Congressional Record, Volume 156 Issue 151 (Thursday, November 18, 2010)

[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 151 (Thursday, November 18, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H7582-H7588]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

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 as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the honor to be
recognized to address you here on the floor of the House of
Representatives. I have long appreciated the honor to serve the people
of western Iowa here in the United States Congress. Each one of us
carries this duty with us in a heavy way and also sometimes in a
jubilant way depending on the cycles of the day and the cycles of the
elections.
I sat here on the floor tonight, and I listened to the presentation
of the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton). He talked about the
situation on the border between Texas and Mexico, Arizona and Mexico,
and perhaps also New Mexico versus Mexico, California, and Mexico.
There are a whole lot of data points that he rolled out here. And I
believe that there is a misunderstanding on the part of the American
people of the magnitude of the border problem that we have.
I make a number of trips down to that border. I think it's my
obligation to do that. I have served on the Immigration Subcommittee of
the House Judiciary Committee now for 8 years. And if all goes well, I
will be able to serve on the committee for another cycle. In that
period of time, you pick up a significant amount of knowledge about the
circumstances that have to do with immigration. And the gentleman from
Indiana (Mr. Burton) talked about how illegal Mexican drug smuggler
gangs are controlling vast areas of the border, some might argue a
majority of the border or perhaps even all of the border, with the
exception of some ports of entry, and controlling vast parts of the
United States itself.
I have been down to visit Oregon Pipe Cactus National Monument. It is
a national park right on the border. And a large percentage of Oregon
Pipe Cactus has been set aside, and Americans have been locked out and
kept out because the illegal border-crossers and the drug smugglers
command some of that park. A large share of it, mile after mile of it,
is under control of the Mexican drug smugglers and people smugglers.
And we think that a sovereign nation should have no border incursion.
If we have a border incursion, and if it's someone who is lined up next
to someone else lined up next to someone else and they are carrying
weapons and in uniforms, it is called an invasion. Whether they are
wearing uniforms and carrying weapons or whether they are coming across
in orderly ranks or whether they are coming across at a rate of perhaps
as many as 11,000 a night--and that's some data that came before the
House Immigration Subcommittee under sworn testimony--you take the
annual illegal border crossings and you divide it by 365, and some of
that data under oath calculates out to be 11,000 illegal border
crossings in a 24-hour period. A lot of that takes place at night.
Think of that: 11,000 a night.
And so I ask the question, what was the size of Santa Anna's army?
About half that. That, Mr. Speaker, is the magnitude of the illegal
border crossings that we are seeing.
And the price that we have to pay in the form of social services, law
enforcement, education, and health services is in the billions of
dollars in costs to the American taxpayer. And the price and loss
because of the result of crimes that could otherwise have been
prevented is awesome beyond our comprehension.
I do have some numbers on that. I'm hopeful that I will be able to
produce a fresh report very soon that would better illustrate the
numbers of Americans who have lost their lives at the hands of those
who came into the United States illegally.
That is a real measure to American society. Every life is precious,
every life is sacred, and every one that we can save should be saved.
And you do so with an orderly society and the rule of law. You don't do
so by allowing for vast areas of the 2,000-mile southern border to
become lawless.
I recall approaching a port of entry, and it was in Sasabe, Arizona.
As I approached the port of entry and introduced myself to the agents
that were there, and leaving aside much of that narrative, I was
informed that, yes, there's a legal crossing at Sasabe at that port of
entry in a fairly remote location in Arizona. But on other side of the
legal port of entry are the illegal crossing areas that are controlled
by the drug-smuggling gangs, the cartels. And that means that there's
lawlessness on both sides of the border. If there's an entity that
controls an illegal border crossing then that means that our side of
that border is not under control. Immediately, if they decide who
crosses and who doesn't, they're also deciding to allow illegals to
come into the United States and illegal contraband to come into the
United States.
And I was in fact there on location when there was an illegal drug
smuggler that was picked up. He had a white pickup with a false bed in
the box. Nice piece of body work. You had to have a practiced eye to
see it. But a false floor underneath there that was 7, perhaps 8
inches, and underneath that false floor it was packed full of
marijuana. Some would call it bales. They were wrapped up in packages
about the size of a cement package, although it's not as heavy, some
placed over 200 pounds, some placed 250 pounds of marijuana, underneath
the false bed in that pickup. And we took the jaws of life and cut it
open and I personally unloaded over 200 pounds of marijuana out from
underneath the false bed in that pickup.
Now, the circumstances at that time--and I suspect this individual
was prosecuted, partly because I was there--but he appeared to be an
MS-13 gang member. He had a 13 tattooed on his arm right here. Full of
tattoos. Had all of the look that you would have of an MS-13 drug-
smuggling gang member. And the practice down there has been--unwritten,
but in practice--that if someone is caught with less than 250 pounds of
marijuana, that they're not prosecuted by the Federal Government. And
when the loads got higher and more frequent, then the number went up to
500 pounds as the threshold for prosecution.
Now, where I come from, if you have any illegal drugs in your
possession, generally you're going to be prosecuted. There are law
enforcement officers that may not, but it's not a practice. We think
that the law is the law. Well, if the law is not enforced on the
southern border for those that come across the border illegally with
illegal drugs in their possession to the tune of hundreds of pounds and
in fact thousands of pounds, then what do we have left of the law
enforcement fabric on our southern border whatsoever? And how can this
be a practice, let alone a policy?
I saw it with my own eyes on that day and handled with my own hands.
And as I talked to Border Patrol officers and the other law enforcement
officers along the border, they confirmed that in some sectors that's
the practice. They set the threshold because they didn't have enough
prosecutors, they didn't have enough judges, and they didn't have
enough prison beds to prosecute all the drug smugglers that they're
picking up across the border, let alone 11,000 a night on average, a
lot of them some might say just illegal aliens, just people coming into
the United States committing the crime of unlawful entry into the
United States.
But among them are drug smugglers. And among the drug smugglers are
violent criminals of other stripes. Part of that goes with the package.
But to think that they could come into the United States illegally with
a load of 235 pounds of marijuana and weigh it up and put it underneath
the bed of the pickup and think, Well, fine, I'm not going to go to
prison for this. If they catch me, they will just impound the pickup,
which likely is stolen anyway, and impound the marijuana, which I saw
warehouses full. And I say ``warehouses.'' More than the size of
garages,

