things have gotten demonstrably worse and cops have been killed in huge numbers uh we don't lift a figure I had two hearings three hearings on Egypt this year that I chaired two of them focused on an issue that I can't give this Administration to focus on and that is that they are abducting little cups of Christian girls or teenagers and forcing them into Islamic marriages by the thousands we had a woman who did the actual human rights reporting on this come and testify at my hearing is on C-Span you can watch it and she said it's not an allegation I've done this myself she's been a human rights um later for years and what they do they they take these little girls and and and very often she just disappears next so you know she's in a marriage and if she leaves she's you know apostasy she could be killed it's a terrible and they call it islamicizing the womb because any children she Bears there after uh will not be cop that Christians they will be Muslims uh if somebody wants to be any faith they want that's their business that's religious freedom but to say that you force it and coerce it is so I had two hearings I had the assistant Secretary of Human Rights democracy and Labor uh my composer testified one of them we I gave him I physically put it in his hand and said please Michael he's a good guy you've got to investigate this I uh Frank Wolf took everything from my hearing and put it in our ambassador to Cairo to Egypt put it in her hands one year later the Ambassador is on a telephone hookup with members of foreign fears I said Madam Ambassador have you have you deployed Foreign Service officers to investigate the the forced marriages and the trafficking of Coptic girls into these she goes well I haven't gotten around to it yet I I couldn't believe it and I let her know I couldn't believe how how you know what are you doing you know this is a major human rights issue and it's gone unattended and what I say this as one example that is symbolic and emblematic of what this Administration has done all along human rights are not even in the back door they're out the door they're out in the parking lot somewhere they have had no human rights policy and as a result the dictatorships around the world have taken their cue from that and it comports with what Bill Clinton did during his eight years human rights were non-existent he would talk a little mouthing about it but it came out to real policies they were slim and none mostly none and in the name of the country I can give you an example of every country in the world between Cuba uh the all the Middle Eastern countries African countries where we have been asleep or AWOL uh By Design or because the confidence I think is more by Design I mentioned this earlier when I was in Bay Head China I've had 41 hearings on China China poses like radical Islam uh the greatest threat to the world in my opinion yes we have and of course Iran and that's the Middle East or the region uh is the greatest threat I believe right now but we have enabled that dictatorship by our silence and indifference on human rights these entire four years religious freedom the issue of coercive population control Barack Obama reversed George Bush and reverse going back all the way to Ronald Reagan uh we are giving money to organizations that enable support and cheerlead for the one job or couple policy in China which has led to the loss of a hundred million girls who are missing the daughters that are missing uh and and just it's called the U.N population flood they are the ones who started it co-started it in 1979 and has supported him every year thereafter in China on torture on labor rights name the human rights issue this Administration has been to sleep I'm going to be on Fox News at what time Jeff 12. 12 40 I don't know how long it is not that long uh before the debate but this is Sunday to talk about China so you know I'm going to try to get some of these things out in because we we deal so superficially with China you know all this you know that I mentioned is again at big head earlier but there's so many other examples every time Barack Obama goes there or Hillary Clinton goes over there human rights are an obligatory mention so they can say I raised human rights but they don't there's nothing behind it it's usually on page five of them talking points uh and and we've seen it over and over again and and and again what is China doing they're in a an expansionist mode unlike I've ever seen Japan is frightened about their expansionists and their settling of scores from World War II we know that Taiwan is always in the crosshairs but so are all the other asean countries and the others in the region and of course that's us too because you know we could easily be drawn into a war by this calculation uh because of all of the growing hostilities of Bluewater Navy uh and all of the other transfers of technology that have enabled them to create an unbelievably strong military industrial competency courtesy of the United States of America and it's gotten only worse in these last years so China remains a huge problem and this Administration has been able in combating it I'm not saying you when they're belligerent I've met with Lee pong I've been with top leaders I can't even get a Visa as I said earlier to go because I've been barred from going to China by the Chinese government but but it you know it I probably said enough on China but it is really a a huge miscalculation threat assessment that has not been done uh and we will ruin the day unless we have someone who really understands we need to get that country to matriculate even if it's incrementally towards a democracy because this dictatorship is absolutely out of control uh so that's a couple of things and again I'll I'll have that little girl coming up real soon do you have any questions we'd love to answer them or try to but Iran is another case Syria is another case uh you go back Hillary Clinton said and quoting some members of Congress that Assad might be you know a more reasonable person to deal with wow what a miscalculation of the dictatorship that is just like Egypt just like everything else that has been going on in the Middle East and then the faux Pasa faux pas what were they thinking when our ambassador and three other individuals were killed in in um in Libya to Spin A Yarn as if you know everything has gotten better because they killed Osama Bin Laden you know I wish they would have captured him maybe that couldn't have been done uh but certainly kellyanne was was The Prudent thing to do is that was the right thing to do at that time but don't politicize it you know if George Bush were to be saying this at the convention and uh he would be randomly criticized by the liberal liberal year uh and not a word that I've heard uh you know just it's just a little bit on the bizarre side but to say that about Assad they keep missing all of these opportunities to as best we can manage very difficult crises they make the wrong decisions and and you know I asked well I can't it was a close hearing I can't talk about but then the the the um it's all going to come out talking about affili elections and finally when they came back on Daryl Ison uh on cutting Embassy Security accounts yes there was an amendment I think they're talking about the amendment by Steve Boyer from Indiana I voted that one uh so but frankly when when the Ambassador or any official says I think I need more security and you're in a place called libyans you honor that request and you do so promptly or he doesn't go to the consulate uh you know every security calls the shots that all came out and Daryl is hearing had that additional Money's been there that wouldn't have made a nickels worth of difference and whether or not it was Deployable assets Diplomatic Security types and and like to accompany him there not any difference but it's a great distraction uh to attack Daryl Ison great job in that oversight hearing uh a week ago I mean that was an extraordinary hearing and um and all that will come out and come out afterwards and just for the record I wrote the Embassy Security Act after Dar es Salaam got hit at Nairobi back in the late 90s I had Admiral crowd who's then chairman was the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff went on to become Clinton's ambassador to to the UK he did what they called the accountability review board he came to the hearing as did Carpenter secretary Carpenter from Diplomatic Security and they marveled frankly at how asleep we were as a state department in not realizing that after so many other previous attempts that Americans that Al Qaeda Al Qaeda did not have the ability or the will to to manifest itself in places other than what you would think of the usual targets because two African countries didn't look like they were you know high on the priorities list and many people died some of our Embassy that a lot of locals died in that terrible bombings so I wrote the Embassy Security Act it provided 900 million dollars each year for five years uh for setbacks putting mylar another kind of Protections in smaller window panes because shrapnel kills so many peoples when your Embassy or any building gets blown up and all those things and there's been a frankly a bipartisan effort healthy and it should be to make sure we have those kinds of protections for the Foreign Service officers who who are brave individuals but again what they do in the culture starts to detox they're not they're just monitoring because it starts at the top starts with the secretary of state and the president um and and um so so I think a backseat to no one on my commitment because I wrote the first law that the major law and uh and we've done it ever since and it's been thankfully bipartisan but again as a distraction they say oh these guys look to cut that well um how about the major mistake in saying as he did at the U.N and elsewhere President Obama uh it was that video that video is Despicable nobody and they're right by whatever defends such terrible garbage but that's not what caused these people to come together and to attack us so um you know that thankfully the media is now at least beginning to ask them tougher questions for all these years they haven't done that with this Administration and so thank you and um I need your help friends needs it talking ticket or free owners uh Sheriff well he was all of us needed local level Mike you did but I think you're in but everyone needs um and any questions I'll take it if