[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 50 (Tuesday, March 24, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H3825-H3832]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   PRESIDENT OBAMA'S BUDGET SPENDS TOO MUCH, IT TAXES TOO MUCH, AND 
                BORROWS TOO MUCH; AND, THE GIFT OF LIFE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the privilege of being 
recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States House 
of Representatives, this Nation's great deliberative body that we are.
  I listened with interest to the gentlemen who have made their 
presentation in the previous hour, and I think back as we start this 
discussion, this 60-minute Special Order about what has taken place in 
the country. And many of us watched the President do his press 
conference. I wouldn't be very surprised if President Obama has at this 
point reached the threshold for press conferences in his career that 
would match that of Ronald Reagan's. Ronald Reagan didn't believe in 
coming before the American people a lot of times in a row. That is 
clearly not the case with President Obama, Madam Speaker.
  We are here dealing with a full-court press across this Nation that 
seeks to, as the President seeks to, sell his budget to the American 
people. We have watched the Congressional Budget Office come out with 
their estimates on what this budget is going to cost. I have watched 
the target move. I have watched the irresponsibility of the spending 
grow. And if you add up the cumulative total of the money that has been 
spent, taxpayers' money borrowed and spent, I don't really know anybody 
that has that full total. We need to put it down here on the floor and 
ring it up every day, just like you put the little thermometer up when 
you have got a fund-raising drive for a new library. The only thing 
will be that there won't be any new libraries for our children and 
grandchildren if we continue on this path.
  I recall, Madam Speaker, the President making a statement that, in 
order to repair this economy, we need to construct this multi-legged 
stool, and the stimulus plan is only one leg of a multi-legged stool. 
That is by his words.
  So I made the remark then that one leg of a multi-legged stool that 
wasn't a milking stool, that would be one leg. It wasn't a two-legged 
stool, I have never seen one of those. There would be no practical 
reason to have a two-legged stool, it would fall over. And so a three-
legged stool, he would have said so. But we know it is multi-legged. So 
that is at least four, maybe more, with the legs of this stool that he 
would like to construct to solved our economic crisis at a price tag 
per leg of $1 trillion to $2 trillion each. And when I said that a 
month or so ago, there was a significant amount of criticism, that I 
was exaggerating the President's budget.
  Madam Speaker, I submit that, no, now the Congressional Budget Office 
has exceeded my exaggerated estimate in their objective conservative 
estimate of what this budget is going to cost this country in debt, and 
cost the American people.
  As I listened to the press conference today, I have been familiar 
with the term that was trotted at nearly every press conference, of 
which there have been many, and there are two things we can't get a 
total on: How much money is being spent, and how many press conferences 
we have had that set policy for this economy. But I have gotten used to 
the term that the President had inherited a $1 trillion debt from his 
predecessor.
  Madam Speaker, I point out that no President inherits a debt from his 
predecessor President. A President can't spend any money. A President 
can't initiate any spending. In fact, a Senator can't initiate 
spending. It has got to be initiated, by Constitution, right here in 
the United States House of Representatives.
  That budget, that spending, that deficit for the 110th Congress and 
the deficit coming into the 111th Congress, that is the Pelosi debt, 
the Pelosi deficit. That is the money that was appropriated by this 
Congress that established much of the debt that was inherited by the 
111th Congress that would be administered by the Executive Branch, 
which would be the President of the United States. His job is to carry 
out the policies we set and take care to enforce the laws with due 
diligence. But his statement has been he inherited a $1 trillion debt. 
Today we have another milestone I hadn't heard before, Madam Speaker; 
and that is, now he has inherited a $1.3 trillion debt.
  So the inheritance is growing for the President, but it is shrinking 
for our grandchildren, unless we consider that they are inheriting 
debt, as well, and the burden of supporting this government and taking 
it out of duly-earned profits in future, future years, without a 
prospect of being able to pay for this, without a plan to come out of 
it.
  And the argument that if we just do something to establish socialized 
medicine, that will solve our economic problems? I cannot connect the 
dots on that kind of a statement, Madam Speaker, and it concerns me a 
great deal.

[[Page H3826]]

