[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 76 (Wednesday, May 19, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H3637-H3643]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          ISSUES OF THE TIMES

  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. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to be 
recognized here on the floor of the United States House of 
Representatives and have the opportunity to address you and hopefully 
illuminate some of these arguments that come before the American 
people, that come before this Congress and that reflect down that 
hallway to the United States Senate. And, Mr. Speaker, I long heard 
from over on this side in the 30-Something group that for years--
actually they went from their thirties to their forties--stood over 
here, two, three, four, sometimes five or more, and they would make the 
argument that, if we would just give them the gavels, everything would 
be all right with the world; that if we would just let them be in the 
majority, they could fix the problems of America and the world. And 
they constantly harangued against the Republican majority that existed 
until the end of 2006, constantly promised that they would fix all the 
problems that we have, and constantly attacked then the President of 
the United States.
  It's so interesting to me, Mr. Speaker, to have watched the 
transformation over the last 3-plus years, 3\1/2\ years now; and we are 
almost halfway through and probably, by business days, more than 
halfway through this Congress and on to the next election in November 
here of 2010. It's pretty interesting to me, Mr. Speaker, that the 
people who made all those promises about what was wrong with the world 
had to do with George Bush and the Republican majority, that were going 
to fix the problems, now I haven't heard any of them step forward and 
say, You gave us the gavels. The American people trusted us with the 
majority--them, not me--and by golly, we've fixed these problems for 
America. Look how great it is, now that the people who clamored for the 
gavels were handed the gavels on January 3, 2007, some almost 3\1/2\ 
years ago.
  The problems that they were going to fix seem to be worse, not 
better. The problems we had with our economy got a lot worse, not 
better. The problems we had with energy got a lot worse, not better. 
The problems that we have with this society and the understanding and 
human nature seem to be getting worse, not better. I haven't yet heard 
the 30-Something group, those that are left of them, come to the floor 
and do the mea culpa, nor have I heard them point out that they've 
succeeded in the policies that they said that they would enact. And, in 
fact, Mr. Speaker, if you look back on the record, it is the exact 
opposite.

                              {time}  1900

  This Pelosi Congress, when we came in by Constitution on January 3, 
2007, there was a great ceremonial and factual passing of the gavel 
that went from the hand of John Boehner to, at that moment, Speaker 
Nancy Pelosi. And we saw actually right in the aftermath of the 
election in November of 2006 when that majority was won by the Pelosi 
Democrats, we saw a shift in the policy of the country. We watched as 
the, let me say heir-apparent at the time became chairman of the Ways 
and Means Committee, Mr. Charlie Rangel of New York, go on the talk 
circuits all over the country, national television, program after 
program after program, booked solid. And they asked him over and over 
again, which of the Bush tax cuts would you want to preserve and which 
would you want to provide that they go away? What will be the burden on 
capital, and how costly will capital be for business, especially big 
business, moving forward from that period of time after the election in 
2006 and the inauguration, let me say the installation of Speaker 
Pelosi in January 2007, and that period of time after that as the new 
Chairs of the committees, their new staff and the new members of the 
committees were seated and they began to assert their will on American 
policy.
  What I heard from the apparent and future Ways and Means Committee 
chairman, Charlie Rangel, that he would repeal or work to repeal any of 
the Bush tax cuts, it simply was by a process of elimination. He was 
asked over and over again every way that the news pundits could ask 
him, what would you do with the Bush tax cuts, the May 28, 2003, Bush 
tax cuts. Because the answer wasn't definitive, but there was a process 
of elimination. The smart capital in the country concluded that there 
were none of the tax cuts that Charlie Rangel would like to preserve.
  That was in November, December, January, and partway into February of

[[Page H3638]]

