[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 6 (Wednesday, January 16, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H283-H289]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2015
                        ISSUES AFFECTING AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to be recognized to 
address you here on the floor of the United States Congress, as always, 
and I appreciate this privilege. There are a series of subjects that 
come to mind that I think it is important for you to consider and for 
the Members and for those onlookers that are here to consider as well.
  One of those issues has been front and center in my mind and in my 
legislative career as we watch these presidential debates that go on on 
both sides of the aisle, from the Democrat and the Republican side, and 
as we watch the caucus and primary season flow across the country, and 
as America waits with bated breath to see how this emerges, as far as 
who will be the nominees on either side for the Democrats and the 
Republicans.
  A series of issues that come to mind that stand out to me that I 
would ask you, Mr. Speaker, to consider as you and as others take a 
look at where they might come down on their particular choice of 
nominees and the things that are important here in the United States of 
America, and I would submit this approach, and that is that there are a 
whole series of issues that are important to us and we talk about them 
and we debate them constantly. But we often overlook the necessity to 
prioritize those issues.
  I will say there are roughly about 10 big issues out there that get 
discussed on the parts of Republicans and Democrats as we turn the 
focus of America towards who will be the next leader of the free world, 
the next commander-in-chief of the strongest nation in the world, the 
unchallenged superpower in the world.
  Those issues include items such as Social Security reform and health 
care reform and tax reform, fiscal responsibility. The social programs, 
education for example, would be another one. How strong should our 
military be? How do we fight our enemies globally. How to do we get to 
the point where we can declare one day in this global war on terror 
against Islamic jihadists? And how do we secure our borders and how do 
we reestablish the, I will call it the sanctity of this Nation, the 
sovereignty of America? How do we reestablish that? How do we 
reestablish the rule of law in this country when we have watched the 
rule of law and the enforcement of our laws decline over the last 20 
years, a little bit more than 20 years, I will say since the 1986 
amnesty bill that Ronald Reagan signed and defined as amnesty?
  What about the appointments that will be made to the Supreme Court 
but by the next president of the United States? As most of the pundits 
have analyzed, it looks like it will be perhaps two appointments to the 
Supreme Court that will come up in the next term. Those two 
appointments that are anticipated will change the balance in the court 
and perhaps have more impact on the destiny of America, and I will say 
will be the legacy of the next President. There will be big questions 
such as will Rowe versus Wade be overturned? Will the States be then in 
a position where they can determine their policy on protecting 
innocent, unborn human life?
  The issue of marriage is coming forward here in this Nation. It is 
under assault across this country. It happens to be a bellwether issue 
within the State of Iowa. Judge Robert Hansen overturned Iowa's Defense 
of Marriage Act. In that decision, he just unilaterally erased the will 
of the Iowa people and replaced it with his own. That case is going 
before the Supreme Court. That will be determined.
  If the decision of Judge Hansen is upheld, Iowa then becomes the 
Mecca for same-sex marriage, because there is not a residency 
requirement, which means then that weekend packages from Las Vegas or 
San Francisco traveling to Iowa for same sex couples to get married, 
and then they will go back to their home States to file suit.
  These are big issues, Mr. Speaker, the issue of innocent human life, 
the issue of marriage, the institution, which goes all the way back to 
the Garden of Eden, and it is transcended and that sacrament of 
marriage has been preserved since before original sin and it survived 
the great flood, but it is under assault now from judicial activists. 
Those, life and marriage, will likely be determined by the next two 
appointments to the Supreme Court.
  And will we have a President that understands that the Constitution 
means what it says and it means what it was understood to mean, the 
text of the Constitution means what it was understood to mean when it 
was ratified by our forebearers, and that each amendment means what it 
was understood to mean when it was ratified? It is not a living, 
breathing document, not a changing document, but a document that is a 
guarantee to the people here in the United States. The next President 
will make those decisions.
  Of all the issues that I have laid out here, including our border 
security and our national security, which many times are wrapped up 
into one, and the refurbishment of the rule of law, which I believe is 
the central pillar of American exceptionalism, all of that is up for 
grabs in the presidential race that is being played out across America 
State By State. The world watches. The world watches because it affects 
them, because we will be electing the next leader in the free world.
  Of all of these issues that I have laid out, Mr. Speaker, I would ask 
you to put those issues down into two different columns. I would label 
those two columns. On the one side I would label it the column called 
quality of life issues.
  The quality of life issues are those issues that probably don't turn 
the destiny of America. They will change our quality of life and raise 
our standard of living perhaps and give us a little better security, 
but if we get them wrong, we can go back and try them again.
  One of those issues that I would put in the quality of life side of 
thing would be the health care issue. That is about all they talk about 
over on the other side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, except for change, 
change, change, change, and that may be what is in your pocket, Mr. 
Speaker. But when you don't say what you would change to, you are just 
going to change from what we are to something else under the 
presumption that doing something different, even if it is wrong, is 
better than what we are doing now, isn't good enough for the American 
people.
  The American people are going to want to know what you would change 
from and what you would change to, what you would make different and 
why and what is the rationale. That will be a requirement moving into 
the general election. It may not be a requirement in the primary 
election, that change.
  But the issues in the two categories, the one category which is 
quality of life issues, and I put health care in there. We can do some 
things with health care, and I think we should. And if we get some of 
those wrong, we can back up and we can try again and try to get it 
right. In fact, we have been doing that for some time, and I expect we 
will do that for some time. Health care belongs in the quality of life 
side, not in the destiny side, because it probably doesn't change the 
destiny of America, but it something that has to do with our quality of 
life. It is important.