  So the inherited debt, which is not inherited from his predecessor 
the President, President Bush, but it is debt that is inherited from 
the 110th Congress and previous Congresses, has grown to $1.3 trillion. 
But the debt the American people inherit out of this is over $8 
trillion, perhaps over $10 trillion. And we are still configuring and 
constructing more legs of this multi-legged stool that is supposed to 
bring us out of this economic crisis.
  I listened as that language unfolded, and you have to listen very 
carefully to understand the meaning of the President's words. It is 
usually an artful job of crafting this ambiguity of language, this 
ambiguity of language that allows me to pull out of it the meaning that 
I want to know and hear, and allows someone, my ideological opposite, 
to draw an opposite meaning from the same words and the same phrase. 
There are a lot of different ways to describe it. I am going to be 
generous and call it a classical ambiguity style. And I find myself 
sometimes turning down the volume and waiting for the newspaper the 
next day, because you really have to parse all this language and 
analyze it, and it is hard for me to find time for that. But some of 
this language is more clear than others.
  I intend to take up the issue in a moment of the President's 
appointment to the Office of Legal Counsel, but prior to doing so I 
think it would be appropriate to transition into the economic 
circumstances, and recognize the gentlelady from Minnesota for so much 
time as she may consume to talk about whatever it be on her mind.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. I thank the gentleman from Iowa, also known as the 
Stunning Steve King of Iowa, as stated by national political 
commentators, who certainly know what they are talking about. Steve 
King is one of our stalwart patriots who is here on the floor fighting 
on behalf of the American people.
  And while we are here tonight to talk about several subjects, we 
can't avoid the first subject that is on the table. It is the fact that 
under President Obama's budget that he has put forward, President 
Obama's budget simply spends too much, it taxes too much, and it 
certainly borrows too much.
  We are very concerned about the excessive spending that is contained 
in this bill. It is $3.9 trillion. That is almost $4 trillion in 
spending under this budget deficit. This is an historical Presidency, 
historical for the amount of spending that is occurring under this 
President, $3.9 trillion.
  Not only is that a huge amount of money just for spending and just 
for taxing; we know that just the energy tax alone that the President 
is putting in his budget is $2 trillion in spending. The President's 
aides just came out within this last week and said that it is not $646 
billion, as we thought, it is nearly $2 trillion. That means for people 
in Minnesota, for people that are watching this evening, Madam Speaker, 
we are looking at perhaps an additional $4,000 per year out of the gate 
that every American household will see in increased taxes for energy. 
$4,000 a year in increased taxes. Who can afford that right now, when 
401(k)s are down, when the value of houses are down, when jobs are on 
the line? We can't afford that, Madam Speaker. The President surely 
must know that.
  But, borrowing too much. Representative Steve King talked about the 
massive borrowing that is coming from under our President's budget. 
This is what is remarkable. President Obama is borrowing so much of 
your tax money, Madam Speaker, of the American people's money, that 
literally President Obama's debt will be more than all previous 
Presidents combined.
  Madam Speaker, you heard me correctly. From George Washington through 
George W. Bush, the 43rd President, you can add up the debt level of 
every one of those Presidents. And day after day after day we hear 
President Obama blaming the previous administration for the current 
situation he is in; but President Obama will lay so much debt on the 
backs of the American people that it will trump all 43 Presidents 
combined. That is historic.
  Take a look. These are the figures that are put out, this is the 
Office of Management and Budget, and these are the figures that the 
President himself points to. The figures here on the left are the 
figures for debt prior to President Obama coming into office. These 
figures on the right are the debt amount that President Obama by his 
own figures say will be accumulated, $20 trillion in debt by President 
Obama's own figures.
  As a matter of fact, the Congressional Budget Office came out and 
said so rosy were the President's figures that he undercounted his debt 
by $2.3 trillion. He has rosy estimates of how great the economy is 
going to grow, and he has very conservative estimates on how high his 
debt will grow. We are concerned, we are very concerned about what the 
future debt load will be on the American people.
  I am often reminded of the Founders; and Representative Steve King 
and I stand here tonight in this chamber, Madam Speaker. Together with 
yourself, we are literally standing on the shoulders of the Founders of 
this great country are. And it was the Founders of our country, as we 
look through the rearview mirror of history, who very clearly made it 
known that our government was to be a Constitutional government formed 
on limited government principles. And the day that the Founders signed 
the Constitution, they also signed the first ten amendments to that 
Constitution; and those ten amendments were given as a gift, a 
protection to the individual American. Why? Because our Founders were 
so concerned about the abuse of taxing authority of their mother 
country, Great Britain. They were so concerned about that abuse of a 
taxing authority that they said to the American people in the first ten 
amendments: We want you to know that your Federal Government will be 
limited in its power. And in the tenth amendment, they specifically 
said: These limited powers that we are giving to the Federal Government 
are all the Federal Government will have. Every other power that there 
is will be given back to the States. We, the Federal Government, won't 
hold that power. We give it back to the States.
  This is very important to realize, because our President doesn't seem 
to see it that way, Madam Speaker. Our President seems to think that 
the time and energy and productive years belongs to Uncle Sam and not 
to the individual. That is a completely different way of looking at the 
world than what our Founders viewed.
  This evening, Madam Speaker, Representative King wants to turn the 
subject now to talking about the gift of life, the gift of human life; 
the issue that our framers talked about in the Declaration of 
Independence when they called out for inalienable rights and said that 
we, Americans, were created by a God; that our creator God created us. 
He gave us inalienable rights, rights that only God can give, rights 
that no government confer nor can any government take away. That, among 
those rights are life, liberty, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness.
  Tonight, I know that is what Representative Steve King wants to speak 
about, Madam Speaker. He wants to speak about that cherished gift 
enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, and 
why we are so genuinely concerned about the nomination to the Office of 
Legal Counsel that President Obama is making and the individual that 
Representative King will be speaking of.

                              {time}  2130

  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentlelady from 
Minnesota for the eloquent presentation on the economic side of this 
thing and the very smooth transition into the life side. And this is an 
important issue that sits before this Congress.
  Before I go to that issue, I would comment that in looking at the 
chart of the debt and the cumulative effect of the debt of President 
Obama's debt compared to the sum total of all the previous 
administrations, Congress has started, the President signed the 
appropriations bills, there is another statistic that I saw that was a 
calculation from the Congressional Budget Office that took this debt in 
the budget that has been proposed by President Obama and lays it out 
into the future. The greatest share of our gross domestic product that 
we have had as debt in a budget was 1945, right at the end of World War 
II. And this Obama budget projects to be not 100 percent of gross 
domestic product, but twice as high, 200 percent of gross domestic 
product is