2006 and early 2007. So what we saw was a dramatic drop in the 
investment, capital investment that took place into industry in America 
because capital is smart. It doesn't last very long if it is not. It 
understands that the cost of capital was going to get more expensive. 
The more expensive capital was going to be a burden on business, and 
the profit margin was going to go down if the tax cuts went up and if 
the tax burden went up. Increased tax burden raises the cost of 
capital, the profit margin goes down and capital doesn't seek that kind 
of an environment if it gets too far apart. That is what was going on.
  In November and December of 2006 and January through February of 
2007, industrial investment went down because the cost of capital went 
up and the prospects for profitability went down and that, Mr. Speaker, 
was the beginning of an economic decline that this country has faced 
and the globe has faced since that period of time.
  Now, the people that stood here on the floor that as Chairs of 
committees that made these arguments at this microphone here and those 
microphones there over and over again argued that it was all George 
Bush's fault, and if they just had the gavel, things would be better. 
They didn't argue that they needed the Presidency, not at that time. 
They argued that they needed the majority in the House of 
Representatives where all spending must begin according to the 
Constitution.
  Well, they achieved their goal, but they never accepted their 
responsibility for the effect of their actions or inactions. In the 
case of the Bush tax cuts, it was the inaction to extend the Bush tax 
cuts that became the culprit that was part of the downward spiral of 
this overall economy. The actions that came forward were massive 
spending.
  It was also the disruption and the suspension of the deliberative 
process here in the United States Congress. For more than 200 years, 
this Congress has had a tradition of open rules in the appropriations 
process that would allow, Mr. Speaker, anyone, any Member of this 
Congress who has their own franchise, \1/435\ of the people of the 
United States of America, they are duty bound to represent their wills 
and their wishes, coupled with the principles they have presented to 
them prior to their election, duty bound. This Congress has for more 
than 200 years recognized that duty to allow Members of Congress to do 
their duty and offer amendments to perfect legislation, and 
particularly in appropriations, where we have had the long, centuries-
old tradition of open rules that allows for any Member to bring an 
amendment down here when there is an appropriations bill that is being 
considered on the floor and offer that amendment into the Record.
  And provided that part of the bill hasn't been passed in its 
deliberation, require that that amendment be debated and can require by 
request of the Member a recorded vote on that line item that they may 
be addressing.
  I did that more times than anyone else in this United States Congress 
in the appropriations process in 2007. It was, Mr. Speaker, the last 
legitimate process that this Congress has had in this legislative 
arena. The balance of it has been closed rules, modified closed rules, 
very much tightly held and constrained amendment process that shut down 
the debate here in this Congress and took away the franchise and the 
right of a Member who has been elected by their constituents.
  And, by the way, the number of constituents that I represent, Mr. 
Speaker Pro Tempore, or the number of constituents that you represent, 
or the number of constituents that Speaker Pelosi represents are 
essentially the same. They don't deserve more representation because 
they live in San Francisco and Nancy Pelosi's district, or because they 
live in, let me say, Miami in somebody else's district, or because they 
live in Iowa in my district. Mr. Speaker, they deserve the same amount 
of representation. And every Member of Congress needs to be on equal 
standing and have that opportunity to offer those amendments and 
require this House to be accountable for the decisions that they make 
up there on that voting board. But it has been shut down.
  Since the appropriation process of 2007, there has not been a 
legitimate process of debate and amendment that perfects legislation to 
take place since then. That is how badly this constitutional republic, 
that is how badly this deliberative process has been usurped by the 
iron fist of the Speaker. And the American people little know how badly 
that cripples our ability to reach out across this Nation and pull the 
best of the wisdom we have of 306 million people and incorporate it 
into our decisions. Because where I sit, I have input that comes from 
all over my district, smart people. Smart people that will give up a 
couple of days from their business and their work and they will reach 
into their pocket and they will buy a plane ticket here and back and a 
couple hotel rooms for the opportunity sometimes to sit down with my 
staff or some other Member's staff even for 15 minutes so they can make 
their argument. They deserve our more serious ear. They deserve our 
best effort and our best judgment. They deserve our respect.
  But when this process is shut down to where the Speaker decides if an 
amendment is going to be heard if that pleases her, all of that wisdom, 
almost all of that wisdom is completely shut out and this process that 
was devised and determined by the Founding Fathers is suspended until 
we reach saner times, or maybe forever.
  Lord only knows what happens to the majorities in this Congress. But 
I know this: this American Government cannot function at a high level 
of efficiency, nor can it produce policy that is good for the people of 
the United States of America if it is going to have to go through the 
filter in the Speaker's office before it can be considered on the floor 
of the House of Representatives.

  That would be, if it worked, if that rule applied to our speech 
outside of this Congress, it would be a violation of the First 
Amendment. This happens to fall under our rules a process so it 
circumvents the First Amendment rule and fortunately I and others can 
come to this floor and raise this subject and speak to it openly so the 
American people can understand what is taking place here in the House 
of Representatives on the floor when the people are being run out of 
the Rules Committee up on the third floor in the hole in the wall and 
we are watching partisan votes come through the committees here on the 
floor of the House that do not deliberate on the policy at all, but 
deliberate exclusively on the partisanship, which party are you with; 
therefore, that is how you vote, not an objective consideration of the 
policy.
  But the 30-something Group and those that have come to this floor 
with them and after them made the argument that if they just had the 
gavels, all would be right with America. Well, we have seen 
unemployment rates go from 4.6 percent and less on up to 9.9 percent. 
We have watched that number of those who are underemployed, those who 
no longer fit the definition of unemployed, that number go from 5 or 6 
or more million, added to the 15.4 million that are unemployed today. 
There are more than 20 million Americans that fit the definition of 
unemployment as the American people understand it. More than 20 
million.
  We have 8 million working illegals in America, and that is a minimum. 
And if the President of the United States directed Janet Napolitano, 
with a little assistance from Attorney General Eric Holder, to enforce 
immigration law, we could open up almost all of those 8 million jobs 
for the American people, and we could do so in a very short period of 
time. But there is no will on the part of this administration to 
enforce immigration law. There is no will. There is a will to pander to 
an ethnic group that they decide is going to be the future of the 
future majority of the Democrat Party.
  And I watched with something significantly less than respect and with 
a high degree of cynicism as I watched them posture themselves about 
fairness and how we should provide amnesty and how we can't fix the 
immigration problem in America unless we first provide comprehensive 
amnesty.
  And I listened to that argument under the Bush administration, and it 
didn't make any more sense then that it makes today to argue that we 
should grant people a path to citizenship because, after all, our law 
enforcement is being tied down by enforcing immigration law against 
people that are not