[[Page H284]]

  It is important like Social Security reform is also important, Mr. 
Speaker. And we are here now with a bankrupt Social Security program. 
It has been a couple of years since I have checked the numbers, but the 
Social Security trust fund, the last time I checked it was $1.74 
trillion. That is how much money this Congress owes the trust fund.
  The trust fund is in little bonds in Parkersburg, West Virginia, in 
filing cabinets. I have a copy of one. It says $3.54 billion on this 
little piece of paper. It is an IOU from the government written to the 
government. But we haven't prepared to pay the Social Security 
liability that accrues starting as we go into the red, the deficit 
spending in 2016 or 2017, and then by 2042, all of the surplus is spent 
and now we are digging ourselves an even deeper hole.
  But it happens to us in 2016 and 2017, because already the Social 
Security trust fund couldn't be trusted. That money has all been spent, 
and we have simply written ourselves an IOU and we have decided to take 
the paper out of this pocket, write ourselves an IOU of $1.74 trillion 
and take it and put it over in this pocket, because there is nothing in 
this trust fund.
  It is important that we address the reform of Social Security, but if 
we don't do it this year or next year or 4 years from now, it gets 
harder and harder, but it probably doesn't change the destiny of 
America. So I put that over also in the quality of life side along with 
health care.
  Then we come to tax reform. I am listening as my colleagues debate 
this around in committee and on the floor, Mr. Speaker, about what we 
will do about this impending recession. Well, the first question is, 
are we in a recession? And I can't quite hear somebody say yes, we are.
  Most of the time we don't know we are in one until we look back and 
realize that we were, Mr. Speaker. So I am not going to submit that we 
are in a recession today. I would submit though that we are constantly 
on our way into one. We are either on our way to a boom or on our way 
to a bust or some minimized version of either.
  So, yes, we are likely, since we have had this long, long period of 
unprecedented growth here in America, chances are we are going to have 
to make some corrections. And this economy is not an economy, and no 
free market economy has ever been, the kind where you just simply said 
we are going to grow this economy out, let's just say 3.5 percent a 
year, and we will lay the ruler on the graph, lift it up to a 3.5 
percent growth and strike ourselves a line out there and say we are 
going to be on target every single day. It doesn't work that way, Mr. 
Speaker.
  The way it works is that you have little periods of growth and little 
periods of decline, and as the graph ratchets its way up, if you look 
at it in more of an illuminated perspective, it looks more like a 
sawtooth, where it goes up and down and up and down. But all the while 
while that is happening, our gross domestic product is increasing, 
people are earning more money, our capital base is growing, and this 
economy that now sits here, as it has in the past year, the dollar went 
out past historical limits a whole series of numbers of times, it has 
grown exponentially from where it was 20 years ago. We have that much 
more assets to work with, an economy that is growing.
  But if this category of our economic growth and our tax reform, if we 
get it wrong, we can back up and try again. We have been backing up and 
trying it again for over 200 years here in America.
  So I will submit that tax reform also belongs over here in the 
category of quality of life issues, issues that are important to us, 
issues that have to do with whether we will be in a boom or whether we 
will be in a decline, and how much prosperity might be there and how we 
provide a tax program that takes the burden off of sectors of the 
economy so that they can earn, save and invest and expect a return off 
their investment. But I don't think the tax reform issue is a destiny 
issue. I think it is a quality of life issue.
  While I am on that subject, Mr. Speaker, I want to address this issue 
that is before this Congress about whether there is going to be some 
kind of a check, a payout to everybody to stimulate the economy. Will 
we send somebody a rebate on their taxes and give everybody $200 of 
walking around money so they can go out in the streets and buy some 
Gucci bags and go to the massage parlor, like what happened with some 
checks that went to the southern part of the United States not that 
long ago? Is that a way to get us out of that economy?
  When I think about that, I back up to 1992, Mr. Speaker, when Bill 
Clinton was elected President. He came into this city, was inaugurated 
in January of 1993, and immediately he said to this Congress, I need a 
$30 billion economic incentive plan, because the recession that had 
been kind of illustrated and probably was part of the imagination of 
the political campaign, I will argue it didn't really exist, but in 
order to get rid of it, he had to have this creation of this recession, 
President Clinton needed an economic incentive plan.
  So he asked this Congress to appropriate $30 billion to go into make-
work projects, make-work projects that we might see today as 
AmeriCorps. In fact, I think it actually came out of that inspiration. 
But the idea was to borrow $30 billion and put it into the hands of 
Americans and have that money be spent out into the streets of America, 
and then now this recession that he thought we were in would be solved 
because money would be spent into the economy and stimulate the 
economy.
  Well, the $30 billion economic incentive package that was requested 
by President Clinton in the first month of his first term in office in 
1993, was debated in this Congress from $30 billion down to $17 
billion, and finally they concluded that $17 billion wasn't enough to 
make any kind of a difference and they just kind of dropped it.
  Well, now we are up to about, one request I have heard was $300 
billion to put into the hands of people, borrowed money so it could be 
spent to stimulate the economy. Other arguments are that we should cut 
corporate income tax and capital gains and a few other things, and I do 
support those changes.
  But what needs to happen, Mr. Speaker, is the Bush tax cuts need it 
to be made permanent. The two tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 saved us from I 
believe a severe recession and perhaps a depression because there was 
enough vision in the eyes and in the mind of President Bush that we 
were under assault from a lot of ways. One was al Qaeda. The financial 
center had been attacked, and the things that had been designed to 
drive us down needed to be stimulated back the other way.
  So we did those tax cuts in 2001. We did them in 2003. And this 
economy has boomed. Sometime last April, this government collected more 
money in a single day than had ever been collected before, stimulated 
by tax cuts.