[[Page H3827]]

the calculation that comes from numbers produced by the Congressional 
Budget Office.
  Madam Speaker, I point out another component of this, that yesterday 
there was a plan that was rolled out that was played off of former 
Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, who argued that he should have 
$700 billion to pick up toxic assets from the lending institutions, and 
that proposal was rolled out yesterday. And here is how this 
calculates, and that is that the Federal Government--and I want to make 
this point, Madam Speaker, before we move on, because I think it is so 
essentially important that we all understand what is taking place in 
this country with the nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, 
reaching into the auto makers with the partial nationalization that is 
going on there, the nationalization of AIG. The taxpayers own 80 
percent of the shares of AIG. They are not worth a lot, but taxpayers 
own 80 percent of them. We have a big investment in Citigroup. And as 
the Federal Government swallows up financial institution after 
financial institution, now this administration reaches in to the 
mortgages themselves, into institutional investors and individual 
investors, perhaps, to deal with these toxic mortgages.
  Now I have argued, and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and I have 
signed on to a piece of legislation last fall and argued that we should 
use private capital to solve this problem with the toxic debt that 
exists, the toxic mortgages that are out there, those mortgages that 
aren't performing and that are going in the tank. It is always 
preferable in a free-enterprise kind of an economy to have private-
sector capital come in and rescue.
  The rescue fund, the rescue act was a piece of legislation that I 
introduced that we are original cosponsors of, and one of the things 
that it does to put private capital into this very thing, these kind of 
mortgages. It would suspend capital gains taxes on rescue capital that 
would come in to pick up the toxic debt. Each time that we have pushed 
out into the middle of the table the argument that we should be either 
suspending or eliminating capital gains taxes so that investors could 
come in and pick up these toxic mortgages, and then if they yield a 
profit, let them keep the profit tax-free, they will reinvest those 
dollars and pay taxes on their capital at a later date, Madam Speaker, 
but we can't get that simple idea of suspending taxes on capital gains 
to stay on the negotiating table any longer than it takes Chairman 
Frank's back of the hand to sweep it off.
  Why? Why would the most logical proposal that can be devised, and the 
simplest one at that, that brings free-market solutions and private-
sector investor capital that is looking for a place to go, why would it 
not be part of the plan to resolve this economic downward spiral that 
we are in? I will submit it is because the people that are in charge of 
devising the plan don't really believe in the free markets. If they 
did, they would want investors to come in.
  So the White House has proposed a plan that would partner up the 
Federal Government, the White House and the taxpayers with private 
sector investment. Now I'm saying that we could get trillions of 
dollars of private investment to come in and pick up this toxic debt. 
You don't want to buy it at any more than the market price is. There is 
no reason to overpay for it. But you want to take it off the books of 
the banks and the lenders and let them move on and heal up. So here is 
the proposal, and it works out to be like this. If an investor wants to 
put $1 down on the table to invest in these toxic debts that we are not 
supposed to call ``toxic'' anymore, these mortgage-backed securities, 
that investor can lay $1 down, and the Federal Government will lay $1 
down, and then the Federal Government will guarantee another $12 worth 
of debt. So, if I'm an individual investor, and I can come up with $1, 
that means the Federal Government puts another $1 in cash up to match 
it, and then they guarantee the loan on the balance of that, another 
$12, so we have got a $14 investment here. Thirteen of the $14 are 
guaranteed by the Federal Government. The risk for the investor is $1 
out of $14, 7 percent of the whole. The Federal Government's risk is 93 
percent of the whole, and if this thing goes down, if it washes out, we 
are, as taxpayers, holding the bag for 93 percent of the loss. And the 
result--oh, wait a minute. What happens to the profit, Madam Speaker? 
Well, the profits are shared 50/50 between the Federal Government, the 
taxpayers and the investor.
  So if I can come out and put $1 down and somebody else will guarantee 
or put down $13, and out of that whole $14 worth of investment I'm 
going to get half of the return off of my 7 percent investment, and the 
Federal Government gets half of the return off of their 93 percent of 
their investment, I think you know what has happened here. They have 
rejected the idea that we should just not tax the profits, and instead, 
in the lust for sharing in the profits themselves and expanding the 
role of the Federal Government, they have rejected a free-market 
solution and come up with a Big Government solution that buys the 
Federal Government in in a big way with no way back out again and not 
even a respectable platitude that would give us a way to define it out 
of the ambiguity of the language that that is what is going to happen.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. If the gentleman would yield, what we have seen 
transpire is nothing short of historic. We have seen, since last year, 
the Federal Government become the bank of first resort and the bank of 
last resort. We have seen the Federal Government nationalize banks. We 
have seen the Federal Government step into insurance agencies, become 
the insurer of first resort and become the insurer of last resort and 
nationalize the largest insurance company in the United States, AIG.
  And now what are we seeing in the Treasury Secretary's proposal that 
was just given out yesterday, or maybe it was the evening before that, 
is this: Now the Federal Government will become a hedge fund. That is 
essentially what we are looking at. The Federal Government will become 
a hedge fund. The only thing is that we will have toxic assets in the 
hedge fund.
  How does this work? Again, the taxpayer, John Taxpayer becomes the 
chump that is holding the bag in all of this. Again, it is the taxpayer 
that is the forgotten man. Because once again, the Federal Government 
thinks that the taxpayer is good enough to have to pony up the money 
for all of these ideas that seem to come out that have a lot more to do 
with centralized government planning and very little to do resembling 
free-market capitalism.

  We are lurching. We are lurching, Madam Speaker, away from free-
market capitalism when you come to the point where the Federal 
Government now decides to throw the dice and become a hedge fund and 
the taxpayer is the one who is there for all of the loss but not for 
the gain. I yield back.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. If the gentlelady will yield for a question.
  It just occurs to me as you speak of this, let's presume that you had 
$1 million to invest. And you had been looking at a bundle of these 
mortgage-backed securities with the idea that you could go in and buy 
up this bundle with $1 million in investment and then manage them in 
such a way that you could get your money back out and make a profit. It 
would be a good thing for our economy. It would be a good thing for the 
investment in that capital.
  Now, if you're ready to invest that $1 million in buying up a bundle 
of mortgage-backed securities, how would you be able to compete with 
someone who also had $1 million and who had $12 million from the 
Federal Government, between them then $13 million, to match up against 
your $1 million? What happens to the free market in this? And how does 
someone who doesn't want to participate and make an investment like 
that in direct competition with the Federal Government, how do they 
possibly find a profit? How can they compete?
  Mrs. BACHMANN. Exactly. And we haven't got the question answered yet. 
It appears that only large institutional investors, a Goldman Sachs or 
someone like that, will be able to get in on these sweetheart deals. I 
don't know too many Joe Averages that will be able to buy into this 
great deal.
  So think of it this way in your example: You have $1 million worth of 
mortgage-backed securities. How much skin in the game would this 
private investor

