[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 41 (Tuesday, April 4, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H1445-H1450]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        CUT UNNECESSARY TAB ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa 
(Mr. King) is recognized until midnight.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the privilege of being 
recognized to address this House this evening, and I would start out 
with some responses and some answers to these questions that you have 
been advised you will never hear the answers to. I didn't come prepared 
to answer these questions, but I actually think I am prepared to answer 
them.
  The remarks with regard to the need to balance the budget. I agree, 
and I have a plan to balance this budget. I don't want to balance it by 
raising taxes. I want to balance this budget by controlling our 
spending. That is the issue. That is what the American people want. 
That is what I want. That is what we would do if we were a family 
balancing our budget or a small business balancing our budget or a 
large business balancing our budget. We would take a look at our 
spending.
  Of course, we would work on the revenue side. Our revenue side has 
been growing. It grew 14.5 percent more than anticipated last year 
because we kept the taxes down. So I would suggest my colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle join with me. I will be introducing a piece of 
legislation. It is called the CUT legislation, which means cut 
unnecessary tab. Cut the unnecessary tab of this Federal Government.
  It is going to be a new process that has never been offered to this 
Congress before, Mr. Speaker. It is a process that will allow for a 
privileged motion to come to the floor under an open rule that would be 
a rescissions bill once every quarter. Once every quarter, leadership 
will have the first 10 days of each quarter to offer a recissions bill. 
If they do not do that, any Member can offer a rescissions bill under a 
privileged motion. And if the Speaker recognizes them, they can bring 
forward a shell bill or a bill that has a thousand cuts in it, for that 
matter, but it will allow every single line item that has been 
appropriated by this Congress to be brought back before this Congress 
and removed from the budget under rescissions.
  When an appropriation bills leaves the House and goes to the Senate, 
and the Senate works their will on the appropriation bill and it comes 
back to conference and we agree and do final passage on an 
appropriation bill, it then goes to the President for his 
signature. From the instant that that bill is enacted, and generally 
from the instant that the President's signature and ink goes on that 
bill, it will be subject then to rescissions that will happen four 
times a year in this Congress.

  Four times a year Congress will take up a rescissions bill, and it 
will allow any Member to bring an amendment that will be ruled in 
order, provided it is in the proper sequence in the structure of the 
rescissions bill, which will allow actually for rescissions of all 
appropriations that have gone out that haven't been expended. So every 
Member then will have that opportunity to have their attempt at a line 
item veto. And when that budget is done and when the expenditures are 
spent, then a majority of this Congress will have had their say on 
every single line item.
  If they object to a particular issue, like say, for example the 
Cowgirls Hall of Fame would be one that comes to mind, they would 
simply bring an amendment that would be added to the rescissions bill, 
put it up, debate the amendment, and we would vote that amendment up or 
down. If the amendment succeeds and it is to strike the funding for the 
Cowgirls Hall of Fame, then that would become part of the rescissions 
bill that would come off this floor, presumably pass and go over to the 
Senate for them to act on it. Now, whether they do or not is an open 
question as well, Mr. Speaker. But certainly the public would put some 
pressure on the Senate to do the right thing and do the responsible 
thing.
  That is one way to control earmarks. It would allow Congress to 
address every single earmark and rescind, if they chose, those earmarks 
that are not appropriate spending. So the pork and the fat that is in 
the bill, particularly the appropriations that come in in conference 
that don't have a vote on the House or the Senate, unless they are part 
of the overall conference report, those kinds of appropriations then 
could be singled out in our rescissions bill and we could strike the 
unnecessary spending.
  It would be something that would empower the rank-and-file members of 
this Congress and help them offset some of the powerful tactics of the 
appropriations people when they sit down in conference and put these 
appropriations in the bill. It is appropriate. It is something I 
believe our Founding Fathers would agree with. It is something that 
will control, to some degree, the overspending of our budget.
  Now, one can argue that it is entitlements that are the big part of 
this, and I will agree. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and 
interest, those four items, are swallowing up more than half of our 
budget. Our discretionary portion of the budget is getting smaller and 
smaller. But we can still address the overspending in our discretionary 
budget. And this doesn't mean we can't address our entitlements. I am 
for going down that path of addressing the entitlements too, Mr. 
Speaker.
  Now, my CUT bill will be introduced sometime in the next 2 weeks, and 
that means Cut the Unnecessary Tab of Congress. It is new. I think it 
is unique. I do not think anything has ever been offered like this in 
Congress before. I don't want to go so far as to say that it is 
revolutionary, but I will go so far as to say that I believe it is 
necessary. It is necessary for us to shine some sunshine on the things 
we do here in this Congress and let the people see how we do business, 
and put people up in this Congress for a vote so we can read their 
voting record and determine where they really stand.
  So these kind of nights when you hear this rhetoric go on over and 
over and over again, that we are spending too much money and we are 
irresponsible and the national debt is going up and up and up and up, I 
would say to the people that have been making