                              {time}  2030

  And today we are hanging in the balance. The whole series of tax cuts 
winds down in 2010 and disappear and expire because they were set up to 
sunset, and politically that was the way that they were sold. And, of 
course, if those tax cuts sunset, they become tax increases; and those 
tax increases will be tax increases on capital gains, there will be a 
personal and corporate income tax. There will be tax increases on the 
estate tax, the death tax. And all of those things are in the way they 
prevent people from planning, they take away their confidence in this 
economy. And when you take away confidence in an economy, the result is 
people don't invest, they don't expand, they don't create jobs. And if 
you are not creating jobs and if you are not able to increase wages and 
benefits, then the money that is in people's pockets diminishes and 
they spend less money and this economy collapses eventually.
  Extending the Bush tax cuts and making them permanent would be the 
single most effective thing we could do to cause this economy to turn 
around the other way and head back up again for another long period of 
economic growth. The single most important thing this Congress has a 
chance to do, and I believe that as history looks back on this time 
they will say, you had your chance, this was it. And I submit, Mr. 
Speaker, we should take that chance.
  But back to this subject at hand of these quality of life issues. Tax 
reform is quality of life, because the dynamics in the economy are tied 
to it. Health

[[Page H285]]

care is quality of life, because the very care that we get that gives 
us this robust health that we have enjoyed comes from the policies we 
put in place there and the incentives we put in place, and a lot of it 
is getting the regulations out of the way. And reforming Social 
Security is another quality of life issue. Those issues over on that 
side, quality of life, let's weigh them for the importance that they 
are.
  But the decision that we are making in this Presidential race isn't a 
decision necessarily about what the quality of life will be for the 
Americans that live in the next 4 years, the first 4 years of the next 
term, or the next 8 years for that matter. This decision is far more 
important than our quality of life that will take place between 2009 
and perhaps as late as 2017.
  No, Mr. Speaker, the decision the American people need to make is a 
destiny decision. We need to be making a decision in this country about 
who will be the best leader in the free world that moves us forward, 
that lays the foundation down on the tracks so that the next 
generations will have that foundation to build on so that they can 
achieve the American Dream and they can aspire to leaving the world a 
better place than it was when they came, as we have had that 
responsibility handed to us from our fathers and our forefathers.
  But I want to make an argument here, Mr. Speaker, about how important 
this is, in a sense of this country that we are that is America.
  First of all, the Founders came here to the United States of America 
and they had a vision. That vision first was that our rights come from 
God. They don't come from humanity. They are not endowed upon us by a 
king or a foreign prince and potentate. They are not endowed upon us by 
a dictator. Our rights come directly from God. And they come directly 
to the people. And then the people hand that responsibility over to 
government to govern them, but always under the will of the people and 
always with the rights that are guaranteed to the people. And if this 
foundation of this great Nation, those values that we hold dear are 
diminished, if they are eroded, if we don't build upon that foundation, 
the next generation doesn't have a good foundation to build upon.
  The culture that is created from the Constitution and from our 
religious values and our values of family and faith and freedom and 
free market economy and property rights, if this culture that is the 
culture of the United States of America that has within it the vitality 
of millions of immigrants that came here legally, that have injected 
their vitality into this overall American culture with an appreciation 
for the host country that is here and an obligation that they happily 
provide, which is to give back to this country, the country that so 
gladly welcomed them.
  This vitality that is this Nation, this vitality of this culture is 
what raises up the leaders of today. And the culture of a generation 
ago was the culture that raised up the leaders of a generation ago, and 
so on, and so it goes as you look back through the history of America 
all the way back to before the Revolutionary War. So each generation is 
built upon the previous generation, and the leaders of each generation 
are produced and raised up by the culture, by the values of the current 
time.
  And today, the values of the United States of America in their 
aggregate raise up the leaders that come in here to serve in this 
United States Congress. The culture of every 435 districts produces the 
leader that represents each of the 435 districts; and the cultures in 
the States produces the Senators, two for each of the 50 States that go 
to serve in the United States Senate. And the values of the 
congressional districts and the values of the States are the values 
that, at least presumably, are embodied within the people who are 
elected to come and serve in this United States Congress, Mr. Speaker.
  The culture raises up the leaders, and the leaders reflect the values 
of their time and their place. And then the decisions that are made by 
the leaders, and I will take this to the decisions made by the 
President of the United States, lay the foundation and alter the 
culture and shift the values and set the principles that shift the 
culture for the next generation. And if we shift this culture now, the 
next generation will react to it, will reflect the new values of the 
new culture that has been changed by the decisions made by the leaders 
today.
  That is why it is so important that we turn our focus to the destiny 
issues and begin to ask the question, who will best lead this country? 
Who will best lay the foundation for the decisions that will be made 
that will affect the formation and the shaping of the values of America 
which are our culture? Who will make those decisions?
  And as I look forward into this, I will argue that those are the 
destiny decisions, Mr. Speaker, those issues that change the destiny of 
America. And when the destiny of America is changed, it shifts the 
culture, and the foundation of the culture will be the foundation that 
our entire culture grows from, that young people learn about.
  Now, this menu of life that I had when I was a young boy in the early 
1950s in Iowa, Mr. Speaker, was not quite such a varied menu of life as 
our young people growing up in America have today. I had a very, very 
bright black and white list on what was right and what was wrong, and 
what I could do and what I couldn't do. And it covered a whole gamut of 
things between telling the truth and working industriously and helping 
my fellow man and having a strong, faithful Christian background, and 
having a duty to my father and my mother and later on my wife and my 
children, and knowing that I needed to teach them in these same values 
so that they would go out and go to work every day and they would carry 
the values of our faith and our family and our freedom.
  A lot more freedom has been injected into this society, a lot of it 
through the 1960s, and not just sexual freedom but freedom that has to 
do with illegal drugs and freedom for a lifestyle that is far more 
permissive than the lifestyle that was permitted in the environment 
that I grew up in, Mr. Speaker. Those are cultural changes. Our music 
reflects it, our literature reflects it, our movies reflect it, and our 
television reflect the shifts and the differences in our culture, and 
they reflect the differences in our values.
  For example, could one imagine that there would be sitcoms and serial 
programs on TV that have to do with same-sex marriage or same-sex 
relationships even 10 years ago, let alone 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. 
And I would say maybe 10 years ago, not much earlier than that could 
one have conceived of such a thing. That is how far this society has 
been moved quickly, much of it by the courts, much of it by the liberal 
media in the movie industry and the television entertainment industry. 
But the permissiveness is different than the society that I grew up in, 
and our values have changed.
  Now, I am not one of the people who sits over on that side of the 
aisle and believe that change itself is a goal. I am one who thinks 
that we should be rooted in our values; we should identify the central 
pillar and all of the other pieces of the foundation of American 
exceptionalism, and we should refurbish those pillars of American 
exceptionalism and we should diminish those things that undermine those 
pillars of exceptionalism. But the permissiveness that has grown has 
changed our culture. And because of that, it is reflected here on the 
floor of Congress, and in such a way that I can go to St. Peter's 
Square and go to communion with more than one Member of Congress, and 
then next week come back here and on the floor hear one of those 
Members of Congress who walked to communion with the new Pope Benedict 
XVI, a very pro-life faith that we have, and have that Member that went 
to communion come to the floor and argue that there should be a 
constitutional right to partial-birth abortion. What a twist and a 
shape in our civilization and our society.
  What that says about the foundation of our culture, that is something 
that has got to be shifted back, Mr. Speaker. It has got to be shifted 
back, and it needs to be changed at the Supreme Court level and all the 
Federal courts all the way down.
  When we have law schools in America that teach the Constitution from 
case law and not from the text of the Constitution; if they presume 
that the students that come there read the Constitution and understand 
it, I don't know where they think they got the education. But when they 
teach that