[[Page H7583]]

not the size of something you would see down at Boeing, to put it
correct. So, vast amounts. More than a semi load of marijuana that had
been confiscated altogether in one particular warehousing location.
There are others.
But to think that we're not prosecuting with the full vigor of the
law with someone who's coming through with a load of marijuana that is
200, 300, 499 pounds of marijuana. That's the America that we have on
the southern border. And the people that don't live there and go like I
do down to visit and get informed just accept the idea that their
America is the same America in, let's say, South Dakota or northern
Iowa as it happens to be on the southern border. And it's not true. It
is a war zone there.

We have seen the numbers of the casualties and the drug wars in
Mexico mount. And I remember sitting in Mexico City with some of the
members of the cabinet and some of the members of the Mexican Congress
who would tell me kind of off on the side that they had 2,000 federal
officers, agents, troops that were killed in the drug wars trying to
bring order and trying to bring the drug cartels underneath the
enforcement of law, to break them up. This would be 3 to 4 years ago.
They would say, we have lost 2,000 Federal officers. Now what numbers
do we hear? Twenty-eight thousand. Twenty-eight thousand, mostly
civilian, but not all civilian casualties, in the drug wars in Mexico.
Twenty-eight thousand. Can you imagine the carnage? That's the size of
one of the larger cities in my State, the number of like 28,000.
So here we are with Border Patrol officers, sending the National
Guard down there. Thankfully, there are some Guard troops that are
showing up. It does help. Every pair of boots on the ground helps and
every bit of equipment we can put down there helps, and every bit of
barrier that we build on the border helps. And I do want to build a
fence, a wall and a fence. And I don't suggest that we build 2,000
miles right away next week, finish it by the end of next year. We could
do that. We're a great Nation. We could do that without breaking a
sweat if we had the will.
But I do suggest that we build a fence, a wall and a fence where they
are crossing it, where they have a path beat down, and just keep
extending the fence, the wall and the fence, until such time as they
stop going around the end. If it takes 2,000 miles of fence, wall and
fence, then so be it. If we can do it with a hundred miles or 200
miles, so be that.
But let's have enforcement of our border. Let's take our Nation back.
Let's take our national parks and our national monuments back like
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Put that back in the hands of the
American people.
The America that I envision is the America that I grew up in that
said you can walk anywhere in America, pick up a newspaper and read it
in English, and you don't have to carry a gun. You can't do that
everywhere in America today. The law enforcement is not such--the rule
of law is not so established that you can go anywhere in America in
that way and safely think that you can travel. You can't go to Organ
Pipe Cactus down along the border, you can't take the jet ski on the
lake in Texas. The Mexicans are controlling too much of that. And the
retribution/restitution is almost nonexistent.
And so I would add also that there's another factor that I didn't
hear the gentleman from Indiana mention and that's the factor called
the spotters' locations on top of the mountains, primarily in Arizona.
And as I traveled down there, I began to learn about these spotters'
location from some of our law enforcement officers. And that would
include the Shadow Wolves down at the Tihono O'odham Reservation.
Shadow Wolves are one of the unique aspects of our border enforcement.
They are the Native Americans that serve together and train down there
and enforce the law on the reservation and on that area that spans the
border. Actually, Tihono O'odham is on both sides, in Mexico to some
degree. Most of it is in the United States.
And as I reviewed the border with them, they began to tell me,
There's a spotter up on that mountain. He's watching us now. And I
would look up there and of course I couldn't see him. I didn't know
where to look, and he was too far away and I didn't have the glasses.
And then we'd travel on down another few miles and they'd say, There's
a spotter on that mountaintop and he's watching us. And as I began to
put this together and traveled along the border and went to the Cabeza
Prieta and some of the other locations along the border and talked to
our officers, they began to tell me, Well, yes, we know where a lot of
these locations are. I had a map there. Well, why don't you just put an
X where you know where they are. So he'd put an X here, X there. I had
him fill that in.