[[Page H3828]]

have? Again, public-private? Public is $950,000 worth of Federal tax 
money to $50,000 worth of investment from the private person. But yet 
what if the yield is positive? For a $50,000 investment, you could have 
a $500,000 gain. That is pretty amazing. Whereas the Federal Government 
would be losing 95 percent, and there is nothing to lose when it comes 
to the private investor.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. And reclaiming my time, the gentlelady mentions the 
institutional investors. And we have also watched the institutions on 
Wall Street such as Goldman Sachs, AIG, Citigroup and let me see, 
Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch. The list goes on and on. It occurs 
to me that some of the same names and faces are inside the room when 
these decisions are made over and over again.
  I think back to AIG, and the situation that flowed across this floor 
that would go back and back tax those retention bonuses that were paid 
to the executives. Who makes that decision? Who had the opportunity to 
say ``no''? Some of the same people that are configuring this program 
now. It looks like it is designed for the institutional investors.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. And if the gentleman would yield on AIG, let's not 
forget what AIG was. Once the American Government came in and 
federalized AIG, AIG was essentially a pass-through entity, meaning 
Federal tax dollars passed through AIG, went directly to Europe and 
made whole foreign investors. So this is what the taxpayer was paying 
for. The taxpayer gave money to bail out foreign investors.
  My question is, foreign investors were made whole 100 percent across 
the board. Goldman Sachs--and I'm not trying to pick on them--but they 
were made whole $13 billion, 100 percent. My question, Madam Speaker, 
is will the American taxpayer be made whole 100 percent? And when will 
they be made whole, if ever?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. We know that there won't be any opportunity for the 
American taxpayers to be made whole.
  And I'm asking for the taxpayers to wake up. Take on this personal 
responsibility. Get out the tea bags. The American people can come 
together and say, enough is more than enough. This is too much. And it 
is time to put the brakes on this.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. If there is one final thing I can add to the 
gentleman's remarks. It was amazing this afternoon. President Obama had 
made a statement when he was with the prime minister of Australia. And 
he was asking Congress to give more power to the Treasury Secretary. As 
if they don't have enough already, he wants more power to the Treasury 
Secretary, which means more power for himself, because the Treasury 
Secretary represents the President.
  He wants more power for what? So that if a private corporation 
becomes in trouble--we are not talking about a bank now. We are talking 
about a private corporation that becomes in trouble, he wants the 
Treasury Secretary to have unilateral authority, on his own decision, 
to walk into a private business and essentially nationalize it, take it 
over and reorganize.
  I'll tell you what. If investors are worried now about the Federal 
Government coming in, opening up private compensation contracts and 
deciding to lower the amount of the wage value, you ain't seen nothing 
yet. Because the Federal Government is going to come in with its 
Marxist view of economics and make a decision about who is allowed to 
make what wage based upon what government thinks. This is one of the 
scariest ideas to come down the pike.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. As I reflect on your discussion about this attitude 
about the Federal Government deciding what executives should be paid, 
what businesses are viable and which ones should be nationalized, I 
recall there is a fine and stellar company that is domiciled in 
Minnesota that had one of their pieces of their investment that was 
nationalized. It was a rice processing plant in Venezuela. A Hugo 
Chavez move, that took over a rice plant in Cargill in Venezuela. And 
this is a pattern. I think if you would read the story about that and 
then bring it back and just change the names, the places and the dates, 
put some American companies in there, I don't think you could discern 
the difference between the specter of what is hanging out for the 
American businesses that is coming out of the White House and what has 
actually happened to Cargill in Venezuela.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. And we also have a great institution in Minnesota, a 
great bank, Twin City Federal. Twin City Federal took some of the TARP 
money, some of the Federal bailout money. They did so because they felt 
if they didn't they would appear weak because the money was supposed to 
be only given to strong banks. Twin City Federal made the remarkable 
move about 1 month ago to return the TARP money. And people didn't know 
if a bank even had that ability to return the money. But they said they 
wanted to. They wanted nothing to do with TARP.
  I think now they are very happy that they got out of that program now 
that they see the Federal Government has no hesitation to step into a 
company and now go in and renegotiate the wage contracts between upper 
management and high-end employees.