[[Page H286]]

the case law controls and the text of the Constitution does not 
control, that is something that has got to have a dramatic shift if we 
are to have any guarantee. And when I realized that, and I know that we 
have three or four members, maybe even more, of the Supreme Court that 
think that the Constitution is this living, breathing document that is 
there for them to manipulate at their will, and when I think of the 
prospect of one or two or more justices in the Supreme Court 
potentially being nominated by a liberal President and confirmed by a 
United States Senate that believe that the Constitution can mean what a 
judge wants it to mean, especially if it is an activist decision 
because of a judge that might conclude a result rather than the text, I 
think that is wrong, Mr. Speaker, and I think it puts our 
constitutional guarantees at risk.

  We have an issue before the Supreme Court that was just heard the 
other day on the second amendment, and there was an amicus brief that 
was offered apparently before the Court and by the White House that the 
second amendment is an individual constitutional right, but it could be 
regulated by political subdivisions, by cities or counties or States. 
And I could argue that if you are going to guarantee my second 
amendment rights but tell political subdivisions that they don't have 
to respect that constitutional right, that it is no right at all. And 
we need judges that understand that. We need appointments to the 
Supreme Court that understand that this Constitution means what it 
says, and we need Federal judges appointed all the way down the line 
with that philosophy.
  I dream of the day that, for example, when Justice Roberts went 
before the United States Senate and he spoke about his beliefs in the 
Constitution and his understanding of case law, he went through that 
confirmation. And when he handled that in an exceptional fashion, it 
was extraordinarily impressive and absolutely worthy of the Chief 
Justice of the Supreme Court. I thought I detected a tone that was more 
constitutional in Justice Alito's confirmation hearings, when I recall 
him speaking more openly about the Constitution meaning what it says, 
and having less deference to case law and more deference to the text of 
this Constitution. And I dream of the day that, in order to get 
confirmed to the Supreme Court or perhaps confirmed at any Federal 
court level, Mr. Speaker, that an appointee would have to profess 
belief and conviction in the text of the Constitution rather than the 
deference to case law that may have been manipulated by liberal judges 
that have come before them.
  Those appointments to the Supreme Court, if we are successful in 
confirming those judges that believe the Constitution means what it 
says and that it is not a living, breathing document, if we get 
appointments and confirmation of those kind of judges, at some point 
the law schools will have to start teaching the Constitution for what 
it says, not for what some piece of case law might say about that 
Constitution. And I think we should be able to drill back to the 
Constitution and always anchor it in the text of the Constitution. If 
we get appointments to the Supreme Court that do so, we can transform 
the guarantees that we have, and we can change the dynamics within all 
the law schools in America, and we can change the understanding here in 
the House of Representatives, and we can change the understanding of 
the Constitution in the United States Senate, and we can go back to 
those fundamental guarantees. Because after all, Mr. Speaker, if the 
Constitution doesn't mean what it says it means, if it is there, 
something that only a judge can determine is in the emanations and the 
penumbras of the Constitution itself, if that is all it is, then what 
guarantees do we have at all? Is the Constitution then some archaic 
document? Or is it a tool to be deployed by activist judges only for 
them to decide when they will amend the Constitution? Or is it a 
guarantee to the people of the United States as it was designed to be?
  I would submit that if the Constitution were offered to the American 
people to be ratified with a little caveat there that, well, the judges 
will be able to rewrite or define it whenever they see fit, it would 
have never been ratified by the several States and would not be the 
document that has held together this free country that we are.