[[Page H3639]]

criminals, that have minor violations, and if you just required them to 
pay a fine and learn English and pay their back taxes, you could give 
them a path to citizenship and all would be right with the world.
  Mr. Speaker, how does this fix anything? We have had in the past 
something like 4 million illegal border crossings on the southern 
border in a year. We encounter a single unique individual as many as 27 
times down to the border by Arizona; 27 times, one individual. I have 
stood down there at the station at Nogales and watched as they bring 
them in after they picked them up for jumping the fence or coming 
across the border. I watched them come through. They know the drill. 
They have been stopped by a Border Patrol agent out in the field, and 
the Border Patrol agent just simply restrains them or, let me say, 
retains them, and along comes a private contractor with a van.
  These people are wearing police-style uniforms in gray, and it is a 
white van with, let's say, reinforcement built in the side, containment 
for human beings, sliding door on a white van. The Border Patrol agent 
picks people up, calls the private contractor, they pull the van in, 
load them up and drive them over to a holding cell or on up to the 
station headquarters. They already know that they put their personal 
items in a Ziploc bag and they walk into the station often, many of 
them, with a smirk on their face.
  They know right where to sit. They sit down against the wall with 
their little Ziploc bag of their possessions, and they know that they 
wait their turn. And they will be picked up and go over and have their 
fingerprints taken one at a time, get their digital photograph taken, 
now with a flash, and once that data is collected, they go into a 
holding pen until there is a van available to take them to the port of 
entry where they waltz out, get in the van, the doors close, the van 
goes to the port of entry back to Mexico, turns sideways, they open up 
the van door and the illegals that have been processed and 
fingerprinted and had their digital photograph taken, get out and they 
walk back to Mexico. The door closes on the van, the tires squeal, and 
the van goes back to get another load.

                              {time}  1915

  And we do this over and over again, for as many as 4 million people 
that come across our border, interdicting perhaps 20 to 25 percent of 
them that do so, realizing that with these 4 million people that pour 
across our border in a year--think of it, 4 million people. Santa Ana's 
army was about 4,000 that assaulted the Alamo. This is 4 million people 
a year, a huge haystack of humanity.
  Now, think what it's like to make the argument that the Bush and 
Obama administration made, that if we would just legalize all these 
people, then we could focus on the bad elements that are within them. 
Well, first of all, if you're going to legalize 4 million people or 4 
million attempts, and maybe that's not 4 million unique people. If 
you're going to legalize all of them, how would you avoid legalizing 
the people that were the bad elements? This is a haystack of humanity, 
and in it are the needles that are the bad elements.
  And so can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, sorting out, out of that 
haystack, the needles? So you'd approve a stack of hay, and in that may 
or may not be a needle. You grab another bundle of hay and you'd 
approve that and you would give them a path to citizenship. Then they 
would have a card that would give them the ability to go in and out of 
United States, stay in America, go to Mexico or wherever they want to 
go, and that card would let them travel. And we would have 
automatically anointed them to be acceptable to work in the United 
States, live in the United States, travel throughout the United States, 
and go back to their home country and come back in the United States.
  Now, first, we don't have any indication that we could possibly do a 
background check to approve the people that would get a path to 
citizenship and get this amnesty. I have asked them, I've asked the 
people that come into the United States, that are living here--they may 
or may not have come in here legally--Can you produce a birth 
certificate from Mexico so we can do a background check?
  Well, it turns out that those that are born in a hospital can 
generally produce a birth certificate. But about half of them are not 
born in hospitals and they cannot produce a birth certificate. That's 
just the fact.
  So when I ask them, Can you get me a birth certificate, their 
response to me is, Yes, I can do that. What do you want it to say? How 
old should I be? Where should I have been born? What should the birth 
certificate say?
  In other words, whatever kind of fraudulent document that is 
necessary to get them legalized in the United States, they'll produce 
that. And if they produce a fraudulent document, it's unlikely that 
it's going to have a paper trail of whatever laws they might have 
violated in a foreign country. So the very idea we could do a 
background check on them, it is an impossibility to do a background 
check on people that come from the foreign countries that we are 
talking about.
  Now, we may be able to do a background check on them just off of the 
fingerprints that we probably already have on record at Nogales or 
wherever they came across the border, probably could do that background 
check on what they have done, potentially, to violate the laws in the 
United States, but that's a very small part of their human history. A 
larger part is in their home country that can't be traced because we 
can't trace them back to an individual identity.
  So this argument that a huge haystack of humanity of 4 million strong 
can be legalized and we can focus on the needles in that haystack 
because they are the bad elements is simply a flawed premise. No one 
can present this to me in a rational fashion, how it gets easier if you 
legalize people; because the people that would be legalized, some would 
be, the percentage would be very similar to the negative elements that 
exist in that broader cross section of society anyway, unless you 
presume that the bad elements will not try to be legalized. Of course 
they will. They'll try to game the system.
  So this huge haystack of humanity with the needles in it would be 
legalized, granted amnesty, handed cards that allowed them to travel 
anywhere in the United States and in and out of Mexico or their home 
country. So a people that would travel more across the border rather 
than less will cause us more problems rather than less. We have 90 
percent of the illegal drugs in America come from or through Mexico. 
And Mexico is not accountable for all of it, but 90 percent come from 
or through Mexico.
  And of that, all of the illegal drugs that are distributed in 
America, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency in the interviews 
that I have done with them, the illegal drug distribution chain has at 
least--every illegal drug distribution chain has at least one link in 
that chain that's provided by an illegal. So magically, if everyone 
that is in America woke up in their home country tomorrow morning, 
every illegal drug distribution chain in America would be severed, at 
least one link would be pulled out of that.
  Now, I don't propose that that would mean that illegal drugs would 
stop flowing into America or stop flowing into the consumers in 
America. I would just say that it would be temporarily suspended, some 
for a few minutes or hours, some for weeks or longer. But it would be 
temporarily suspended.
  Illegal drug smugglers are protected by the flow of illegal humanity. 
Even if they are good people, they want a job. They want to take care 
of their family. They inadvertently provide cover for those who come in 
here for evil purposes, drug smuggling, people smuggling and worse.
  And we've watched as Phoenix has become the second highest kidnap 
city in the world, second highest in the world. Highest, Mexico City. 
Why is Mexico City the highest? Kidnapping is part of the criminal 
culture in Mexico City. Why is Phoenix the second highest? I will 
suggest, Mr. Speaker, that the kidnapping culture that exists in Mexico 
City is being transferred into Arizona and into Phoenix, at least to 
some degree, causing that major kidnapping problem that is in Phoenix.
  And so 90 percent of the illegal drugs coming into America come from 
or through Mexico. And Phoenix has become the second highest kidnap 
center in the world, partly because of the drug