                              {time}  2145

  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady. And it occurs to me that at 
some point, that the NBA, the professional baseball leagues, the NFL, 
hockey players all are going to eventually come under this scrutiny, 
and maybe even the Hollywood actors and actresses. If there is 
something that you can dictate what it is, the wages and benefits of 
executives in private business, then there is no line by which you 
wouldn't cross to tell anybody in America what they could or couldn't 
make.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. And it makes me wonder if we will have politically 
correct wage decisions that will be made. For instance, if you are an 
executive at a wind-powered plant, is it okay for you to make $800,000 
a year; but if you are the president of an oil company, we don't like 
you so you are only going to make $60,000 a year. You wonder what kind 
of decisions are coming down the road.
  And again, this has nothing to do with free market capitalism or 
getting our country back in order. This has everything to do with the 
banana republic and bringing our country's finances down the road to 
bankruptcy.
  I yield back.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. And the point that is being made, the undercurrent 
of this point that is being made is what the gentlelady from Minnesota 
made at the beginning of this hour, and that is, getting to the 
foundational principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, 
these rights that come from God that are clearly articulated in the 
Declaration of Independence and flow through the Constitution that are 
part and parcel of our law and our culture and rooted in biblical 
values. These are the things that have made this a great Nation, along 
with property rights and free market capitalism, the rule of law, which 
is God's law transferred into this country. And so today it brings us 
to this point, this point of the subject of the law itself and how it 
is interpreted, how the Constitution is interpreted, the profound 
constitutional questions and how the laws that are written within the 
parameters of the Constitution are interpreted, and how the President 
himself is advised by the Office of Legal Counsel. And I will submit 
that the President's appointment to the Office of Legal Counsel is one 
of the most important appointments that is ever made. And it is an 
appointment that, according to the Newsweek magazine, the Office of 
Legal Counsel is the most important government office you have never 
heard of. This is the job that advises the President and other branches 
of government on all constitutional questions, evaluates executive 
orders as to their constitutionality and anything that might come 
before the President for a signature, a piece of legislation that would 
come out of here, for example, Madam Speaker, that is also something 
that would come under the purview of the Office of Legal Counsel.
  The President issued, he rescinded the Mexico City Policy on January 
23rd of this year, and that Mexico City Policy is a policy that 
prohibited Federal dollars, our tax dollars, yours and mine and 
everybody across this country, from being used to fund abortions 
overseas. That is the Mexico City Policy. I think the President wanted 
to issue his

[[Page H3829]]

Executive order on January 22, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, but out 
of respect for the hundreds of thousands of Americans that poured into 
this city to make their case about the protection of innocent unborn 
human life, I think out of the fear of backlash, plus he was a little 
busy signing his Executive order that closes Gitmo a year to the day, 
it will be on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade on 2010. But on January 
23, the next day, he issued the Executive order that rescinded the 
Mexico City Policy, opened up the door to compel American taxpayers to 
fund abortions in foreign countries, under the guise of what shall we 
call it, population control, reproductive rights.
  And then, on top of that, we have the appointment of Dawn Johnson to 
the Office of Legal Counsel to advise the President on executive 
orders, constitutional questions, and someone who comes to this job 
with a real track record, a track record of a built-in bias as an 
assistant to the Office of Legal Counsel, under President Clinton, and 
someone who has made a whole series of outrageous statements, mostly 
that have come in conjunction with her doing her job as a legal counsel 
herself. So these are not, this is not talk that is coming along in the 
coffee shop. This is language that flows out of legal briefs that she 
has written.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. And if we could just speak a little bit more about the 
importance of this office, the Office of Legal Counsel. The gentleman 
had quoted from Newsweek magazine. Newsweek went on to say that this 
role as Office of Legal Counsel acts as a kind of mini Supreme Court. 
This office is the President's legal counsel, for all practical 
purposes. They issue opinions, much like judicial opinions, kind of a 
mini Supreme Court. Newsweek went on to say its carefully worded 
opinions are regarded as binding precedent, as final say on what the 
President and all his agencies can and cannot legally do. I can't think 
of a more important office to whisper into the President's ear about 
where the President will come down and stand on issues.
  The other thing to recognize, the Office of Legal Counsel is a 
training ground, so to speak, for future Supreme Court justices. This 
individual that the President has nominated for this position, previous 
occupants were Antonin Scalia, William Rehnquist. This is very 
important that we know who this person is that will be whispering in 
the President's ear.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time. I thank the gentlelady for that 
further clarification of the Office of Legal Counsel, the most 
important government office that most have never heard of, Madam 
Speaker. And so, as we saw this appointment be made, and looked through 
some of the documentation of Dawn Johnson, we put together a letter to 
the President. And this letter is dated March 24 of this year. And 
there are 62 cosigners on here, both of us, Michele Bachmann and myself 
included. And it addresses a letter to the President and it says, 
essentially, Mr. President you stated when you rescinded the Mexico 
City policy, that no matter what our views, we are united in our 
determination--and this is a continuing quote--to prevent unintended 
pregnancies, reduce the need for abortion, and support women and 
families and the choices they make. I will just close that quote there.
  If it is your intent, Mr. President, that we really reach for those 
kind of goals, and another component of that statement, we must work to 
find common ground. Close quote.
  I hope the President picks up on this. There is no way to find common 
ground with an individual who holds such utterly biased views. And this 
is, in my judgment, one of them.
  And this is a quote from Dawn Johnson, and the notion of legal 
restrictions as some kind of a reasonable compromise, perhaps to help 
make abortions safe, legal and rare, which is a statement that has come 
out of a many leading Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. This proves 
to be nonsensical in her view. And I think it is the rare part that she 
objects so much too. And she goes on to quote in a different location, 
progressives must not portray all abortions as tragedies. Absent 
unforeseen technological and medical changes, abortion is unlikely to 
become truly rare, and certainly not nonexistent.

