Rep. Darrell Issa: This feels like Reagan country. Tim, thank you very much. It’s not often I get an introduction that doesn’t read from my old bio and it’s, it’s really enjoyable not to talk about what I did in the past but to talk about what we’re doing here today. This is an exciting time for conservatives. Scarcely a year ago there was questions. Questions about whether or not we were, our ideas were out of favor, whether or not change was a change very different than one that’s being talking about here today. Today however, we are watching a movement that promises us that in fact the American people are with us, they want the ideas that made this country great and strong. The experiment in liberty that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison conceived of over 230 years ago has stood the test of time and today is in vogue like never before. Please feel free.

Now as Tim said, I have the honor of, of overseeing the watchdog committee of Congress. Now some would say that the chairman of that committee oversees it. But the chairman of that committee is the party of the speaker, the part of the President and the party that in fact is not going to oversee itself. It’s going to, well basically, apologize for this president, to spend for this president. So I’m the luckiest man in Washington. I’m lucky in a strange, strange way. I’m lucky that the presidential candidate I didn’t vote for in fact got elected. Now that kind of luck I can do without. And as Dick Cheney said to this group the other day, this is a one-term president we trust. But our standard, that has sustained us for 230 years, is a standard of checks and balances. And so I’m honored that at a time in which the party of the majority and the party of the president has ideas very different than those here. Very different than the ideas that allowed us to survive and come out of the depression, which was free market and private enterprise. The, the policies that allowed to defeat the Soviet communism and to end it once and for all, which of course was strong national defense, the party and the principles that allowed us to be a shining light of liberty around the world, not in fact a collective for the greater good willing to co-op our ideas in order to fit in in a ever more socialistic world.

As a young kid growing up in a working class neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio, there we go. A little bit for Cleveland please. You know I always, always take something from Dan Lungren which is that he said, when he was running for governor in California, they knew why the pioneers kept moving west. And, and by the way it wasn’t, it wasn’t the great parks, the great museums, the great educational capabilites that drove them from Cleveland, it was just the weather. And those of you who came, who have gone for a walk today on the snow-filled sidewalks here, know there’s a reason that this place is not always a, a warm swamp and in the era of global warming we’ve had 4 of 14 of the worst snowstorms since 1870. Perhaps when the hot air leaves this town that’s what happens. But the opportunities that I had even though I left in my senior year of high school to go to the Army and didn’t get a high school diploma and got a GED, the Army scholarship and the opportunity to graduate from college, be commissioned, learn skills that have worked for me throughout my business career and today are still being used here in Congress, all of that comes because in this country all one needs is a belief in our principals and a willingness to work and the opportunities have always been there and will always be there. Before you leave, I would ask you all to, to provide a few dollars to the metro or the, the cabs here and go down to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and then go up to the Nation’s Capital. Our founding fathers knew that in fact what would oversee our government was the house of the people, the Congress, a place where every two years, we go back and we face you, the voters. We go back and ask you how we’re doing. And we’re so often told, quite rightfully, we should do better, and do better we will.

This administration needs the scrutiny of my committee. I’ve been privileged to lead a group of individuals, not to be the leader, but to lead this group of individuals who have done great research, who have leveraged our capabilities with capabilities around the country, with people who have done the things they should do, done, do, blew the whistle as former ACORN people on wrongdoing of ACORN. Dug in the dumpsters in San Diego to find 50,000 pages of documents intended to be destroyed but unfortunately left in an unlocked dumpster. We here today are here to a great extent for this panel to talk about the wrongdoing of ACORN. But before that I want to talk very specifically about this President. This President would have you believe that in fact he inherited a great deal and he that he does, he is here today and doing the people’s work to change America for the better. And that he works for you. He would have you believe that. But I would say, one year after the stimulus of $787 billion without a single Republican vote; that his policies are not only failed but you can begin to see a pattern in his policies. The pattern in his policies are very clear. They’re for the unions, they’re for the democratic machine, they’re for the liberal agenda, and I’m going to give you a case in point. My investigators have done what investigators do. They searched through to see what is it the President is really committed to? Where were his real campaign promises? So I would ask you to take a moment and look at this video and then see if the video doesn’t answer exactly what’s going on here in Washington.