[[Page H1446]]

those statements night after night down here, what is your plan? What 
plan do you propose, other than raising taxes?
  You are talking like we don't respond to you. We respond to you. I am 
responding to you right now and asking you to join me in my CUT bill. 
We will do something responsible. We will slow down Federal spending 
and make everybody in this Congress accountable, to have a vote on 
potentially every single line item in the entire $2.7 trillion budget.
  That is a responsible thing for us to do, and I am asking for support 
on both sides of the aisle. I actually think there will be some 
significant Democrat support on the other side of the aisle, and I am 
confident there will be significant support here on the Republican side 
of the aisle. That is one thing we can do.
  Now, this foreign debt issue. Well, foreign debt just comes two ways. 
One is if we have deficit spending and then we are borrowing to keep 
this government going. All of that debt isn't foreign debt. A 
percentage of it is, and I have seen the numbers. It isn't a shocking 
piece that is foreign debt. But we have foreign countries that invest 
in U.S. Treasury bills because they believe in our currency. So you can 
declare that to be foreign debt, and I won't deny it. And I am not 
comfortable with an ever-growing foreign debt.
  Another way we can get foreign debt is to have a negative balance of 
trade. A year ago it was a minus $617.7 billion in a negative balance 
of trade. A lot of that is because of oil and another big chunk of it 
is because of China. Those two things added together, I believe, are 
nearing about $400 billion between those two categories all together. 
That was a year ago, minus $617.7 billion. This last year, it was just 
reported out a month or a little more ago, a minus $725 billion 
imbalance in trade deficit.
  So whenever we come with a trade deficit, that means that there are 
companies and countries, foreign companies and foreign countries that 
will hold collateral of the United States. We buy more than we sell, so 
that deficit becomes collateralized in collateral here in the United 
States. I know at one point the Japanese owned Rockefeller Plaza. So 
that would be an example. They have since sold it, but that kind of 
collateral is held here in this country and it grows: $725 billion.
  This kind of growth rate of our trade deficit, we are approaching 
that point where it will be $1 trillion a year. And if you do $1 
trillion a year for 10 years, you have got, miraculously, $10 trillion 
in debt. These numbers continue to grow. It can't go on forever. We 
need to reverse that.
  Unlike my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I have a plan to 
address that as well. And it is not a difficult plan to understand. It 
is one that serious economists will not disagree with, and it is called 
the fair tax. The fair tax is a national consumption tax. And what it 
does is it recognizes that what you tax, you get less of. Well, we're 
taxing all productivity in America under this policy that we have today 
under the Internal Revenue Code: The corporate income tax and the 
individual income tax and all of the taxes we have that roll around 
that.