{time} 1510

Along the way, we came up with a map that showed the location of at
least 100 mountaintops that are controlled by Mexican drug smugglers
who sit up on top of the mountain. They will take the stones that are
up there and stack them up like sandbags around a gun emplacement.
Well, it is a gun emplacement. It's a high-quality optics observatory
location where they spot the travel of our law enforcement officers,
primarily Border Patrol, all along the highways. If you go down in any
area from Phoenix, going south towards the Mexican border, especially
where you see an intersection where there is a highway going north and
south and another one east and west, look up on one of those corners,
and you will see a small mountain there in a perfect location to be
able to watch the traffic coming from all four directions. You can
presume that that mountaintop is manned--it's a lookout mountaintop.
It's a spotter mountaintop, and they're using that so they can tell the
people who are moving their illegal loads across from Mexico into the
United States when our law enforcement is coming up, when they're
approaching. It will cause them to divert, to go the other way, to
perhaps take a side road--and there aren't many, but it will give them
that sense of warning.
Now, for those who might think that I'm catching this secondhand, Mr.
Speaker, and for those who might think that this is anecdotal, I can
tell you that it's not anecdotal. It's real. I went down and I climbed
to the tops of a number of these mountains. I sat in those locations
and I observed the traffic. In those locations, with the stones stacked
like sandbags on top of one of the smaller mountains, I found a broken
piece of some fairly high-quality binoculars, and you could see clothes
that had been left there. You can see from those locations that they've
been spotting and tipping off as to the law enforcement that's moving
along. It's an essential component for them. If they're going to
smuggle drugs and if they don't know where law enforcement is, they
can't just drive blindly up into Arizona with a truckload of marijuana.
They have to know when the coast is clear. Well, these are the ``coast
is clear'' spotter locations. They're on top of the mountains in
Arizona. I climbed to several of them, observed it from there, took
pictures up there, and saw the pieces of litter that were laying
around. You can see the patterns and the habits, and you can get a
pretty good idea of what their diet is and what they're doing up there.
Then we got in a Blackhawk and flew to the top of other locations--
spotter lookout mountains--and we settled down close to that. We
brought in law enforcement officers from the ground. With the
headphones on and listening to the scanner, you can hear the scrambler
of the frequency that they're using when they communicate with each
other. It's high-quality optics and high-quality communications
equipment with scramblers and descramblers. You could hear, flying from
mountaintop to mountaintop, the intensity of the chatter go up and up
and up in the earphones when we were tuned in to the frequency that
they were using. It's that chipmunk language that has been scrambled
into something that's completely unintelligible even though it was
coming in, and, you know, it was Spanish that was scrambled, and it got
descrambled at the other end.
What I could hear was the intensity of that chatter going up and up
and up. About a minute from the time we arrived at the next lookout
mountaintop, the spotter mountaintop, that frequency and that
transmission would immediately stop and be hushed. We