                              {time}  2045

  Destiny issues, Mr. Speaker. The appointments to the Supreme Court, 
the next one or two or perhaps more appointments to the Supreme Court, 
will redirect the destiny of America.
  We either go into the abyss of judicial activism, the judicial 
activism that found a right to privacy that didn't exist, a right to 
abortion that didn't exist, and a Roe v. Wade decision that was poorly 
reasoned and an unjust mandate on the American people that has taken us 
down this path where next week will mark the 35th year of Roe v. Wade. 
We have already marked the 50 millionth innocent little unborn baby 
that has been aborted and not given a chance at life.
  The solutions to our problems are in the generations that will come 
after us, and 50 million have been denied this opportunity to breathe 
this free air in America, creating a sin against this Nation and a hole 
in our heart and a vacuum that is filled by tens of millions of illegal 
immigrants that have come across our border. And we can't talk about 
that openly, Mr. Speaker, because it becomes a reactionary thing.
  But we should put the whole formula together. The quality of life 
issues pale in comparison to the destiny issues, and the destiny of 
America is wrapped up in Roe v. Wade. Next week when we mark that 35th 
year, 50 million babies aborted before they had an opportunity to 
breathe free air and contribute to this society and have been denied 
the right to life.
  Marriage is being attacked from all sides, mostly within the courts 
because they understand that they cannot win these cases to the 
legislatures across America, and they can't take their case to the 
United States Congress.
  But it changes the destiny of a country if you destroy marriage. Some 
will say why am I worried about two people of the same sex getting 
married and moving next door to me; it doesn't affect my life. It may 
not affect my life if that were my neighborhood either. And I don't 
know that I would take a personal objection to that.
  But I would ask, Mr. Speaker, that people step back and take a 
broader look and think about how the culture gets shifted and changed, 
and think about the menu of life that little kids would have in a 
society where we would see a court impose same-sex marriage on America. 
If you can make the argument in court that two men ought to be able to 
get married and access all the benefits that are saved right now, 
preserved, protected and promoted for a man and woman joined together 
in holy matrimony because the State has an interest in promoting 
marriage because that is a crucible through which we pour all of our 
values. But if we open that up to a man and a man or a woman and a 
woman, what standard do we draw the line upon next? What standard do we 
say it can't be two men and a woman or two women and a man, or three 
women, or a brother and a sister and a mother? Where do we draw the 
line?
  I recall some testimony before a hearing in the Judiciary Committee a 
couple of years ago, the now chairman of the Finance Committee said, 
Well, it would be two consenting adults. Two consenting adults doesn't 
satisfy a standard here in America. Two consenting adults could be twin 
brothers, a brother and a sister, a mother and a daughter, a mother and 
a son, a father and a daughter. Those things would all be rejected and 
objected to by society's norms today.
  But is this about breaking down society's norms? Is it about breaking 
down our values? Is that really the agenda over here on this side of 
the aisle, Mr. Speaker? I will submit it is. The agenda is change, 
change, change. Change sells at every one of those Presidential rallies 
across the country because that is the mission of that side of the 
aisle. Change for what purpose?
  I will submit that if I had a magic wand and an infinitely long list, 
and I could say that Speaker Pelosi and the people whom she works with 
and those philosophically aligned with her, you can make me a list of 
all the things on your wish list, and I will assume here in fantasy 
land that I have a magic wand and I can grant every wish.

[[Page H287]]