Every major bill this Congress has sent to the President has been loaded with kickbacks, payoffs and earmarks designed to reward liberal special interest groups, labor unions and political allies of the Democratic Party. That is undeniable. The results are undeniable is yes, ACORN is at the center of it all. The most important thing that you’re gonna hear on this panel today is not about a question of, of the left or the right. It’s gonna be about an organization, ACORN, who as an ally of the Service Employee International Union and a number of other unions we have now uncovered that are directly working with them, they have formed a criminal enterprise. In my report last year I asked the question, “Is ACORN intentionally structured as a criminal enterprise?” When you find over 100 corporations and the lead corporation – which could be a non-profit not being a non-profit and paying taxes specifically because they didn’t want to be under that umbrella – putting together an impossible to separate group of organizations that are co located with unions, have dual hats with unions. You understand that one of the things that we discovered is the Service Employee International Union and, and ACORN are not only co located but they instruct people to say they represent both organizations. Like that wouldn’t be a small conflict for a non profit community organization that only cares about the poor. Caring about the poor and union efforts, do they really go hand in hand? I believe on this panel today you’re going to see that it’s just the opposite, that ACORN not only leveraged over $53 million of taxpayers’ money but tens of million dollars of money extorted from banks based on you don’t want us talking bad about you so fund our outreach, fund our ability to help the underserved get a loan. That money was unabashedly used in combination with the union and other Democratic associations to in fact distort the very democracy we depend on. For all of us here today the most important thing we care about is that our process be able to make a fair decision. In Massachusetts just a matter of weeks ago we saw a decision that was unthinkable in the polls, impossible a year ago and determined by the people of Massachusetts. In spite of every effort to turn out unlimited Democratic votes, to exaggerate the support of a flawed candidate, Scott Brown got elected. The lights were on very bright and it was much harder to distort that election. It is not hard to do a few thousand votes in a congressional race. The amount of thousands of votes that you have to pass, put together the difference between a Republican majority and a Democrat majority – or vice versa quite frankly – is usually less than a few hundred thousand votes and you do it district by district. I’m telling you today that this organization in fact sets out to do exactly that, to shade it enough to make a difference and they do it at all levels and in case some of you are Conservative Democrats as you well might be let me make something very clear. They don’t just defeat Republicans with Democrats. They play in the primary. When you have a Conservative Democrat that fits his or her district they play to make sure they get their particular style of Democrat. They distort democracy in the primary. They distort democracy in the general.

Now before this panel comes up – and I’m gonna do everything I can to get you the opportunity to hear this – I want to just set the record straight on this President because I think it’s important that somebody say that all we need to do is shine the truth and then let people decide for themselves. The American people need the facts on this administration and here they are. First, the President has the nerve to say he will limit his own campaign spending. Well he relies on ACORN to illegally do his election work for him and then lectures the Supreme Court Justices on protecting the rights of those participating in elections. Second, to my amazement his economic team covers up what’s really happening in our economy and in, and in calling the shots they actually are trying to say that their bailouts and borrowing are part of our recovery. It’s true. Third and most, most dangerously a national security team whose efforts to dismantle effective system of protecting American has won applause and even – yes even – a Nobel Peace Prize and who gave us the Award? Those who have no vested interest in our security, not the American people who know that in fact a prisoner of war is not tried in a Illinois or New York court. So why is an unlaw –  yeah, go ahead, please. An unlawful combatant is a prisoner of war who has violated the laws of war. That person is less entitled to protection than a prisoner of war and yet this administration is in, is insisting on giving special rights beyond what a prisoner of war would have and it’s wrong. Fourth, the campaign spend team has hyped the stimulus jobs that do not exist, has called record budget deficit fiscal restraint, has pushed corrupted science to get a global warming tax, and has last and most, most unconscionably reached out to us saying that he wants bipartisanship in order to get a partisan advantage for a health guild, a, a health care bill the American people have already decided they do not want.

I first voted in a federal election for Richard Nixon. For those who remember Richard Nixon that means I’m old but if I were old enough to remember this I would never forget it and I want us all to take this to heart. President Lincoln once warned our greatest danger if it is ever to reach us must spring up from among us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot Lincoln said it must be our it, it must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we must live throughout all time or die by suicide. That is an amazing statement at a time when this administration’s policy are both political and economic suicide. I charge you to be the truth bearers to change that in this election and the one that follows. Thank you and God bless you!

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