  In other words, this is a rejection of the position, the most, I will 
say the most friendly position that I get from people that do not 
support the protection of innocent unborn human life. At least they 
will concede that there is a moral abhorrence to it, and it should be 
minimized if they aren't willing to eliminate. And that was something 
that Hillary Clinton said. But this statement by Dawn Johnson, I think, 
makes it clear, Madam Speaker, that she says that abortion will never 
be rare and safe, legal and rare, as a matter of fact. It will not be. 
And that just opens up the door to further dialog on this particular 
issue. There are many issues that I would object to. But I focus this 
on the abortion side.
  And another one of these statements that we carry to the President is 
this: And this, Madam Speaker, is among the most offensive statements 
that the American people are asked to accept as part and parcel of the 
package that you get when the President appoints someone to be, to head 
of the Office of Legal Counsel who carries this kind of a bias against 
the people who stand up for innocent human life. And this is her 
statement on abortion regulation. The State has conscripted her body 
for its own ends because the State has an interest in babies being 
born. If a State is not interested in that, you will see a civilization 
ultimately die. So she goes, recognizing a compelling State interest in 
protecting the fetus would provide States with an open-ended invitation 
to force pregnant women to act in whatever ways the State determined 
were optimal for the fetus, thereby, and I pay attention to this, 
thereby reducing pregnant women to no more than fetal containers. That 
is a remark of contempt towards mothers, toward the cherished role that 
they have in bringing these young children to birth and nurturing them 
with all the love they possibly can. It is offensive to me to think 
that someone has called my mother a fetal container.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. If I could add to the gentleman's remarks. I think 
that the other thing that is glaring in this statement by Ms. Johnson 
is the fact that she said, recognizing a compelling State interest in 
protecting the fetus. I would just like to remind her that the State is 
not only interested in protecting the fetus, the State is also 
interested in protecting the woman. Many States all across the United 
States of America have laws known as women's right to know because 
there is an intention that women who are abortion-minded know what the 
consequence of that decision will mean. Many women become infertile for 
life. Once they have an abortion they can never bear another child 
after that. And many women don't know what the consequences of an early 
abortion will be. That is a violent act. An abortion is a violent act 
to a woman's body.
  Also, women have tremendous emotional pain that they may deal with, 
not just for an afternoon, or not just for a weekend, they may, for the 
next 10 years, suffer with depression and all manner of disorders that 
they may have to deal with emotionally for years and years because they 
didn't fully comprehend the consequences of their decision.
  And while women should never be viewed as fetal containers--I have 
never heard any more crass language in my life than the imagery that 
Dawn Johnson brought up--it is also true that babies are more than a 
product of tissue. Babies are a gift. Just as women are a gift, babies 
are a gift. Human life is to be cherished, not discarded.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. And reclaiming my time from the gentlelady from 
Minnesota who has lived her life in demonstration to that commitment to 
life, your own children and the numbers of foster children that you 
have nurtured, you are the woman that lives in Minnesota and had so 
many children but always knew what to do. And I have not quite figured 
out how to put that into the proper alliteration, but that is the 
concept.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. We had great kids, Representative King. That's how we 
did it, and a great husband.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. It definitely helps to have a good husband. I 
remind my wife of that, and I appreciate that comment.
  Going back to this, as you mentioned, it was the Office of Legal 
Counsel is a perfect position to whisper

[[Page H3830]]

things into the ears of the President, to get the President's 
attention, to be on his agenda, to make legal arguments, to make 
arguments that are going to help him rationalize and set the policy, a 
policy like the Mexico City.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. And to help him make his statements for him because 
these are written statements that become binding precedent within the 
President's office. This is an amazing amount of power.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Written statements with binding precedent, and the 
ability to write that into statements or whisper into the President's 
ear fetal containers, Mr. President.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. It also binds the administrative agencies. So this has 
power throughout the entire Presidential administration. Every agency, 
every department would be bound by these statements.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. And it would limit the ability of each of the 
agencies to react to the very policy that this Congress has 
established, this Congress might establish. And this kind of pejorative 
language has no place in law. And it has no place in the dialog of 
America. It has no place in families and humanity, has no place in 
nurturing little children, and it has no place in taking care of the 
mothers, the brothers and the sisters with the idea that a fetal 
container, that reduces the unborn child, that innocent little baby, to 
being a term that hardly makes it as a medical term.
  These aren't the only comments that have been made by Dawn Johnson. I 
just picked them up as they come along. There is quite a stack here. 
And I don't know if I will get through them all, Madam Speaker, but 
here is one that is also indicative of a similar kind of language in 
the previous quote where Dawn Johnson, again, the President's appointee 
to head up the Office of Legal Counsel, the argument says the argument 
that women who become pregnant have in some sense consented to the 
pregnancy belies reality. I would like to think that most women who are 
mothers have consented to the pregnancy. Not all, but most. The large 
number of women who never receive proper information about 
contraception and others who are the inevitable losers in the 
contraception lottery, no more consent to pregnancy than pedestrians 
consent to being struck by drunk drivers. Pregnant mothers equivalent 
to being struck by drunk drivers when they become pregnant? That 
reduces this thing down into an act of almost negligent violence, if 
not willful violence. I think it is an act of love.