[[Page H7584]]

would get to the mountaintop in about a minute, and the location that
had been manned just moments before, just minutes before, was empty. It
was empty every time because they came down off the mountain and went
out into the desert and hid. So, when they get out into the desert and
get away from that location and hide, they don't have to get very far
away, a half a mile or so, and you can't identify them as being the
people who were sitting on top of the mountain. Plus, we don't have a
law against sitting on top of a mountain in Arizona, so it's hard to
prosecute. It's hard to bring them to justice, but they exist.
These are paramilitary locations. These are strategic locations.
These are people who are armed with high-quality optics and with their
high-quality communications devices, and they're set up to smuggle
drugs into the United States. So far, we have not been very successful
in snapping those spotters off of those mountaintops and taking that
tool away from the drug smugglers. That's another piece that, I think,
Mr. Burton is well aware of, and I add to the dialogue that he
delivered here.
What do we see instead?
Instead of the administration using the resources that are at its
disposal to go down and enforce the law in places like Arizona, Texas,
New Mexico, and California, it's using resources to sue the State of
Arizona. I've read through that complaint, and it's a bit astonishing
to me to think that the Department of Justice could contrive such an
argument, and even though it didn't mirror the ACLU's lawsuit and
MALDEF's lawsuit and--let me see--the American Muslim Society's
lawsuit, I thought it would. Instead, they wrote up a whole new legal
theory. This is the Holder Justice Department.

Eric Holder essentially admitted that the President had ordered him
to sue Arizona over their immigration law, and 5 minutes later, under
oath, he admitted that he had not read the bill. So here we have the
Attorney General bringing a lawsuit against the State of Arizona--
determined to give the lawsuit--who came before the Judiciary
Committee. Under oath, he testified that he hadn't read the bill. He
conceded under oath that the President had ordered him to sue Arizona.
It was clear from listening to the President that the President
hadn't read Arizona's law, S.B. 1070. So it's clear, as was concluded
under oath and not denied, obviously, by the Attorney General of the
United States, that the President ordered Eric Holder to sue Arizona.
The President hadn't read the bill. Eric Holder hadn't read the bill,
and they were determined to go forward anyway, so we made the
commitment. I think that was actually announced by the Secretary of
State when she was in South America--perhaps in Ecuador, if I remember
right, maybe in Colombia.
It's interesting to read the complaint and think, What did they have
to sue about? You know, it's like throwing a tantrum, and then somebody
asks, What are you mad about? Well, let me see. I'll have to come up
with something. I'm sure I'm mad about something. What could it be?
Well, let me think. I guess I can't be mad about this whole list--that
is obvious--but I'll make up a new reason to be mad. This is a new
reason to sue, and here is what it is:
They argued in their complaint, the Department of Justice's complaint
in their file against Arizona, that Congress had entrusted the various
agencies in the executive branch of government with establishing and
maintaining a ``careful balance,'' a careful balance between the
various immigration laws that this country has. A careful balance. Huh.
Well, Congress did no such thing. There is no record of Congress
passing legislation and saying, Keep a careful balance, Mr. President,
between the various immigration laws so that the Department of Justice
thinks this is all right and so that the Department of Homeland
Security thinks this is all right, as well as the State Department.
Surely, don't enforce an immigration law that might cause the
diplomatic arm of the State Department any heartburn with President
Calderon.
That's their argument, that they may not enforce obvious immigration
laws because it might upset our neighbors in one direction or another.
This is an astonishing legal position to argue, that they have been
entrusted with establishing a ``careful balance,'' then maintaining
that careful balance and, therefore, because Arizona is compelled to
defend themselves, that somehow that careful balance has been upset by
Arizona helping to enforce the laws that have been passed by the United
States of America here in this Congress, on this floor, where we gave
no direction--no direction--to the executive branch to have the
discretion to enforce some laws and not others. There is no discussion.
There is no history. There is no Congressional Record in here, let
alone in the statutes, themselves, that declares a ``careful balance''
standard. That standard never existed. It was created by the
imaginations of the lawyers in the Department of Justice, and now we've
got to go all the way to the Supreme Court to fix a problem created and
motivated by a political decision to sue Arizona, a decision which came
directly out of the White House to order, exactly, Eric Holder to file
that lawsuit.
That, Mr. Speaker, is what I think of what's going on here with the
immigration situation, and it's just a bit of a sequel to the gentleman
from Indiana's statements on immigration, Mr. Burton. I want to make
sure that I support that initiative that he took here tonight.
From my standpoint, we've got to stop the bleeding at the border.
We've got to reestablish the rule of law. We've got to raise the
expectation that the law will be enforced in all of its aspects. We
need to do a careful inventory of all of the resources that we're
deploying, especially on the southern border, and make sure, when a
Border Patrol officer puts his life on the line and pulls over a stray
truck that has got more than a ton of marijuana in it, that that Border
Patrol officer never has to get on the phone and plead with a county
prosecutor to pick up the open-and-shut case and prosecute it. If not,
we don't have the Federal prosecutors enough to prosecute and
incarcerate someone who is smuggling a ton or so of marijuana into the
United States of America.