                              {time}  2320

  I propose under the FAIR Tax, H.R. 25, to take all tax off 
productivity in America. Ronald Reagan said what you tax you get less 
of. So I want to take all tax off of all productivity. We will more 
than double the economy in this country in 10 to 15 years. If we do 
that and put the tax on consumption, then we are providing the 
incentive for savings and investment. To take the earnings, put it in 
savings and investment. People will decide when they will pay the 
taxes. But the important part is to untax productivity so we get more 
productivity. When that happens, gross domestic product jumps and 
doubles. People have 56 percent more money in their pockets because we 
are not withholding from their paycheck and they go out into the retail 
businesses and spend money. The tax is collected there, and it comes 
into the national treasury and that is a wash. We do not collect any 
more or less taxes than we do under the income tax system, but what we 
have done is taken this burden of our taxes off. We have gotten rid of 
a trillion dollars in anchor that we are dragging every year to fund 
our IRS and force our IRS, and then the disincentives when people will 
no longer work that overtime or invest that money in their production 
line.
  The FAIR tax is the solution to this economy. It fixes the balance of 
trade. The way it does that, for example, if you had a Mazda on a 
dealer's lot with a $30,000 price tag and you had a Chevy or a Ford 
sitting on a dealer's lot with a $30,000 price tag. Competitively they 
have matched their prices so the vehicles are built with competitive 
value and competitive prices; $30,000 is an example.
  Then we pass the FAIR tax, and it will remove 22 percent out of that 
automobile because that is the embedded Federal tax that has to be 
built into that price so that the corporations can pay taxes: Their 
corporate income tax, their payroll tax, and a series of other taxes 
that are built into the burden of running a company. Passing the FAIR 
tax takes the income tax pricing component out of that automobile, the 
$30,000 Ford or Chevy or American-made vehicle goes down to $23,400. 
And the Mazda made in Japan stays at $30,000.
  Then we add the embedded tax back in, the 23 percent tax and you 
write the check for the Chevy or the Ford for $30,420. You write the 
check for the Mazda for $39,000. That is a 28 percent marketing 
advantage for the American-made vehicle. That means those $800 million 
worth of Mazdas coming over from Japan every year do not come in any 
where as near as great of numbers any more, and some of those Chevies 
and Fords go to Japan to be sold. And over there, they are priced at 22 
percent less because we have taken the Federal tax out of the pricing 
component and put it on the sales size.
  That is how we fix this minus $725 billion imbalance of trade. And 
when we have revenue coming into the Federal Government, we also have 
repaired the problem with regard to balancing our budget. We will be 
able to do this. What we need, though, 44 percent of Americans are not 
paying taxes at all. They are not filing their returns. They do not 
have a tax liability.
  It was Alexander Tyler who said that when Americans understand that a 
majority of them can vote themselves benefits from the public treasury, 
on that day democracy ceases to exist. We are closing in on that 51 
percent number that Alexander Tyler was so concerned about. It is 44 
percent today, and perhaps the number is larger. We need to turn that 
around. We need to make taxpayers out of every American. Get them 
vested in this. We can untax the poor in America at the same time.
  But I want to point out an anecdote that I think illustrates how the 
face of America gradually would be changed. That is I have often said 
that little Johnny would have to put a couple dimes up on the counter 
when he bought his baseball cards or little Sally on her Barbie doll 
clothes, and they would understand that they had to fund the expensive 
Federal Government. That would change the politics of America one 
transaction at a time, one child at a time, growing to adulthood. Every 
time they make a transaction, they would realize they had to pay for 
this expensive Federal Government. That has been the story I have used 
and created because it illustrated something I wanted to express.
  Well, last Friday night I was at a dinner in Iowa. A young candidate 
for Congress stepped forward and he told about his son, Michael, who 
was buying a package of Skittles for 85 cents. I believe Michael is 8 
years old. He put the Skittles on the counter and the checkout lady 
said that will be 91 cents. And Michael said the Skittles are 85 cents, 
why do you want 91 cents?
  You have to pay the tax.
  I have to pay tax on Skittles, he said.
  Yes. The answer is you have to pay tax on the Skittles, the baseball 
cards, the automobile, the Barbie doll clothes, the prom dress, the 
pampers and the limousine service if it is for personal service, all of 
those things. And every time we dug into our pocket and put that cash 
out for Uncle Sam, all of us would be reminded we have an expensive 
Federal Government and we would ask, can we get along without some of 
these services. Can we be a little more personally responsible? Could 
we get a little more efficiency out of our churches because we do not 
get much efficiency out of our Federal

[[Page H1447]]

Government? Those kinds of questions would go on one at a time by the 
tens and hundreds of millions over the generations, and the face of 
America and attitude of America toward government would change.
  So two things, fix the problems which have been laid out here tonight 
by the people on the other side of the aisle, and one of those things 
is the CUT bill, the Cut the Unnecessary Tab that America has so we can 
do a rescissions bill under an open rule so we can cut the earmarks 
that are unnecessary, the pork that is unnecessary, and put a final 
stamp of approval on a budget and all of us be proud that we voted our 
conscience and our needs.
  The other side is let us reform our taxes. Serious economists will 
not argue with the position I have taken here tonight. But what I do 
recognize is we have had a long, strong economy. This long, strong 
economy, we had ten quarters in a row where we had 3 percent or more 
growth in our gross domestic product. Unemployment has been ratcheting 
down. It is about 4.7 percent right now. When you get that kind of 
smooth sailing for 10 quarters, and now the 11th quarter was the last 
one and I think that settled in around 1.6 or 1.7. You cannot carry 
that run on forever, but no one can find a better run in this economy 
at least going back to the early Reagan years and perhaps well before 
that because even before a similar kind of 3 percent run of growth for 
10 consecutive quarters did exist in the early 1980s, it existed in an 
environment of 22 percent interest and high unemployment and high 
inflation rates. We had to get that under control.
  A strong growth and economy was not doing as much as the strong 
growth we have had over the last 11 quarters here in the United States 
of America. So this solid economy that we have really works against us 
in a way because I do not believe we will find the political will to 
reform our taxes under this kind of an economic environment.
  So I will say there are only two ways we can pass H.R. 25, the FAIR 
tax bill, and one of those ways is if we had an economic collapse or a 
dramatic economic downturn. That would cause us to look for solutions 
to bring our economy out of the potential doldrums.
  That is not something I anticipate nor do I desire. I do not want to 
do business and get tax reform under that kind of an environment, 
although I think it would be better for us to go through that kind of 
pain and come out the other side with the FAIR tax as a policy.
  I want to avoid an economic collapse or a downturn, so the other 
alternative is if we had a Presidential candidate who runs for the 
candidacy on the FAIR tax and wins the Presidency and receives a 
mandate from the American people. That kind of mandate from the 
American people would bring it to this Congress, good economy or not, 
and we could hammer out a good fair tax policy that would be a reform. 
That fixes our balance of trade and our deficit spending and it fixes 
the borrowing from foreign governments and lets us pay all of that 
back. It makes the United States of America the destination Nation of 
choice for the capital in the world. It brings back $11 trillion in 
stranded American capital that is in foreign economies.