                              {time}  2200

  Mrs. BACHMANN. It almost seems contrary to feminism because feminism 
empowers women and believes that women have the capability to give 
consent, informed consent. The way that this is written by Dawn 
Johnson, it appears that she is saying that women are without capacity 
to give consent even in an area of becoming pregnant.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, even when they make that 
decision themselves.
  I as a new grandfather myself 3 weeks ago today, I think of those 
children who are loved and wanted and planned and of those families who 
are not able to have children and who are lined up to adopt children 
who might become available. There are many more families in this 
country who are waiting for a child to come along who they can adopt 
and nurture into the bosom of their family and raise as one of their 
own than there are unwanted children in this country.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. And if I could just correct the gentleman, my opinion 
is that every child is a wanted child. That is one of Planned 
Parenthood's trademarks that, I believe, is one of the biggest myths 
that has been perpetrated in the last 40 years--every child a wanted 
child----
  Mr. KING of Iowa. By God.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. As if there are unwanted children. Every child is a 
wanted child.
  I can attest to the fact that there are open arms for every child who 
is born. If a child is considered less than perfect, has a physical or 
a mental disability, there are homes all across the United States that 
are begging and pleading and waiting for a child. None of us can ever 
forget the words of Mother Teresa, who said, ``If you don't want the 
children, I want the children. Give them to me. I will take them,'' 
this diminutive, little nun from Calcutta who was willing to take any 
child from across the planet. Here in the United States, we have 
willing, open hearts that would take every child who is born in this 
country.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, raising up on the point made by 
the gentlelady from Minnesota, it is true that every child is both 
wanted as is wanted, but also, every child is planned and wanted by 
God. It is his will, and we need to acknowledge that will and nurture 
and love these children with all of our ability and with all of our 
will.
  It takes me to another quote by Dawn Johnson. This one fits right in 
with the category. Perhaps it is more egregious. This is the infamous 
KKK quote where she says, ``The terrorists' behavior of petitioners,'' 
meaning those people who are praying for life outside the abortion 
clinic, ``is remarkably similar to the conspiracy of violence and 
intimidation carried out by the Ku Klux Klan against which Congress 
intended this statute to protect.''
  Madam Speaker, I am watching my constituents by the hundreds on these 
40 days of Lent, praying outside Planned Parenthood in Sioux City, Iowa 
throughout these 40 days, and they have been labeled now to be similar 
to the KKK by the prospective head of the Office of Legal Counsel who 
would be whispering these terms into the President's ear and writing 
legal opinions and bringing influence on the enforcement effort of the 
Federal Government, bringing that up against people who are exercising 
their first amendment rights of freedom of assembly and religion to 
protect innocent life.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. This is a remarkable statement because it seems to 
invoke the worst hate speech that you could possibly make. To call out 
those who are praying on behalf of life and to liken them to terrorists 
and to call them terrorists, that seems to me invoke a hate speech and 
also a form of bigotry, religious bigotry of the worst order.
  This really calls into question for me the President's judgment in 
choosing someone like Dawn Johnson, who used this type of language, and 
putting her in the position of being Office of Legal Counsel. I think 
it is shocking and a stunning choice, and it really calls into question 
President Obama's judgment in this selection.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, the gentlelady has articulated 
this, I think, very well.
  We'll add these expressions up together: pregnant mothers are the 
equivalent of being hit by drunk drivers; that abortion will never be 
rare; the equivalent of the KKK are people who are demonstrating and 
protesting that we should protect and support innocent human life.
  I'll put another one up here and add another quote to that. This is 
another quote from Dawn Johnson.
  She says, ``The experience of an abortion is no longer traumatic. The 
response of most women to the experience is relief.''
  I don't have any experience with that, but that is not the message 
that I get from the people I talk to who come to this city. The 
strongest leaders in the pro-life movement and always among them will 
be women who have had abortions and who have suffered the trauma, the 
psychological trauma of abortion. They don't feel relief. They feel 
compelled to pray and march and demonstrate until Roe v. Wade is 
overturned, and we can protect innocent life in this country as God 
intended.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. I would add that, with all due respect, this is one of 
the most ignorant comments that I have ever heard--that the experience 
is no longer traumatic. Speak to anyone who deals in the aftermath of 
dealing with women who have had abortions.
  My best friend runs a crisis pregnancy center. She has given her life 
and has poured her life out because she loves women and she loves 
abortion-minded women. She wants to meet them at the point of their 
deepest crises. She has told me that, for women who come in who are 
considering abortion and also for women who have had an abortion and 
who come to her, it is

[[Page H3831]]

completely traumatic. They agonize as they walk into the clinic. They 
agonize, the women who have had previous abortions, after they have had 
the abortion. It is traumatic.
  There are reams of scientific papers that have been done that speak 
loudly to the trauma that the woman has experienced, let alone the 
trauma that the baby has experienced. That baby's life was taken in 
cold blood. That baby was murdered in cold blood. Not traumatic? It was 
traumatic for that innocent child, but it was equally as traumatic for 
the mother. The mother realizes and understands what has occurred. This 
is traumatic. To make that statement, to me, is heartless at worst and 
ignorant at best.