  So here we are in the middle of January, and you can spend all year 
long putting that wish list together, Madam Speaker. When it comes 
midnight, all of the things that you want to change, the full breadth 
of the imagination of your wish list and all of your ideological 
colleagues, put that list together and submit the list, and when the 
ball drops in Times Square to turn us into the new year 2009, at the 
stroke of midnight, with the help of the magic wand, could grant every 
wish on the wish list, I would argue that should that happen, and the 
deal would need to be you get your wish, but now you have to be quiet 
for the rest of your life. You fill out your wish list, and now you are 
going to have to be satisfied and live with the results of your 
request, and maybe even the consequences of your request, but just the 
results.
  If that happened and the wish list were achieved at midnight, 
December 31, 2008, at the stroke of midnight on the new year of 2009, 
and the deal was no more complaints, you have to be happy you have 
finally gotten everything you wanted, now and forever, or even for a 
decade or a generation, that team that put the list together would stay 
up the rest of the night not celebrating but looking to see what it was 
that they forgot to change. What they wanted to tear down of society's 
values today or what they forgot to change for tomorrow.
  There is no anchor. There is no philosophical anchor. There is no 
philosophical core because the core changes. For me and for my 
colleagues, we have a philosophical core, Mr. Speaker. This core is 
rooted in our constitutional values and the values that are laid out by 
our Founding Fathers and the rights that come from God and the values 
that are taught through the family that is joined together in holy 
matrimony. And the ethics of faith and worship and freedom and hard 
work and the obligation to leave this world a better place than it was 
when we came, that achievement of the American Dream, that laying out a 
culture that raises up the leaders for the next generation that will 
lay a new foundation on top of the old one so that the next generation 
can build on that and achieve the American Dream, all of that is 
wrapped up in the value system of the people that I go to conference 
with, the constituents that come out day after day after day to talk to 
me, to talk to nearly a multitude of Presidential candidates that went 
across Iowa for the past year or more.
  These values matter. These destiny issues matter. The next two 
appointments to the Supreme Court matter, and those will be the 
appointments that will uphold all of our constitutional rights. They 
will uphold our second amendment rights, for example. And our rights to 
freedom of speech and religion and assembly. And they will understand 
the 10th amendment; the responsibility that the power is not designated 
for the Federal Government, are reserved for the States and the people, 
respectively. That devolution of power down to the States, that idea 
called federalism, the States' rights idea need to be preserved and 
promoted by the next President of the United States. We need to 
understand basic fundamental principles.
  But the destiny of America is going to be tied to our ability to be 
able to produce leaders that make decisions today that lay the 
foundation, that shapes the culture that tomorrow raises up tomorrow's 
leaders who will then lay the next layer on top of that foundation.
  And if we get it wrong, if we get a flaw, if we get a rotten piece in 
the foundation and we have to build upon that, we can't go back and 
take that section back and reform and reshape and repour it. The 
destiny issues we are stuck with. They are our decisions and we have to 
live with them, and that's why it is important.
  So as I have spoken about Roe v. Wade and life and marriage and 
appointments to the Supreme Court and emphasize how important that is 
and how essential that we have a President who makes those 
appointments, and when he closes the door of the Oval Office after all 
of the lobbyists have come and gone and after all of the political 
supporters and advisor and the chief of staff and all of the people 
that advise the President, when they are all done weighing in and the 
door closes on the Oval Office, I want a leader in that office that I 
know shares my core values, Mr. Speaker. I want a leader in that office 
that I don't have to wonder about whether he is swayed by someone's 
special interest or whether he is swayed by some temporary benefit or 
some trade or some deal or some bargain or something other than the 
best interests in the long-term good for the United States of America 
as grounded in our core values and understanding the very principles 
that this Nation was founded upon and the necessity to adhere to those 
core principles and move forward and build another layer of a sound 
foundation.
  That's what I want in a leader, Mr. Speaker. And those will be 
appointments to the Supreme Court that will shape the foundation of our 
culture and our destiny.
  But another component of this, an essential core component of this, 
as I mentioned earlier, of all of the pillars of American 
exceptionalism, the pillars of faith and family and freedom and the 
Declaration and the Constitution and the free-market economy and 
property rights and the devolution of power from the Federal Government 
down to the States and the States' rights as separated within the 10th 
amendment, all of those issues are pillars of American exceptionalism.
  And another pillar would be the vitality that comes with legal 
immigration. We have had the privilege in this country of having, for 
the most part of our history, a smart immigration policy that attracted 
people to come into the United States that had a dream. And many of 
them sold themselves into indentured servitude for perhaps 7 years just 
to get a boat ride from London to Baltimore, for example, and went to 
work and worked off their passage because they knew that they could 
become free and they could then go to work here and build a dream and 
raise a family.
  I look back at my ancestors and what they have done, and most, if not 
all of them, have participated in that dream. But from every donor 
culture in civilization, we got the vitality of that culture and 
civilization.
  The people who didn't have a dream, didn't find a way to get on a 
boat and come to the United States, they sat back where they were. They 
were content to live within that society and environment that didn't 
provide the opportunities that were here because they didn't want to 
take the risk or they didn't have the energy or just didn't share the 
dream. And I don't say that, Mr. Speaker, to diminish anyone who didn't 
come to the United States. I say that to identify that we skimmed the 
vitality off the top of every donor civilization that sent people here 
across the world. And they came here with an extra vigor and energy and 
dream, and we found a way to bring them together and assimilate them 
into a common culture, this greater overall American culture. And when 
they got tied together, they latched onto that opportunity and got in 
the harness and went to work. We found a vitality here that had never 
been created in any society or civilization anywhere in the world. That 
is often a missed component of American exceptionalism is the vitality 
that comes from the donor civilizations that sent legal immigrants here 
to the United States. That is a vitality that I want to preserve and 
promote and protect.
  Another one of the reasons that we have been able to be a successful 
Nation, because we are a Nation not of men but a Nation of laws, of all 
of the pillars of American exceptionalism that I have mentioned, the 
central pillar of American exceptionalism, Mr. Speaker, is the rule of 
law. If we do not protect and preserve the rule of law, you can only 
then go back to what kind of political influence you have: who do you 
have favor with, who can you get to do you a favor, who can you get to 
set aside a law, and who will be immune to the law.
  In this country, justice has always been equal for everyone 
regardless of their economic or their social status or their ethnicity 
or their national origin. If you are a member of the human race, you 
get the same version of justice in America and the same opportunity in 
America as anybody else. And it has not been about equality of results; 
it has been about equality of opportunity. Those protected civil rights 
that are identified in title VII of the Civil

[[Page H288]]

Rights Act are there, and they need to be protected so everyone has an 
equal opportunity.
  And the rule of law gives us that guarantee that we can work within 
that environment and that rule of law will protect our property rights 
and let us build, earn, saving and invest. But if we become a society 
and a civilization that has disregarded the rule of law and perhaps 
created contempt for the rule of law, I believe that central pillar of 
American exceptionalism would have been removed from our society or 
diminished or eroded to the point that it no longer has the credibility 
that it has, let me say that it had, 20 years ago.