                              {time}  2330

  All of those things happened good out of this. These are solutions, 
Mr. Speaker, to the problems that were raised over here on the other 
side of the aisle tonight. I ask again, what is your plan? I have laid 
out my plan and there are clear solutions. There are well thought out 
solutions, and I present them to this Congress, Mr. Speaker, and ask 
for endorsement and support of those clear and logical and rational 
and, in fact, with regard to the FAIR tax, irrefutably solid economic 
plan, one that serious economists will not challenge.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I didn't come here to the floor to talk about 
taxes. I came here and listened to the statements made by my colleagues 
and that, Mr. Speaker, is my rebuttal for their remarks.
  I came here to talk about immigration because I think it is important 
for us to look ahead to the future of this Nation. And I have watched 
people marching in the streets across this country. It sounds to me as 
though they have a series of marches that are planned in the near 
future.
  I recall in my mind's eye the television shots of a half a million 
people in the streets of Los Angeles, a half a million pouring into the 
streets to march and march under the Mexican flag in a big way. And as 
I looked across there and tried to do my count, my judgment was that 
perhaps there were 10 Mexican flags for every American flag in the 
streets of Los Angeles.
  These protests went on in other cities around the country as well. 
Students walked out of school in places like Marshalltown, Iowa, for 
example, and marched with Mexican flags. I don't know how many of them 
actually knew what they were doing or understood the issue at all. Part 
of it might have just been a reason to get out of school. And I don't 
know how many of them salute our American flag, put their hand over 
their heart and pledge allegiance to the flag. Perhaps most of them do.
  But I also saw anger in the streets of Los Angeles, and it reminds me 
that was the place where the American soccer team some years ago played 
the Mexican soccer team, and the American soccer team, when they came 
through the tunnel, were pummeled with garbage and trash and food 
wrappers and anything that the people in the stands in Los Angeles 
could throw at our American soccer team.
  There is a friction there, Mr. Speaker. And the people that are 
marching under Mexican flags aren't marching with a request that we 
accept them underneath the American flag. If they were, they would be 
marching under an American flag. I think that is a simple piece of 
logic.
  The questions that are not asked on this immigration issue, it is 
much rhetoric. It has been an intense effort to repeat over and over 
again certain fallacies, and those fallacies seem to be, they seem to 
believe if they repeat them enough, soon or later people will accept 
them and regard them to be true.
  For example, we can't deport 12 million people. Yes, we can. We could 
do that if we mobilized our Nation. We could deport 12 million people. 
It would be the largest human deportation ever in the history of the 
world. We don't have the will to do that. I don't propose that we do 
that, but I don't accept the idea that we could not deport 12 million 
people if we chose to do so.
  But I will submit instead, Mr. Speaker, that we set policies in place 
that shut off the jobs magnet. The 12 million people and, in fact, I 
believe that number is significantly larger than 12 million people. But 
the 12 million number that the Pew Foundation has put out within the 
last couple of weeks, and now we have adjusted our 11 million to 12 
million, they came here on their own. They got here on their own dime, 
so to speak and maybe on $1,500 or so to a coyote to get them across 
the border and up into the United States. But they came here on their 
own. They found their own resources to get here on their own, and we 
can set up policies that shut off this jobs magnet and they can find a 
way to go back home on their own. That's the right kind of policy to 
have.
  We don't want to go out and pull people out of houses and load them 
up in buses and haul them back down to south of the border. We want to 
set a policy that we should have had in place a long time ago, and we 
want to enforce the policy that we should have had in place a long time 
ago.
  I sit on the Immigration Subcommittee of the House Judiciary 
Committee. I sit on immigration hearings, sometimes two, three, perhaps 
even more per week. I have done that for more than 3 years, listening 
in these hearings, and you get educated about immigration policy if you 
are listening in that fashion and asking questions and reading and 
probing.
  And I will say the part that is missing is this: Employer sanctions. 
I cannot determine that the Federal Government has sanctioned a single 
employer in the last 2 years. I did get a report that they have 
sanctioned three employers in the last year. But then I got a report 
that there were none in the year before. And when I drill down into 
that information I tend to find out they were civil actions that were 
brought, not other actions from our Department of Justice. And so I 
would ask the Department of Justice demonstrate what employers have 
been