[[Page H3640]]

smuggling trade, the people smuggling trade, the profit margins that 
are there.
  And in deference to President Calderon, who is in this city, I think, 
right now as we speak, I do reject the criticism that he has provided 
for the State of Arizona for passing their own immigration legislation. 
But I also will concede his argument that there's a powerful magnet 
here in the United States, and that is the use and the purchase of 
illegal drugs, that the illegal drugs that are the magnet that really 
brings about the markets that cause the drug wars in South America, 
Central America, Mexico, coming into the United States.
  If we could shut off this illegal drugs magnet--there's two magnets 
that need to be shut off in America. One is the jobs magnet that hires 
illegals and pours them into our economy, who work at substandard wages 
and then the taxpayers have to subsidize the subsistence for the 
families that should be sustained by the wages and the benefits. That's 
one thing that is a magnet that needs to be shut off, and there's ways 
we can do that, Mr. Speaker.

  But the other is this huge magnet, which is the demand for illegal 
drugs in America, that sets up the production and the distribution 
chain and the drug cartels that are so utterly brutal, especially in 
Mexico, where I saw a number that I can't substantiate. I will just 
tell you, Mr. Speaker, that it was reported in the news that over the 
last several years in the drug wars in Mexico, they've had 23,000 
people killed, 23,000. Now, that would be drug cartels killing members 
of other drug cartels. It would be local law enforcement officers. It 
would be intimidation attacks on families. It would be the military 
personnel that are engaged in this fight. But it is a very high amount 
of casualties that have taken place in Mexico to shut off the illegal 
drugs in that country.
  And I understand the frustration of President Calderon that the 
United States is providing the magnet for the illegal drugs, and we are 
critical of them for the human smuggling, the drug smuggling, and the 
cash smuggling that comes out of the United States down into Mexico and 
places south.
  Well, it's all right for us to be critical of what's going on in 
Mexico, but we have to acknowledge that the drug abuse problem in the 
United States is a big part of that. And if we could shut off the 
magnet of drug abuse in the United States and the magnet of employers 
who are seeking to hire substandard-wage workers in America, we could 
solve a lot of the border problems by doing that.
  The rest of the border problems that can be solved will be solved by 
building a fence and a wall on the southern border. Now, this is not 
that hard to figure out, Mr. Speaker. We spend $12 billion a year on 
the southern border when we add up the costs going into ICE, the Border 
Patrol, Customs and Border Protection, all the equipment that they 
need, the benefits, wages, and pension plans that go along with that, 
and we used a corridor some 40 miles wide or so along the southern 
border. $12 billion for a 2,000-mile border. That's $6 million a mile, 
Mr. Speaker.
  And I constantly hear the message that we have to have more and more 
boots on the ground, more boots on the ground. And so I suggested to 
the then-chief of the Border Patrol, if we could produce an impermeable 
barrier from heaven all the way down to hell so no one could go over 
the top, no one could go underneath, and they were completely 
impermeable, how many Border Patrol do we need to protect that border? 
And the answer that I got was, well, we still need more boots on the 
ground. Well, that wasn't expert testimony. That was the party line. If 
you have an impermeable barrier that no one can go over or under, you 
cannot argue that you need more boots on the ground, Mr. Speaker.
  And I make this argument hypothetically because of this: Good solid 
barriers on the border cut down on the need for personnel, or they 
improve the effectiveness of the personnel that we have. That's the 
equation.
  You can't envision that if you build a fence and you come inside of 
that 60 or 100 feet and you build a concrete wall that is 13\1/2\ feet 
high with a wire on top of it and a foundation underneath of it, and 
you come in behind that and you build another fence, and you've got 
roads on either side of that concrete wall, triple fencing with a 
concrete wall, wire on top, cameras, sensory devices that are there and 
agents that can patrol and come directly to the spots where there's 
activity and problems, you cannot convince me that you need more Border 
Patrol agents instead of less. You can't convince me that more people 
will cross the border if you don't have a fence--or, excuse me. You 
cannot convince me that more people will cross the border if you do 
have a fence than if you don't. Of course they're effective. And 
they're effective. We know they're effective. They're cash flow 
effective.
  Six million dollars a mile, Mr. Speaker, is what we're spending today 
on open, vast areas of the border where there was only a concrete pylon 
established from horizon to horizon; $6 million a mile. And who would 
not take a check for $6 million to guard the border for a mile?
  My west road, no one lives on it, a mile of gravel. If the Feds came 
to me and said, Steve, I've got for you $6 million this year and every 
year for the next 10 years. I'll give you $60 million to guard that 
mile from your house west. And by the way, I'm going to dock from that 
$60 million every time somebody gets across that border illegally. And 
I'm going to require you to bond that so that the effectiveness, if 
you--that you will guarantee that you'll get the job done.
  I would not as a, let me say, as an astute entrepreneur look at my 
west mile with no fences on it and hire myself 100 Border Patrol agents 
with Humvees and radios and put helicopters in the air and guard that 
border with hovering helicopters and Border Patrol agents that are 
sitting back 4 or 5 or 6 or 20 miles from that road and go catch them 
when they come across and get into my cornfield. No, Mr. Speaker, I'd 
build a fence and a wall, and I'd put sensory devices on that and I'd 
have cameras. And when somebody approached the wall and tried to get 
over, we'd know. We'd see it coming, and we would call our handful of 
Border Patrol agents there to address the problem. That's what needs to 
happen where there's high crossing rates over our southern border.
  It defies common sense to believe that you can chase people around 
the desert cheaper than you can prevent them getting into the desert. 
And no one has put the cash to this and the cost to what's going on. 
I'm the only one I know of in the entire United States Congress, House 
and Senate, that can tell you $12 billion on the southern border is the 
annual cost, $120 billion for 10 years. That's how our budgets go, $120 
billion.

