In 2012, the Supreme Court upheld President Obama's overreaching mandate that forces every American to purchase health insurance or face a fine.
Blake Farenthold
It's said that you can tell a lot about someone by who opposes them. In the case of liberal pundit Bill Maher - a man who called America's actions cowardly in the wake of 9/11 and who mocked WWII veterans who wanted to visit the monument built in their honor - I wear his disapproval of me as a badge of honor.
As much as I hate to say it, what I'm coming to realize is that all we're really able to do is put the brakes on. Imagine going real fast in a Flintstones car, and my heel is out there. I went to Washington to change the world, and all I can do is put my heel out.
Human trafficking robs victims of their basic human rights, and it occurs right under our noses. Many efforts have been focused in other regions of the world, but this is a major problem here at home.
Do I have a reasonable expectation of privacy in any information that I share with a company? My Google searches? The emails I send? Do I have a reasonable expectation of privacy in anything but maybe a letter I hand deliver to my wife?
We need to be talking about things like the DREAM Act. We need to also be talking about e-verify. We also need to be talking about border security.
We all went up to Washington on a mission to change things. What I found is that the Founding Fathers set it up where it's a little more difficult to do. We've got the Senate and the president to deal with.
'Those people' is a bad word.
I'm still on the Trump train.
I cannot ignore this reality, and I encourage my all colleagues to join me in this fight to end modern day slavery in our own backyard.
I think there's no problem getting through the House a pathway to legal status. A pathway to citizenship is going to be tougher, but I think it is potentially doable, if we can show the American people that the border is secure.
Everybody wants to help folks out. But we've got a system where you can stay on unemployment for an awfully long time. And I think we need to create a system of decreasing benefits over time to encourage you to get a job.
I've got a quad copter on my Christmas list, as I suspect quite a few people do.
I see our veterans as American heroes, not as cartoon characters.
If I were to leave Congress and want to start Farenthold TV, it would be very difficult. The fewer players there are, the fewer the opportunities to build a big enough audience to get on.
The fourth amendment specifically was designed to prohibit general warrants. How could collecting every piece of phone data be perceived as anything but a general warrant?
I'm not going to sell Donald Trump short. I think the American people saw something in him.
I think a fair amount of my votes were 'not-for-Ortiz,' votes and I'm going to have to work hard to earn the 'for Blake' votes.
I think anybody who's had an alcoholic in their life, or somebody with a drug problem, realizes that until things get bad enough, there's no incentive to change.
The census should not be political.
I'm a Texan - my idea of gun control is hitting what you aim at and nothing else.
I would consider it to be immoral to take a paycheck when the people in the federal government are not.
Nobody in the Washington regulatory bureaucracy gets fired for saying no.
I've been through several of his campaigns, and I can tell you nobody can out-campaign Rick Perry.
Census data influences decisions made from Main Street to Wall Street, in Congress and with the Federal Reserve. Not to mention, the American people who look to, and trust, the data the government releases on our nation's unemployment, state of our economy, and health insurance coverage.
I went in with the youthful vigor that I could single-handedly change the world. But you fast come to the realization that you're 1/435th of one-half of one-third of the government.
Hillary Clinton and her media machine try to dismiss, but anybody who understands anything about how email works - and this is millennials in particular, who grew up on the Internet - know that you're an idiot to keep sensitive information on a server in your house.
We have testimony saying, and I think common sense also dictates, that in a failed state like Syria, you don't have any government information, police reports to rely on to vet somebody. So there's no way to do a background check from somebody coming out of Syria. There's no way we can find out whether they're safe or not.
I've already composed and written a letter to the House administration telling them to withhold my paycheck in the event of a lapse of appropriations.
In an urban area, you're not going to be an hour away from another post office.
We've got the power of the purse in the Congress.
I will continue to fight to secure our borders and implement common sense policies aimed at reducing violence and the flow of illegal narcotics, firearms, people, and money across our borders.
Drug testing for recipients of various welfare programs - I really think that's something that needs to be considered.
I feel like my mandate when I was elected was to go reduce the size of government, lower taxes, and increase freedom, and freedom isn't free, and sometimes you have to make a small sacrifice to move forward with what you're after.
If you are just using the service to look at Web sites and download e-mail, then a DSL line may be cheaper. It is when you have more data going out that wireless can make a difference.
Companies that are hosting Web sites or do a lot of teleconferencing need a lot of bandwidth going both ways.
With President Obama restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba, the immigration preferential treatment given to Cubans... no longer makes sense.
My subcommittee will be thoroughly investigating this issue and demanding answers from Census officials on allegations that the Census Bureau is changing the wording of survey questions used to determine our nation's annual report on health insurance coverage.
I sit on the House Judiciary Committee, where we've been actively working on concrete solutions to fix our nation's immigration policy, piece-by-piece.
You've got to do the same sort of outreach to Hispanics that you do to any other group. They want to see their congressman.
Sometimes you've got to make a hard decision, and there's a real reluctance to make hard decisions in Washington.
Nobody likes to make a hard decision, because you're running every two years.
Every member of Congress has highways in their district.
I actually enjoy having the Capitol view. We started referring to it as the trillion dollar view.
My constituents feel betrayed by the promise that Reagan made, that if we grant amnesty, we'll then secure the border. We obviously didn't do that.
I'm committed to voting to repeal Obamacare or defending it as much as possible.
My message on immigration is that the people who want to come to this country, by and large, even those who have done it illegally, are coming for the right reasons, not to take advantage of our welfare system.
As a government watchdog, I'm always looking for ways to make government smaller, more efficient, and fairer.
It's Congress' job to keep an eye on the other agencies and the workings of the entire government. It is our constitutional duty.
I understand that, for some, everything is political.