[[Page H1448]]

sanctioned, how many and for how much and what are the violations, Mr. 
Speaker.
  I am going to live with the belief though that there are no effective 
employer sanctions. That is probably the most accurate way to state at 
least the last 2 years, and the years prior to that there have been a 
few sanctions but they get less and less as the years go on, and it 
demonstrates the administration has no will to enforce these laws in 
the workplace. So I submit that we need to enforce employer sanctions 
to the fullest extent the law. I support enhancing those employer 
sanctions.
  I do not know how to get the administration to do their job and 
enforce the law. And so since Americans know that there is no 
enforcement of employer sanctions, employers know that they can hire 
illegals with impunity. They are not accountable.
  Now if you are an employer and you are competing against other 
businesses, perhaps in foreign countries or maybe across town, and 
those other businesses have a cheaper labor supply than you have, if 
they are across town they might be hiring illegal labor.

  Say, perhaps you are a landscape company and you go out and cut grass 
and spray lawns and fertilize them and trim trees and lay sod and do 
yards for new houses and those kind of things where it takes a lot of 
labor, labor that can go out and be effective in their work. If you do 
that, Mr. Speaker, and you are competing against someone who is paying 
half the price for labor that you are, you have got to get twice the 
work out of your employees in order to be able to compete with that. 
And you can only push people so hard.
  And I have spent my life in the construction business and hired a lot 
of men and we have done a lot of work. And I met payroll for over 28 
years, over 1,400 some consecutive weeks, signed pay checks, met the 
cash flow, hired people, took on all the liability, the Worker's Comp, 
the Unemployment, the health insurance, the retirement fund and the 
liability insurance that goes with that, the H.R. issues that go with 
hiring personnel when you know you want to keep them there. I put my 
people in a seasonal business, giving them 12 months out of the year 
work with vacation pay and benefits because I wanted to keep those 
employees and have them on hand when I needed them.
  Now, some of my competition looked at it the other way and decided, 
well, if Steve King has to pay $17 an hour to start out an unskilled 
employee, we can go out here and get ourselves one for 7 or $8 an hour, 
and we will put them on the job and we can have twice as many. Actually 
they could have three times as many because the illegals don't carry 
with them those burdens of health insurance, unemployment benefits, you 
know, I gave you the list. So smart money will go for the cheap help.
  And they don't have to maintain that help throughout the winter, the 
non working season. They can just simply work them when they need them, 
cut them loose when they don't need them. And I won't say that is 
necessarily abuse because these people are willing to accept that wage. 
They are glad to. It is the opportunity that they have. But it puts the 
worker who is working legally at a disadvantage. It puts the employer 
who wants to hire legal employees at a disadvantage. And we are doing a 
tremendous disservice against the people who are complying with our 
laws. And I don't hear anything coming out of the United States Senate 
these days that would change that, Mr. Speaker. I don't hear a word 
that would change that with regard to the guest worker/ temporary 
worker policies that are coming.
  There are those who stand with me on this issue certainly. And those 
I applaud for standing for American sovereignty.
  Borders. If there is any institution that has survived and thrived in 
the 20th century, it is the nation state. The nation state has come 
through all of the chaos of two world wars and a Cold War and numerous 
other battles and economic collapse that we saw in 1929 and other blips 
in our economic bubble that we have had, and throughout all of that and 
through all the strife and the stress that goes on, the nation state 
survives.
  A nation state must have borders. And you can't call them borders if 
you don't enforce them. If you simply draw a line on a map but people 
cross that border at will, if they haul goods and services across the 
border at will, if they haul contraband across the border at will, you 
don't have a border, and pretty soon you don't have a nation.
  I made a point before a group in Texas last weekend on Saturday night 
down in Dallas, and I asked them to forgive me if my precision on Texas 
history wasn't exactly right. But I am going to make another attempt 
here tonight on the floor of the Congress, Mr. Speaker, and it is going 
to be close, if not precisely correct.
  I would take us all back to 1821 in Texas. Texas was a territory of 
Mexico at the time. And one of the earliest Anglo settlers in Texas was 
the father of the famous Steven F. Austin. His name was Moses Austin.