                              {time}  1930

  Six million dollars a mile, $60 million a mile for 10 years. Sixty 
million. Think what you could build for every mile that you can imagine 
in your neighborhood, Mr. Speaker, over 10 years if you had $60 
million. This country would be so full of edifices of construction if 
we had $60 million to invest for every mile.
  We have got to have it be effective. And we have got to be smart 
about how we spend our money. And we have got to establish immigration 
policy that is good for the social, the economic, and the cultural 
well-being of the United States of America. And I pledged to do that.
  I have introduced legislation which will do so, Mr. Speaker. It's 
called the New IDEA Act. New IDEA stands for the New Illegal Deduction 
Elimination Act. And what it does is it brings the Internal Revenue 
Service into the immigration enforcement arena, the IRS. The IRS seems 
to like to do their job from time to time. In fact, let's just say that 
they are good at it. I don't want to necessarily accuse them of liking 
it. And the effectiveness of the IRS is one of the reasons that I 
brought them into this mix when I introduced the legislation.
  So the New IDEA Act stands for the New Illegal Deduction Elimination 
Act, Mr. Speaker. It clarifies that wages and benefits paid to illegals 
are not tax-deductible for income tax purposes. It provides for the 
IRS, during the course of a normal audit, to come into a company and 
run the Social Security numbers of the employees through a database. 
And that database would be the E-Verify database, which

[[Page H3641]]