{time} 1520

We must take a look at the deployment of our resources. If our border
patrol officers are an adequate number, that means we also have to have
an adequate number of prosecutors, judges, and prison beds so that we
can enforce the law so that there's an expectation that this Nation has
as one of its essential pillars of American exceptionalism the rule of
law, and we must stand for it. We cannot and I will not stand for its
erosion any longer, Mr. Speaker.
But I came here tonight to talk about a number of other things as
well, aside from the immigration issue. It was Mr. Burton that got me
wound up as I listened to him talk. So I want to go back, and without a
very smooth segue, I would like to just take us back, Mr. Speaker, to
the election results of a couple of weeks ago and the message that was
sent by the American people and reflect a little bit about my
experience here and what I've seen happen politically and that works
out this way.
As I came here, I came here in the majority and we had the votes to
pass legislation that was reasonable that the American people could
accept, and we did so. As I engaged in the debate here and I watched as
the level of intensity of that debate diminished from our side and the
level of rebuttal increased from over on this side of the aisle, on the
Democrat side of the aisle, I don't know that I realized that at the
time--I could feel it here internally but I don't know that I realized
it clearly enough at the time but there was a shift going on in the
minds of the American people. I thought we were doing the right thing
for the most part in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006, but we weren't
articulating this to the American people in a way that was as useful
and accurate as it should have been.
The best example of that, and I say this example because of my great
respect for the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States
and put their lives on the line on a regular basis, that selfless and
noble commitment. What I saw happening in the State of Iowa in 2003 was
when we had Democrat Presidential candidates coming into Iowa on a
regular basis, moving through the State stopping over and over again.

[[Page H7585]]

And as I listened to this dialogue and I remember the date, it was
October 5, 2003, and I'm watching the news and listening to the debate
of the Presidential candidates, and I opened up The Des Moines Register
newspaper. Inside page 3, headline at the top of the page, Candidate
Howard Dean Repeatedly calls President Bush a Liar. And I was appalled.
I thought, how can anyone call the President of the United States a
liar? How can this be in this article? What must the President have
said?
So I read that article, October 5, 2003, and looking for the
statement that would be identified that would make our Commander in
Chief a liar, and I read the article and I missed it apparently and I
went back and read it a second time for the language that would be in
this article that would confirm the truth of the headline that our
President, our Commander in Chief, was a liar.
It wasn't there, Mr. Speaker. There wasn't an allegation in the
article about what the President had said. It was just a story about
Howard Dean calling George Bush a liar, repeatedly calling George Bush
a liar. Well, it turned out it was about 16 words in the State of the
Union address that had taken place just a few months, 6 months or so
before that when the President of the United States said, We recently
learned from the British that the Iraqis were seeking uranium in the
continent of Africa. That's the 16 words, roughly speaking, in general
delivery here that was the objection that was delivered by Howard Dean.
Well, it turns out the statement was unequivocally true, and I
actually have the evidence of that in the brief case that I carry with
me wherever I go. But it wasn't so much the point of that because I
remember when Charlton Heston ran commercials during the Presidential
elections of 1996, when he looked into the camera and he said, Mr.
President--and he was speaking of President Clinton--Mr. President,
when what you say is wrong and you don't know that it's wrong, that's
called a mistake. But when what you say is wrong and you know that it
is wrong, that's a lie.
Well, I think that's an accurate definition of the difference between
a lie and a mistake. I don't think President Bush made a mistake. What
he said in that State of the Union address was spot on accurate,
absolutely provable. They disagreed with it because of one Ambassador
Joe Wilson, who--I will give him a pass tonight, Mr. Speaker, because
the clock is ticking.
However, I turned to my wife, appalled that a Presidential candidate
could declare our Commander in Chief to be a liar, and I said, Marilyn,
I'm going to Iraq. So a few days later by the 17th of October, 15th to
the 17th, I was in Iraq, and I took a look at what was going on there.
I traveled through there, did a lot of stops, met with a lot of our
officers that were there and enlisted men and women and came back with
a different story on what was going on in that country.