                              {time}  2340

  He negotiated with the king of Spain for a permit to establish an 
Anglo colony in Texas, the first nonHispanic, I guess we could call it, 
or they all called it the Anglo colony in Texas. In 1821 he negotiated 
to establish that settlement. He began to establish that settlement, 
and then there was a revolution in Mexico. Spain lost control of Mexico 
later that same year, in 1821, and the successor then to the king of 
Spain was the new king of Mexico, King Augustin de Iturbide. And that 
new king of Mexico honored the agreement with Moses Austin and allowed 
them to continue with their colony that they were establishing, I 
believe, near Nacogdoches, Texas.
  So as these years unfolded and there was a contest and a battle for 
who could be the leader of Mexico, in 1825, Texas still being a 
territory of Mexico, they issued an offer out to the rest of the 
continent, and the offer was this: If you are married and you will come 
to Texas and promise to pay $30 over the next 6 years to the government 
of Mexico, we will give you a league of land. A league of land being 
4,428 acres. Well, that is a pretty good offer even back in those days 
when $30 was really $30.
  So that started a vast land stampede, and people came from the United 
States, all over the United States, but, of course, we always think of 
Davy Crockett from Tennessee and Colonel Travis and Jim Bowie. Those 
folks poured into Texas. They came in to seek their fortune. They came 
in to claim that league of land. I do not know how many of those guys 
were actually married so they could do that, but a lot of Anglos poured 
into Texas. That was 1825 when that offer came, and Texas was well on 
its way to independence by 1836, 11 years later. Only 11 years after an 
open borders plan that was offered by the territory of Texas, which was 
a territory of Mexico, they said, Come down here. We will give you some 
land. We need some folks to settle here. It will be good for our 
economy. We cannot get along in Texas unless we have some settlers down 
here; so we are going to take them from wherever we can get them, and 
it does not matter if they do not culturally match the people that are 
there. Well, it was clear that that was the clash that came at Goliad, 
the clash that came at the Alamo, the clash that culminated down at San 
Jacinto.
  So I posed that question in Dallas Saturday night. Texas is not part 
of Mexico anymore, is it? Or is it yet, Mr. Speaker? That is the 
question that is before this Congress. That is the question that is 
before the Senate today. It makes a difference when you open borders 
up. It makes a difference when you allow in perhaps 4 million people a 
year that have contempt for our laws.
  Their very first act upon setting foot in the United States of 
America is to violate our laws, and we think they are going to respect 
our laws if we grant them a free pass?
  Thomas Sowell wrote some words. He said, What if bank robbers who 
were caught were simply told to give the money back and not to do it 
again? What if murderers who were caught were turned loose and warned 
not to kill again? Would that be proof that it is futile to take action 
when no action was taken? Could it be that it is impossible to enforce 
our border laws when no one has tried? That is Thomas Sowell, Mr. 
Speaker.
  And I think I have quite a lot of material here, but I am not so 
unique in my presentation that I would not love to concede some of this 
time to the gentleman from Texas, my good friend Mr. Gohmert.

[[Page H1449]]