has proven to be well more than 99 percent efficient and effective. And 
if those employees, one or more of them, cannot be verified to be 
lawful that they could work in the United States, the IRS then will 
give the employer an opportunity to cure that problem. But the bottom 
line is that they will deny the business expense of wages and benefits 
paid to illegals as a tax-deductible item.
  So if an employer paid a million dollars in wages to a list of 
illegals and the E-Verify program could not verify that they could 
lawfully work in the United States, then the IRS would deny that 
business expense of a million dollars. It would go from the schedule C 
exemption side, the business expense side, over to the profit side of 
the ledger, in which case that all becomes a taxable profit event.
  I did this at 34 percent corporate income tax, and that has gone up, 
but I did the math at 34 percent, and it turns out to be this. Your $10 
an hour illegal becomes a $16 an hour illegal when you add the tax 
liability at 34 percent and the interest and the penalty that's 
assigned by the IRS.
  So your $16 an hour illegal is a pretty expensive ticket. And the 
million of dollars in wages that would have been paid that were 
deducted as a business expense now become an additional, well, let me 
say $600,000 in costs to the employer. They will make a decision then 
not to take that risk and to hire an American worker or someone who is 
lawfully present in the United States that can work here.
  I am all for that, Mr. Speaker. It is the right thing to do. Bring 
the IRS into this. Pass the New IDEA Act, the New Illegal Deduction 
Elimination Act, and let the IRS join with the Department of Homeland 
Security and the Social Security Administration to build a team so that 
the government is all on the same page, singing from the same page of 
the hymnal, so that the right hand, the left hand, and the middle hand 
all know what the other one is doing. That's the right thing to do here 
in America. That shuts down the jobs magnet. It doesn't shut it 
entirely off.
  Some have suggested that we should pass legislation that makes it a 
felony to hire an illegal. Well, you know, we have document theft that 
goes on with those employees. And Janet Napolitano has taken a position 
she is not going to enforce even against document theft in the course 
of people that are working illegally. We can turn our pressure up 
against the employers and make it a felony, and we can lock them up in 
jail or give them massive fines. I suggest instead we provide the 
incentive so that all of the employers can be under that kind of 
scrutiny with a 6-year statute of limitations that's written into the 
bill that then allows for the IRS to go back 6 years.
  Now, think how this works, Mr. Speaker. If you paid a million dollars 
in wages out to illegals in a year and the IRS came in and did the 
audit and they took your $10 an hour and it became $16 an hour, and $10 
an hour equated into a million dollars, you would have $600,000 in tax 
liability for that year. And the interest and the penalty that goes 
back actually accrues to a greater number, but let's just say it's 
level across the period of those 6 years. Now your $600,000 in penalty 
to the employer that paid a million dollars in wages to illegals 
becomes $3.6 million in liability to the IRS. Now, that is a powerful 
incentive to clean up your employee base to comply with the law, to do 
due diligence, and to hire people that can legally work in the United 
States of America.
  This argument that we are in that we have to pass comprehensive 
immigration reform in order to solve our problems here is a false and 
specious argument. It doesn't hold up to any kind of logical scrutiny 
that I know. It's only out there because there is a political gain that 
is being sought on the other side. People that want to expand their 
political base and make a promise to different groups of people that 
they would be their benefactors.
  And by the way, when I look at the pattern that is taking place 
between the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet 
Napolitano, the President of the United States, the Attorney General, 
the Assistant Secretary of State Posner, this is an astonishing thing. 
The immigration law that was passed in Arizona mirrors Federal 
immigration law. It was designed to do that. The people that wrote it 
were smart people that understood Federal immigration law. They 
intentionally wrote it in such a way that it would not conflict with 
Federal law and would not be preempted by Federal law.
  And here are some things that I know: That local law enforcement has 
always had the authority to enforce Federal immigration law. One of the 
ways that I have described that is, could you imagine local law 
enforcement arguing that they didn't have the authority to enforce 
another jurisdiction's law? Say for example if it was a county sheriff, 
can he sit out there and write speeding tickets on a State highway or 
does it have to be a county highway? If a county sheriff happens to see 
somebody run a stop sign in the city does he decide that, well, that's 
the town of Phoenix, but I am a Maricopa County sheriff, therefore I 
can't write a ticket for running a stop sign that is a city stop sign 
in Phoenix? Does a State trooper that watches a national bank be robbed 
not enforce that because they can only enforce the laws against robbing 
State banks, not national banks?
  I mean how bizarre is it to believe that local law enforcement would 
have no business enforcing Federal immigration law? I would submit to 
the Record, Mr. Speaker, a case in 2001, a Federal district court that 
ruled in the case of the United States against Santana Garcia that 
established that local law enforcement has an inherent right and 
responsibility to enforce Federal immigration law.
  There are several other cases that are on point on this, but I know 
of none, I know of no cases that would argue that local law enforcement 
does not have the authority to enforce immigration law. Of course they 
do, just like they have the authority to enforce other Federal laws. Or 
for example, I believe it's a Federal violation to murder a Federal 
agent. I believe it's also a violation of every State law for first- or 
second-degree murder or manslaughter in the United States of America to 
murder that same Federal agent.
  Now, who would argue that if the Federal Government didn't prosecute 
the murder of a Federal law enforcement agent that the State couldn't 
prosecute because it would be a preemption of Federal law? It is 
complete irrational baloney to believe that there is a preemption that 
prohibits the States from protecting themselves or ordering their 
societies.
  So Arizona has written their immigration law that simply says, hey, 
it's against the law to be in Arizona illegally in violation of Federal 
immigration law. And they went to great pains to establish that there 
has to be probable cause in order for law enforcement to pull people 
over and inquire beyond that. Probable cause. So probable cause would 
be let's say a taillight out, a brake light out, a car that's speeding, 
a stop sign that's been run. How about a bank that's been robbed?
  They chase all of those vehicles down, they approach the vehicle, 
they ask for a driver's license. If they are handed a matricula 
consular card, that's almost de facto proof--a person that carries one 
has no reason to have one in America if they are here legally. If they 
are here legally, they have got documents that they can use. So a 
matricula consular card would be probable cause--excuse me, that would 
be probable cause, but it would be a higher standard than the lower 
standard of reasonable suspicion. And that law enforcement officer then 
would get to ask a few more questions and determine if that individual 
was in the United States legally or illegally.
  Now, if he suspects and comes to a conclusion that it's worthy of 
taking it to a higher level, he can call ICE and have them go through 
the process and take care of the situation. If the back of the van 
opens and 15 people start to run across the field, well, that's 
reasonable suspicion I would say, Mr. Speaker. But it's not targeting, 
it's not profiling, it's not prejudice.
  And all of this fulmination about the profiling and the prejudice is 
a great big red herring designed to create this political argument that 
they think they have got some traction in.
  And I, Mr. Speaker, have been through a number of these. It took 6 
years to establish English as the official language in the State of 
Iowa. I

[[Page H3642]]