                              {time}  2100

  I believe that pillar called the rule of law needs to be refurbished 
and restrengthened because it is essential for America to continue to 
be an exceptional Nation. For us to continue to be a leader in the free 
world, the leader in the free world, we simply must preserve and 
protect and refurbish the rule of law.
  So as I look to the 1986 amnesty bill that was signed by Ronald 
Reagan, defined as amnesty, and if you lay the components of that bill 
down alongside the components of either one of the two Senate versions 
of the comprehensive immigration reform bill, the McCain-Kennedy bill, 
that's probably the one that most often defines it, the components of 
those bills, when you do a side-by-side comparison match up almost 
identically. The 1986 amnesty bill, the McCain-Kennedy comprehensive 
immigration reform bill match up side by side, piece by piece almost 
all the way down.
  President Reagan called it amnesty. I remember the debate in New 
Hampshire the other night where it was alleged that anybody that says 
that anyone who supports comprehensive immigration reform in the 
Senate, or that anyone who calls comprehensive immigration reform in 
the Senate amnesty is a liar. That came out in the debate.
  Mr. Speaker, that offends me, because I know what amnesty is and the 
American people know what amnesty is. And either of the two versions 
that were presented in the United States Senate last year was amnesty. 
And I don't know how anyone can argue otherwise, except to go back to 
the President's speech in about January 6 of 2004; that was the first 
aggressive effort to roll out comprehensive immigration reform. That 
speech attempted to redefine amnesty, and there's been an attempt on 
the part of the administration and the open borders crowd to redefine 
amnesty for the last 4 years.
  You just can't trump Noah Webster, Mr. Speaker. People in America 
know what amnesty is. And if you wanted comprehensive immigration 
reform, which I'll call comprehensive amnesty, then you should have 
just stepped up to it and said, yes, we're for amnesty, and we're going 
to define for you what amnesty is, too, and we're going to also argue 
that we have to grant amnesty, or otherwise we can't accomplish the 
goals that we'd like to see with immigration reform.
  If they would have made that argument, Mr. Speaker, and I don't make 
that argument, but if they had, their argument would have had a lot 
more credibility. But instead, the proponents of comprehensive 
immigration reform sought to redefine the term amnesty, and they got 
bogged down in trying to tell the American people that the word we 
understood to mean amnesty meant something different.
  They argued that, well, it's not amnesty if somebody has to pay a 
fine. It's not amnesty if you make people learn English. It's not 
amnesty if you require them to pay their back taxes or pay their bills 
or be an honest citizen and not get locked up and be convicted of a 
felony.
  Mr. Speaker, they argue that if you required all of those things, it 
wasn't amnesty. And so of all of those things that I've mentioned, 
those are required of people that would come here legally to become an 
American citizen, including pay the fee in order to be naturalized.
  By the time you add up the dollars that are required to come into the 
United States legally and achieve a lawful permanent resident status 
and the fees for a green card, and the fees to be naturalized as a 
citizen, you're pretty close to the dollar figure that they first 
proposed would be necessary in order, if you're here illegally, to buy 
your way into legality. It's lawful permanent residence, a green card, 
naturalization, citizenship of the United States for sale for paying a 
fee that they called a fine that they said that they are going to 
absolve the issue of amnesty.
  Now, the American people understand this, that when you commit a 
crime in America, there's a penalty for that that's listed in the penal 
code, whether it's a Federal law or whether it's a State law. And the 
penalty that's listed needs to be the one that's applied to the 
perpetrator upon conviction.
  You can't go rob a bank and be looking at life in prison for robbing 
a bank, and after you rob the bank, they come along and change the law 
and say, well, now the penalty is only going to be a year in prison 
rather than life in prison. If you did that for a whole class of 
people, that would be amnesty. If you said to the bank robbers, you're 
going to have to pay a fine now instead of being locked up in prison 
for 10 or 20 years or life, and you did that to a whole class of 
people, that's amnesty.
  The distinction for amnesty generally comes into, are you going to 
waive the penalty or reduce the penalty for a class of people for a 
crime they've already committed under a different penalty clause, a 
different penalty phase? If you do that, you're granting amnesty, Mr. 
Speaker.
  And what is amnesty? I've defined this many times. It's many times in 
the Congressional Record. It's gone through the House Judiciary 
Committee. To grant amnesty is to pardon immigration lawbreakers and 
reward them with the objective of their crime. Pardon and reward. 
Pretty simple concept.
  If people are here in the United States illegally, and the Senate 
gets their way, well, they actually voted it down over there, so some 
in the Senate who at least were aggressive enough to advance this got 
their way, then they would have pardoned the immigration lawbreakers en 
masse, by the tens of millions.
  While I'm on that subject, you know, we've been saying here in this 
Congress for at least 5 years, there are 12 million illegals in 
America. Twelve million. It's interesting to me that last year we 
stopped 1,188,000 illegal border crossers on the southern border; 
that's the Border Patrol doing their job. And most of them self-
deported, volunteered to go back to their home country. Most of them 
went across the line to the south to their home country; about two-
thirds of them did. So we've stopped 1,188,000.
  And according to testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, the 
Border Patrol says they stop a fourth to a third of those who try. So 
that means, and you do the math, about 4 million tried to go across the 
southern border. Most of them made it. Two out of every three, or three 
out of every four made it. You kind of do the math on that, 4 million 
border crossing attempts, and that works out to be about 11,000 a night 
trying to get across our southern border, most of them making it, the 
significant majority of them making it across the border, 11,000.
  Now, what does that mean? Four million in a year. 11,000 a night, Mr. 
Speaker. To put that in context, I just ask the question, how large was 
Santa Ana's army? And go back and read the historical reports. Most of 
them will fall between five and 6,000 was the size of Santa Ana's army.
  So every single night, coming across our southern border, on average, 
and I say night, not day, because most happens at night, the equivalent 
of twice the size of Santa Ana's army, 11,000 come pouring into the 
United States illegally, accumulating at a rate a lot faster than not 
just 12 million 5 years ago, but a number that I believe today 
significantly exceeds 20 million illegals in the United States of 
America, putting pressure on our social services, putting pressure on 
our health care, putting pressure on our schools, putting pressure on 
our infrastructure, our utilities, our roads, our streets, our sewers, 
our lights.
  We're building infrastructure to accommodate for people that if ICE 
got there first wouldn't be there to put pressure on our 
infrastructure. And under the guise of what? The idea that the argument 
made by the open borders crowd, by the comprehensive amnesty people, 
and that would include