  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Well, I appreciate very much my friend from Iowa for 
sharing this Special Order. And I appreciate the things that you have 
been pointing out.
  Of course, as you talk about Texas history, you are talking about my 
State. It is where I was born, reared, grew up. Except for my 4 years 
in the service and the summer I spent in the Soviet Union on an 
exchange program, it has been home. And when you talk about Nacogdoches 
and San Augustine, right in that area where the first settlement in 
Texas occurred, that is my district. That is my home. That is my 
district. So it is interesting. And I love history. I was a history 
major in college.
  And one of the things we were taught in elementary school, one of the 
things we were taught in junior high; high school; and college; Texas 
A&M, where I attended, we got the same thing all the way through 
schooling: What two words in common language are the basis for 
America's strength? ``Melting pot.'' We are a melting pot. People came 
from all over the world to America. They assimilated. They came 
together through heat and difficulties and problems of the day. And the 
heat that tests people and makes them pure and stronger, that heat 
brought us together and melted us together into one Nation under God, 
indivisible, and, yes, there was liberty and eventually justice for 
all.
  But I thought about it as you mentioned earlier, Mr. King, the 
discussion about immigration. Immigration has been a lifeblood to this 
country, and that does not need to stop. But as we have gotten wise in 
our own eyes, as you can find reference in the old Testament, ``wise in 
our own eyes,'' we quit using the melting pot metaphor and gone to 
using something that some people today like to say is even better: We 
are now a tossed salad, where each ingredient retains its individuality 
and just mixes together.
  A tossed salad. That was never the strength of America. The America 
that became strong, the America that we studied, the America that made 
it through world wars, the America that is responsible for France not 
speaking anything but French now and Germany speaking German, the great 
America that has allowed England to speak the language that it was 
accustomed to, the America that has not been imperialist, as some 
French people would say. Some French people say, You are imperialist. I 
say, Then why are you not speaking English instead of French? That is 
because it was never our intention. Why do Iraqis not speak English? 
Because that is not our intention. We are a great country and have 
always been.
  And if you would allow me and indulge me, the thing that I would like 
to share further is the oath of allegiance that is taken when someone 
becomes a citizen, and if the gentleman would continue to yield, I 
would like to go through that.
  Mr. Speaker, I think it is important for people to be reminded. This 
is the oath. You want to assimilate in this country? You want to be a 
citizen of this country? Take this oath. And you have got to mean it. 
It is under oath.
  ``I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce 
and abjure,'' and, of course, in Texas we do not abjure a lot, but we 
know what ``renounce'' means, ``renounce and abjure all allegiance and 
fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of 
whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.'' That is 
pretty strong language.
  And if you have any comments on that first part of this oath.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, thank you, Mr. Gohmert. I have got to speak 
to naturalized citizens in the courthouse. Sioux City is a location 
where we have the most activity there in my district, and I look 
forward to those events and take that very seriously.
  In fact, I bring a Constitution to every one of those new students, 
and this will be an example of it. And I will sign that and date that 
and present that to them as a cherished document.
  And in the Constitution, of course, we have also the Declaration of 
Independence as part of that. And I talk to them about the immigrant 
heritage of my family and how we had opportunities here and how my 
ancestors and myself and my children and then my grandchildren, 
hopefully, will remain grateful for the privilege that this country has 
offered.
  And I know that my grandmother came from Germany, and she reared six 
sons. She sent one to the South Pacific. That was my father. And one 
was physically unable to serve in the military, and the other four went 
back to Europe to fight against the old country.

                              {time}  2350

  They put their roots down in this country solid and hard from the 
beginning. And my father went his first day to kindergarten speaking 
only German. And when he came home from school that day, he said 
``hello'' to his mother in German. And she turned to him and said 
``Speaking German in this household is for you from now on verboten. I 
came here to become an American, and you will go to school and learn 
English, and you will bring it home and you will teach it to me. That 
is the only way that I can learn.''
  She never really came away from her German accent, but she spoke 
English well, and I could always understand her.
  I yield back to you, Mr. Gohmert, if you have other comments.
  Mr. GOHMERT. The gentleman from Iowa understands what it means then 
through his heritage to absolutely, entirely renounce fidelity to any 
foreign state or sovereignty. That is critical. And my great 
grandfather came over, was a European immigrant, in around 1870, came 
to South Texas and settled there. He didn't speak English and he had 
about $20.
  Within 25 years, he built one of the nicest homes that is still 
there, it has a historical marker, State of Texas and national 
historical marker, because he learned English and he worked his tail 
off and he assimilated and he made the community better, the State 
better and the country better. And that has been the legacy of 
immigrants.
  But it goes on. That is not enough. That means I am going to wave my 
American flag. That American flag is what is going to be the most 
important flag to me in my heart and soul. That is what in that oath 
means, American flag.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I might point out that in one of my travels around 
Iowa, I pulled down around in Keokuk, and there used to be an old 
Federal hospital there that was built and put in place during the Civil 
War. They would bring the wounded up the river and then offload them 
there at the hospital in Keokuk and take care of them.
  So one of the monuments there, down in the river bottom near the 
Mississippi River, is a big stone, a great big heavy stone, and there 
is a big brass plate in there, and it is mounted in there by the 
daughters of the American Revolution. And it says ``One Nation, One 
Flag, One Language.'' That was established just after the Civil War.
  They understood how important and powerful it was to have a common, 
unifying language. That is something that has been recognized by all 
nations in the world. They all have established an official language, 
except here in the United States. It becomes more and more important 
for us to bond each other together by having that common form of 
communications currency.
  ``One Nation, One Flag, One Language.'' That was the creed in 1865, 
and it should be the creed today.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I thank the gentleman, my good friend. I would continue 
on with the oath. That I will support and defend the Constitution, not 
just the Constitution, it goes on, I will support and defend the 
Constitution and the laws of the United States of America. All laws. 
The Constitution and the laws of the United States of America.
  Gee, that would seem to include immigration laws, wouldn't it?
  It goes on, against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will 
bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on 
behalf of the United States when required by law.
  It is not enough simply to pledge allegiance. You have to be willing 
to risk your life for the American flag and all that it stands for. You 
have to be willing to pledge allegiance to the United States, the 
Constitution and the laws of the United States.
  It goes on, and I know your time is running short and I don't want to 
intrude on the gentleman's time. I guess