had the same discussions and the same debates take place over and over 
again. And they argued that if we establish English as the official 
language of Iowa there would be people all over the State that were 
disparaging other languages and the people that spoke it. And so in the 
bill we wrote that it's unlawful to disparage any language other than 
English.
  So oddly, and I didn't accept this amendment willingly; it became 
part of the law nonetheless, oddly people can disparage English in the 
State of Iowa and no other language. Well, it never really applied. 
Never heard of a case where anybody was disparaging any language. And I 
suppose that there may be. I don't know if anybody actually is 
disparaging English itself either. But all of this hysteria that was 
being ramped up, it went on for months and in fact for years, and all 
of the allegations that it was going to destroy our society and it was 
a bitter pill, it was an insult to people, when the bill was passed and 
it became law, it went away. All of the worries that were there went 
away.
  I also was principal author in the Iowa Senate side of Iowa's 
workplace drug testing law. And that law, among other provisions, 
allows for a drug test to be conducted on an employee provided there is 
reasonable suspicion that they are using those drugs. Now, reasonable 
suspicion is credible, objective, identifiable characteristics. It's 
pretty close, although it's not quite verbatim from the statute. It's 
been 12 years.
  That gives you a bit of the idea, Mr. Speaker of the definition of 
reasonable suspicion. Objective, credible, identifiable 
characteristics. And as much noise as was made about that, that we were 
going to test people on reasonable suspicion, we were going to test 
them on random testing, we were going to test them post-accident, we 
were going to test them preemployment, we did all of that. We didn't 
ask law enforcement officers to go and be trained and come into the 
workforce and look around for people whose behavior was erratic or 
maybe their pupils were dilated, or people who were nervous or 
irritable or whatever it might be.
  We just simply directed that the employer designate an employee who 
would be the one who could declare that there be a drug test on someone 
because of reasonable suspicion. And the standard that's written into 
the bill is that employee has to go through an initial 2 hours of 
training, 2 hours, and then each year refresh that training with a 
minimum of 1 hour of training. So that might be the truck driver, could 
be the nurse, could be the janitor, it could be the CEO. Actually, if 
it's a small business, it could be about all those things wrapped up in 
one person.
  But these are not people that are necessarily trained by their 
profession to identify a reasonable suspicion. They are just simply 
trained within their job to do so. And we for 12 years, for 12 years we 
have had reasonable suspicion in Iowa applied by employees of companies 
who have received 2 hours of initial training for the first qualifier 
and then each year thereafter 1 hour of training.

                              {time}  1945

  And they have pointed their fingers at employees and said, I have 
reason to be suspicious that you are abusing drugs. You go and provide 
a urinalysis now because that single individual's judgment thinks so. 
Now, that would give an opportunity for people to be profiled, for them 
to be discriminated against, for a law to be abused in a broader way 
than it could possibly be done in the State of Arizona. And yet in 12 
years, in Iowa under the reasonable suspicion law, we don't have a 
single case of any type of persecution or prejudice or profile that has 
emerged.
  Now, it doesn't mean there aren't some people who have not complained 
along the way. But I know of none. I've not had a complaint come back 
to me. There's not been a case that's been filed. The language for 
reasonable suspicion in Iowa that's granted to someone with 2 hours of 
initial training and 1 hour of annual training after that, it doesn't 
necessarily have a specific background required, has worked 
beautifully. And hundreds of companies now provide a drug-free 
workplace because they have the tools to work with.
  And why would we think that an immigration law that applies in 
Arizona right now, if it's enforced by the Federal Government, somehow 
becomes a discriminatory law if it's enforced by local government? The 
very people that have to live with their neighbors and friends. The law 
enforcement officers that in Arizona are more likely to be Hispanic 
than the Federal officers that are enforcing immigration law. In some 
of the communities, that's true.
  So why would we presume that law enforcement officers are inherently 
racist or bigoted or they would use their job to target people? I think 
this: I think the level of hysteria that exists in Arizona and across 
the country, especially with the boycotts that are out there, is 
proportional to the fear of the open-borders crowd, the whining 
liberals crowd, proportional to their fear that Arizona's immigration 
law will actually be effective. That's the answer to what's going on. 
They don't want to see a law passed that will be effective because 
they're for open borders, they're erasing the United States of America, 
they're for allowing people to flow back and forth at will. And, you 
know, you can't be a Nation if you don't have a border, and you can't 
call it a border if you don't defend the border.
  And we are a Nation that has great respect for the rule of law. All 
of the people that come here to this country don't have any experience 
of respect for the rule of law. They don't understand that justice is 
blind here in America, or is supposed to be blind. They don't 
understand that there is a provision of, I'll say, a statue of the Lady 
Justice who holds the scales in her hands and she's blindfolded because 
she's weighing this justice without being able to see who the person is 
that the justice is being provided for.
  And so this immigration law in Arizona that the President of the 
United States played the race card on and played to, unnecessarily, to 
fears falsely and erroneously when he made the statement in a speech a 
few weeks ago that a mother and her daughter that didn't quite look the 
right part--and I've forgotten the exact language that he used--could 
be going out to get some ice cream and they could have somebody stop 
them and demand their papers.
  Well, that's inconsistent with the law that I read. It is 
demagoguery, Mr. Speaker. It's inaccurate. It's willfully scaring the 
American people for political reasons.
  And it fits right down the path of the President standing right back 
here and saying to the Supreme Court who sat here that they had 
unjustly decided a case before them and seeking to intimidate the 
judicial branch of government, in fact the Supreme Court of the United 
States.
  And so if the President read the bill, he didn't understand it or he 
willfully misrepresented it. We know if we take his word under oath, 
and that was the Attorney General Eric Holder last week when he was 
asked by Congressman Ted Poe of Texas, did you read the bill--meaning 
the Arizona immigration bill--he had to admit no, he hadn't read the 
bill and he hadn't been briefed on it either.
  Now an Attorney General of the United States coming before the 
Judiciary Committee to testify before the committee would be 
intensively briefed on subject after subject. He would be so boned up 
and ready that he could respond to anything. And this Attorney General 
couldn't see fit to bother to read a bill that's less than a dozen and 
a half pages long, double spaced? One that he felt free to speak to and 
make allegations about and imply that it could lead to discrimination 
and racial profiling or flat out say so in his public statements.
  I was shocked to think that the question that I would have not 
considered was even one that legitimately just couldn't imagine that 
the Attorney General of the United States would not have read a bill 
that he was so critical of, but he did not. Thanks to Ted Poe, we know 
that.
  So the President didn't read the bill or he willfully misinformed the 
American people. Attorney General Eric Holder said he didn't read the 
bill, but still he misinformed the American people.
  The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet 
Napolitano, admitted before John McCain, her colleague from Arizona, 
that she hadn't read the bill. She was aware of it, but