  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, the trauma that has been 
visited upon many, many thousands of women in this country has brought 
about the beginnings of an entire organization, of a movement that has 
significant inertia and membership, and that is called Women Deserve 
Better. They come to this city continually and make the case that women 
deserve better. They deserve proper psychological and medical counsel. 
They deserve to be treated with respect. They deserve to understand 
what is going on, and they do not deserve to be told that they are 
going to feel relief or that it used to be but is no longer a traumatic 
experience.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. That is the cruelest thing that could be done to a 
woman who is in crisis--to tell her that this is an easy quick fix and 
that you will experience relief. Women are strong, capable, intelligent 
people. They can handle the truth, and they deserve to be given full 
scientific evidence of the procedure they are about to undergo if that 
is the case. We need to respect women, and these statements do not 
reflect a true respect for women.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. But they may reflect the majority of the input that 
is going into the ears of the President as these decisions are being 
made, and they would reflect the position of the Office of Legal 
Counsel if Dawn Johnson is confirmed by the United States Senate.
  Now, we can expect that these ideas--this philosophy, this pejorative 
approach--is not balanced and that they do not bring a sense of 
legality or legal scholarship or constitutional analysis. They bring a 
bias into this discussion. These kinds of biased positions would be 
reflected throughout the President's positions because he is the one 
who has chosen her. It does reflect his positions to some degree.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. I would say that this reflects his position completely 
because we know, from the President's previous votes when he was a 
State Senator in Illinois, he was the most pro-abortion State Senator 
in Illinois. His voting record here in the United States Senate was 
that of the most pro-abortion United States Senator.
  He fully supported partial birth abortion, one of the most gruesome, 
cruel procedures of infanticide one could ever imagine. Also, he voted 
for the Born Alive Act, which meant that he stood on the floor, as a 
matter of fact, in the Illinois State Senate and argued that children 
who were born, born alive, did not necessarily have a right to live, 
that as to those children who were born alive after a ``botched'' 
abortion, the doctor would have the right to kill that baby after it 
was born, and now President Obama voted in favor of that unthinkably 
gruesome bill.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. And he argued in favor of it.
  The foundational principle that he argued for, Madam Speaker, was: A 
woman who sought to have an abortion had a right to a dead baby even if 
they botched the abortion and the baby survived.
  That is not a moral principle. That is not a legal principle. It is a 
myopic principle that is pulled up within the political lobbying that 
comes out of Planned Parenthood. It cannot be based on anything moral; 
it cannot be based in law. The philosophy of the President was also 
reflected during the campaign trail when he was speaking as if his 
daughters got pregnant--out of wedlock, I presume is what he was 
referring to.
  He said, ``I don't want my daughters punished with a baby.'' I 
listened to that tape tonight to be sure I heard it right. Those are 
the words of the President of the United States. He actually said, 
referring to his daughters, ``I don't want them punished with a baby.''
  I don't believe a baby is punishment. I believe a baby is a gift and 
that the people whom I know who love their children as we do ours and 
our grandchildren as we do ours see them all as gifts, all as gifts 
from God.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. One of the most gruesome quotes--and I don't know if 
the gentleman has this one--is when she is referring to her beliefs and 
to people who are like-minded.
  She said, ``Progressives,'' which would be far-left liberals, ``must 
not portray all abortions as tragedies. Absent unforeseen technological 
and medical changes, abortion is unlikely to become truly rare and 
certainly not nonexistent.''
  In this statement, she is lamenting the fact that abortion could 
become rare. She wants abortion to occur. When do you ever hear anyone 
say that they don't want abortion to be rare? But that is what Dawn 
Johnson is saying.
  When President Bill Clinton was running for President, he said he 
wanted abortions safe, legal and rare. Hillary Clinton said the same 
thing when she was running for President. Barack Obama--I'm not sure 
what his words were, but those were the words of the people running for 
President. Dawn Johnson is refuting that. She doesn't want abortion to 
be rare. She wants to see abortions occur. That is in the realm of the 
macabre. I am amazed at that statement.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady.
  I have one more shocking statement made by Dawn Johnson. Now, 
remember, this is the person who would be doing the constitutional 
analysis, making that decision and making the same thing as a legal 
opinion, a binding legal opinion to the entire executive branch to one 
degree or another. She would have the ear of the President. I think 
Dawn Johnson has a major flaw in her jurisprudence even though she is 
probably very well trained. This is what she says about the difference 
between the Bush administration and the Clinton administration on 
balance.
  She calls the Bush administration's claims to executive power 
``extreme, extraordinary, implausible, illegitimate, appalling, and 
abusive.'' By comparison, as to the Clinton administration, ``I do not 
have any specific criticisms of the Clinton administration in these 
regards.'' Well, I think that tells us about the lack of partisanship 
that is there.
  Let's see. I was looking for a quote. I have it in front of me. I 
will take it back to the slavery issue where Dawn Johnson said, 
``Statutes that can curtail a woman's abortion choice are disturbingly 
suggestive of involuntary servitude, prohibited by the 13th amendment, 
in that forced pregnancy requires a woman to provide continuous 
physical service to the fetus in order to further the State's asserted 
interest.''
  Slavery? I could read through that Constitution dozens of times over. 
I could pour through this case law over and over again. I invite the 
law school creative people. I don't know who would come up with the 
idea that the opportunity to be a mother was equivalent to slavery.
  For a couple of minutes, I will yield to the gentlelady.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. You know, I would say that this heavy tax burden that 
the Obama administration is laying upon the American people has more to 
do with involuntary servitude than the fact of a woman who has the 
opportunity to carry an unborn child to term and to give life to that 
baby. Most women consider that a privilege and a blessing, and they 
pray for that opportunity so that they can have the chance to share in 
the joy of motherhood together with their husband, to be able to bring 
life and to cooperate with God and bring life into the world.
  Life is a beautiful thing. It is precious. It is something not to be 
wasted. It certainly cannot be equated with involuntary servitude, 
which is slavery. Slavery is what we are looking at right now with the 
debt burden that we are seeing from the Obama administration, where we 
are looking at having more debt under President Obama than under all 
previous 43 Presidents combined. That is involuntary servitude when a 
person has to work three-quarters of the year just to pay their tax 
bill, and that is what we are looking at

[[Page H3832]]

down the road for our kids and grandkids, because this Obama 
administration is clearly spending too much, taxing too much and 
borrowing too much.

                              {time}  2215

  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady.
  And I would just remind the gentlelady, the Speaker, that we have, by 
letter, called upon the President to withdraw the name of Don Johnson 
to head up his Office of Legal Council for these reasons that we have 
argued here tonight, for a multitude of reasons that we didn't get to 
in the time that we had, for moral reasons, constitutional reasons, 
statutory reasons, reasons of logic, common sense, and understanding 
the nature of humanity; for reasons that we want to see this Nation 
continue to ascend in all of the levels of morality, and economics, and 
national defense, and culture, and vision so that this country can be 
moved to the next level of its destiny that's positive, one that we can 
be proud of, one that will carry us forward and make our children 
proud, one day that our children can come to the floor of the House of 
Representatives, somebody's children, the next generation, and say, We 
stand on the shoulders of our forefathers, our predecessors, the people 
who stood up for life, the people who stood up for what is right, the 
people who stood up for the Constitution and the principles of life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that are embodied in the 
Declaration of Independence; and the argument that these rights come 
from God, and they are not to be torn asunder by someone who is a 
liberal activist who would lay out this list of offenses against life 
and family itself, the very core and foundation of American life.
  That is what we have going on here. No good can come of it. This is 
the reminder that we have. This is the letter with 62 signatures that 
we sent to the President to withdraw the name of Don Johnson, appoint 
someone with a Constitutional understanding and a commitment to those 
principles and not an activist. We don't need an activist to head up 
this Office of Legal Council. We need someone who will understand the 
Constitution and the law and respect life.
  And with that, Madam Speaker, I would thank the gentlelady from 
Minnesota.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________