[[Page H1450]]

we have got about 7 minutes, but I did want to point this out, at least 
this point of the oath of citizenship.
  If this Nation is going to continue to be stronger, I would only 
submit to you the Hispanics that have settled in my district from 
Central America, from Mexico and assimilated, have made East Texas a 
better place in which to live.
  I have some dear friends. As a judge I presided over the wedding of 
some dear Hispanic friends that had come in and assimilated. I am 
telling you, they have made Tyler, Texas, and East Texas a better 
place. They have assimilated. They are wonderful people. They bring 
family values, and they are strong in their faith and love and joy and 
mirth. It has just been wonderful. But they assimilated.
  That would be the one thing I just wanted to add. Melting pot is the 
strength, and that is what we need to get back to.

  Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Gohmert. I appreciate the gentleman 
coming to the floor at this hour of the evening to add to the dialogue 
here.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up with that. Certainly assimilation, we 
are the nation that has been successful in assimilation. The Israelis 
established their country in 1948, and in 1954 they established Hebrew 
as their official language. They did that because they needed a common 
language to tie them together.
  I asked them, why did you do that? Where did you get that 
inspiration? They said, well, we saw the success the United States had 
with assimilation, so we wanted to adopt a similar policy.
  They resurrected a language that wasn't used functionally other than 
in prayer for 2,000 years and put it in the workplace, and everyone 
that comes to Israel learns Hebrew, and that is how they tie themselves 
together as a nation.
  But I would like to point out another statement that gets repeated 
that is not challenged often, and that is we can't replace all these 
workers, the ones that are here illegally. If we shut off the jobs 
magnet and they go home, we can't replace them.
  Here are some numbers that one might work with to give us an idea on 
whether we can replace them or not. The Pew Foundation put out some 
numbers, this is a year ago, so they have raised them a little bit, but 
at that time they were working with 11 million illegals in America. 6.3 
million of them were working. About the same proportion if you want to 
go to 12 million, but I don't have that factor figured in.
  If you are were going to replace the 6.3 million working illegals in 
the United States, the first place we would go would be the 
unemployment rolls. That is 17.5 million on unemployment. We are paying 
them not to work. One would think we could just simply pay them to work 
and replace the 6.3 million. Maybe they continue to have the skills 
necessary and you can develop some skills in them, but there would be 
7.5 million there in that category.
  Then of those who have exhausted their unemployment benefits, that is 
another 5.2 million that are looking for work but they are not on the 
unemployment roles. So we are at 12.7 million.
  Another 9.3 million teenagers between the ages of 16 and 19 are not 
in the workforce, even on a part-time basis. We would go to them to 
help work in our fields, for example, and flip some burgers. Add to 
that 4.5 million who are the young seniors, ages 65 to 69. Some of 
those people would go to work if they didn't have a disincentive, Mr. 
Speaker.
  Then of those between the ages of 20 and 64, the really prime work 
age, there is another 51 million in America that are simply not in the 
workforce. They could be retired, they could be working on the black 
market, they maybe are doing some kind of dishonest enterprise, but 
they are not in the workforce in any meaningful way. They would also 
become part of that force that we could hire from.
  Added up altogether, 77.5 million non-working Americans between the 
ages of 16 and 69. We could surely tap one out of every 12.3 of those 
to fill the gap for the 6.3 million illegals that are working in this 
country. That is before we bring technology to bear. That is before we 
find other solutions for any kind of gaps we might have in our hiring 
practices. So there are solutions out here, Mr. Speaker.
  And it is not true that there are jobs that Americans won't do. 
Americans are doing all of these jobs right now today. For example, in 
the construction business, 12 percent in the construction industry are 
illegal workers. Thirteen percent is the unemployment rate in the 
construction industry.
  There are the other comparable rates. In those kind of sectors where 
there is a high concentration of illegals, there is also a high 
unemployment that corresponds with that. The reason is because those 
American workers have been displaced by cheaper labor and they can't 
afford to go do that work for that kind of money.
  So, Mr. Speaker, there is piece after piece of this immigration issue 
that needs to be discussed. It is a very, very complicated issue. It is 
a very emotional issue. I stand on enforcement first. Let's establish 
that we can defend and protect our borders. Let's build a fence. Let's 
eliminate birthright for citizenship. Let's shut off the jobs magnet. 
Let's pass my New Idea bill, which removes the Federal deductibility 
for wages and benefits paid to illegals.
  If we can do those things and establish that we can enforce the law 
in this country and respect for the law, then we can have a legitimate 
debate on what kind of workforce we need and where they need to come 
from.

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