[[Page H3643]]

she hadn't read the bill, but she felt free also to talk about the 
potential effects of Arizona's immigration law.
  And then we have the assistant Secretary of State, Posner, who 
repeated to us that they brought up the Arizona immigration law to the 
Chinese early and often and apparently made the statement of mea culpa 
for the United States that we had laws that were discriminatory and 
perhaps bigoted. But he hadn't read the bill either.
  The President of the United States didn't read the bill. He 
misinformed the American people, unintentionally or willfully. The 
Attorney General of the United States, who is looking into suing the 
State of Arizona, hadn't read the bill, but he misinformed the American 
people unintentionally or willfully. The Secretary of Homeland 
Security, Janet Napolitano, hadn't read the bill but was misinforming 
the American people unintentionally or willfully. And the assistant 
Secretary of State, Posner, hadn't read the bill or intentionally was 
misinforming the Chinese. All of this going on in the Department of 
Justice has been directed by the President of the United States to 
investigate Arizona's immigration law.
  Now, if the President gave that order without reading the bill, you 
would think he would have someone around him who had read the bill and 
had briefed the President. There's no sign of that. So apparently 
they're taking their marching orders from MoveOn.org or the ACLU.
  And so the Department of Justice is investigating. They're looking 
for a way to bring suit against the State of Arizona on what could the 
basis be. And I asked the Attorney General this last week before the 
Judiciary Committee, Can you point to a single component of the 
Constitution that may have been violated by Arizona's law? No. Can you 
point to a Federal statute that would be in conflict with Arizona's 
immigration law? No. Can you point to any case law, any controlling 
precedent that would indicate that Arizona doesn't have the authority 
to enforce their immigration--the immigration law? No.

  But still at the direction and order of the President of the United 
States, the Attorney General is using the force of the Justice 
Department to investigate Arizona and Arizona's immigration law all 
while inside that Justice Department they have canceled the most open-
and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of America--that's the 
New Black Panthers--smacking billy clubs in their hand, calling white 
people coming in to vote in Philadelphia ``crackers'' and intimidating 
them from voting. And the Justice Department says we don't have enough 
evidence to convict.
  And the Assistant Attorney General, whose name is Thomas Perez, 
testified before the Judiciary Committee that they achieved the highest 
possible penalty. And the highest possible penalty was to put an 
injunction against one of the four New Black Panthers, prohibit him 
from standing at that same polling place with a billy club and 
intimidating voters in the 2012 election. But after that, it's 
apparently not a problem.
  It was a false testimony on the part of Assistant Attorney General 
Thomas Perez. They didn't achieve the highest penalty that was 
available to them, even though he testified otherwise, and the Justice 
Department canceled the case, the most open-and-shut voter intimidation 
case in the history of America.
  And then we have the case of Kinston, North Carolina, where the 
people of Kinston, North Carolina, voted that they wanted to have 
nonpartisan elections in their citywide elections. A lot of communities 
in America opt for that. Something like 70 percent of the communities 
in America don't want to have partisan elections. So they say you can't 
put a Republican or a Democrat, no ``R'' or ``D,'' by your name. You 
get elected to represent this city without having a party 
identification.
  Kinston, North Carolina, voted to do that overwhelmingly. The same 
person inside the Justice Department that dropped the charges for the 
voter intimidation in Philadelphia, Loretta King, also sent a letter to 
Kinston, North Carolina, because they are a covered district and 
covered by the Voting Rights Act and they have been labeled 
discriminators since the middle 1960s, have to get approval if they are 
going to change any system of their elections under the Voting Rights 
Act because they are a covered district.
  So she denied the will of the people of Kinston on the basis that 
African Americans who wanted to vote for another African American 
wouldn't know to vote for that African American unless they had a ``D'' 
beside their name. Well, that seems to me to be a race-based decision, 
not one based in law or logic.
  I don't think it's logic that people can associate necessarily a 
``D'' with skin color. I'd like to think that they were voting without 
regard to skin color, that they were actually voting for people that 
will do the best job of representing them in Kinston, North Carolina.
  That's strike number two against Loretta King and the Justice 
Department.
  She had a third strike against her, and that was a rule 11 being 
applied for filing a specious case that was unfounded, and it cost the 
Federal Government $570,000 to pay that out because she brought a case 
that couldn't be supported that was false and specious and unfounded. 
And there's better language for that to be found under the rule 11 
language that's there.
  All of this the Justice Department can investigate and continue with 
the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case. They canceled the will 
of the people in Kinston, North Carolina, based on a race decision of 
Loretta King who had brought this false and specious case that cost the 
American people $570,000 all while this Justice Department that has 
enough resources to investigate Arizona with no rational reason why, 
with no constitutional thing that he can point to, he can't even 
investigate ACORN.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I would yield back the balance of my time.

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