[[Page H289]]

everybody on the Democrat ticket and some of the folks on the 
Republican ticket for President, Mr. Speaker, advocating that we need 
to legalize tens of millions of people here. And I guess you can 
eliminate law breaking if you just eliminate the laws.
  They argue that this economy can't prosper if we don't have massive 
amounts of cheap labor, and that if they all went home tomorrow this 
economy would collapse.
  Mr. Speaker, I'm here to put this into perspective for the American 
people. You have to think of this United States of America as one big 
company. 300 million people here. And of those 300 million people, we 
have a work force of about 142 million. And out of that work force, 
about 6.9 million of them are illegals working in our economy, 6.9 
million of the 142 million.
  If you do the math, you're going to come down to around 4.7 percent 
of the work force is illegal. And of that 4.7 percent, since they're 
lower skilled people, on average, they're doing only 2.2 percent of the 
work.
  So, if you're managing a factory and say you're a good manager and 
you show up at 7:30 in the morning and your employees clock in at 8 
o'clock and the production lines have to start and you run from 8 till 
5 and you work 8 hours and you kick product out the door and you load 
it on trucks and it has to go every day in an 8-hour shift, you have to 
produce the gross domestic product of that company.
  Well, this Nation has to do the same thing equivalently. So, at 7:30 
in the morning, if you, as a manager of a company, discovered that 2.2 
percent of your work force, remember, that's the percentage of the work 
that's being done, not the percentage of the work force; but if 2.2 
percent of your work force wasn't going to show up, it would take about 
5 minutes to type out a memo that would go to all the departments in 
your company that would say, we're going to have to make up for a loss 
of 2.2 percent of our production today and every day until we can hire 
enough people to replace those 2.2 percent that didn't show up.
  And my memo would say this. Your coffee break in the morning isn't 
going to be 15 minutes today; it's going to be 9\1/2\ minutes. And your 
coffee break this afternoon isn't going to be 15 minutes, it's going to 
be 9\1/2\ minutes because we have to pick up 2.2 percent of the 
production if you're going to go home at 5 o'clock.
  Now, I made that management decision today because you might have 
plans, but we can decide to work till 11 minutes after 5 every day and 
you can get your full coffee break morning and afternoon. But 2.2 
percent of the work, if all the work in America was done in an 8-hour 
day, amounts to 11 minutes out of an 8-hour day. That's the impact of 
the illegal labor in our work force here in America.
  And the rest of it's just distribution, Mr. Speaker. The rest of it's 
recruitment lines and it's training and it's education and it's letting 
the market work; letting companies that need labor go out there and do 
the recruitment, do the training.
  It's never been easy. And I've been an employer most all of my life. 
I met payroll for over 28 years, 1,400 some consecutive weeks. And I 
can remember recruiting in the high schools and around and making sure 
that I had a good program out there so that we could hire good people. 
I didn't always make the best decision. But we were able to put 
together a good, reliable work force because that was part of our 
operation.
  Today the argument is, well, no, we don't have people lined up for 
these jobs, and so, therefore, that proves we need to open the borders 
some more. Well, of course they're not lined up for the jobs. Of course 
they aren't; not if you're not going to pay them the wages that it 
takes so that people can take care of their families and pay their way 
in this society.
  Supply and demand. And we're watching the middle class in America 
collapse because of a flood of cheap labor coming in on the low side of 
the economic spectrum to provide cheap labor in the factories for the 
elitists in America who are increasingly moving into gated communities 
and sending their children to Ivy League schools and believing that 
their descendants will all be able to live in the upper crust and have 
cheap labor to take care of their yards and their mansions and the 
labor in their factories, while the blue collar person in America, the 
one who, of the 16 or 17 percent of Americans who are high school 
dropouts, the American citizens that decide that education isn't in 
their future, but would like to go work in the local factory, punch the 
time clock and go in there and do an honest day's work for an honest 
day's pay, that dream that was achievable 20 years ago, that dream that 
would allow them, the blue collar people, lower educated people with a 
good work ethic to be able to punch the clock and do a day's work for a 
day's pay and buy a modest house and raise their family and go fishing 
and go to the ball game and do those things and be part of this 
society, that dream is almost gone, Mr. Speaker, because those jobs 
have been flooded and diminished by low skilled labor pouring into 
America. Labor is a commodity like corn and beans or gold or oil. And 
the value of it will be determined by supply and demand in the 
marketplace. And when you flood lower skilled jobs with low skilled 
people, you're going to see wages go down. They've, in fact, gone down 
in some of the categories. And unemployment in America has gone up 
within the categories of the lowest skill. There's direct evidence in 
this economy that the flood of cheap labor is holding wages down.
  Twenty years ago, people that worked in the packing plant in my 
neighborhood were making about the same amount as a teacher. Today, 
they're making about half as much as a teacher is making, and they 
can't make it any longer. And so society pays the burden of health 
insurance and that burden on the schools on our infrastructure, while 
the companies get a discount on their labor.
  We need to think this thing through, Mr. Speaker, and we need to hold 
the Presidential candidates, whether they're Democrats or Republicans 
accountable. We need to ask them, please define amnesty. Accept my 
definition; to pardon immigration lawbreakers and reward them with the 
objective of their crime. Pardon and reward. Accept that definition, 
take the oath not to promote amnesty, to veto any bill that might come 
before their desk that is amnesty. Let's have a little tighter labor 
supply in America. Let's re-establish the sovereignty of the United 
States of America by building the fence and end birthright citizenship, 
and apply our laws in the workplace to shut off the jobs magnet.

                              {time}  2115

  Let's let attrition kick in and let people make a decision to go back 
to their home country. They got here on their own; they can go home on 
their own.
  We have got to build a country for America. We have to have an 
immigration policy that's designed to enhance the economic, the social 
and the cultural well-being of this country, and we need to export our 
values to other countries so they can build on the same dream. If we do 
that, not only would this Nation be a greater Nation but this planet 
and the people on it will be better off, and we will have achieved the 
American dream.
  We will have not just left this Nation a better place for the people 
that come behind us; we'll have left this world a better place for the 
people that come behind us.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I thank you for your indulgence.

                          ____________________