But the assault on President Bush and the undermining of his position
and our men and women under arms, when I heard people on this side of
the aisle say, well, I support the troops but not their mission, Mr.
Speaker, that cannot be allowed to stand, to concede a point such as
that. My point is, if you support the troops, you support their
mission. You cannot ask them to put their lives on the line for
Americans if you don't believe in their mission, too. We can't ask them
to go on that kind of a mission.
So what we saw happen was the assault, the verbal assault on the
operations in a time of war in Iraq, being constantly pounded by the
Presidential candidates and by many of the people over on this other
side of the aisle in an effort to erode public opinion for the war in
Iraq because doing so, in my estimation--and I understand that their
motives may well have been pure--in my estimation in their desire to
win the Presidency and their desire to win back the majority, their
zeal to recharacterize our war in Iraq undermined public support for a
mission that's turned out to be, on the balance of it, a pretty good
ending considering what we were in the middle of during that period of
time.
My point is the President of the United States and the executive
branch of government did not bring out a full-throated defense nor did
they articulate a reason for being in Iraq in an adequate way. That
left the door open so that the criticism that came against the war in
Iraq nearly cost what's now considered by many to be a victory in Iraq.
Public opinion's got to hold together. It should hold together on
facts, and Republicans need to stand together and stand up for truth in
principle when we're right. We cannot allow a debate to go the other
way just because we think we have the votes. We must stand and win the
debate and hold the votes together. That, Mr. Speaker, is an essential
principle.
As we go forward and we see these election results, we also need to
understand that there will be a time coming into the 112th Congress,
gaveled in, sworn in January 5 of 2011, that we'll sit here and we'll
think we have the votes, so we just have to wait Democrats out while
they have their say.
I want Democrats to have their say. I agree with the incoming Speaker
of the House, Mr. Boehner, that we need to have sunlight on this place
and run this place with the kind of function that allows for--he says
open rules. I'd shorten it up a little bit and say a lot more open
rules. I don't know that we can do all open rules but more open rules
so there's a legitimate debate here. And if Democrats have an idea,
bring that amendment, let's debate that amendment, we'll vote them up
or down. If Republicans have an idea, also bring your amendment. We'll
debate it up or down.
Think of how this process is supposed to work. You get busy and you
go to work in the subcommittee and you hold hearings and you gather
facts and the staff does the research work, crunches it in a way so
that the under oath testimony and the information that's submitted is
meaningful and that it can be cataloged and rationalized in a way that
we can move forward with a good piece of policy. Once that hearing's
need is satisfied, then you can go to a subcommittee and mark the bill
up, and there of course you have to accept amendments from each side.
Whatever the product is of the subcommittee needs to go to the full
committee, and when it goes to the full committee, there needs to be a
full committee markup. And there we need to allow for an open and
legitimate debate because the process is taking an idea, present it to
the hearing. If it can sustain itself in open, public dialogue, then it
can actually become the bill that moves through the process, subjected
to amendments that are designed to perfect the legislation, on through
the full committee and to the floor for the same kind of process.

{time} 1530

That's what's envisioned by our Founding Fathers. It was never
envisioned that there would be a Speaker of the House that would run
this Congress, the House of Representatives, out of her office with her
staff and disallow amendments, disallow debate, disallow an opportunity
to even vote with a level of clarity so the American people can see
what's going on.
So their level of disgust rose up, and 58 Democrats were voted out of
office, and there were a number of open seats that increased that
number substantially from there.
So I think the message should have been clear. It doesn't seem to be
clear. It is clear to me. The American people are filled up with a
process that does not reach out to draw the wisdom from the American
people through this republican form of government, which is guaranteed
to us in the Constitution of the United States. They're filled up.
They've had it with the nationalization, the takeover of the banks;
AIG, the insurance company; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and all the
liabilities that go with that. They are fed up with the takeover of
General Motors and Chrysler. Now it looks like, though, the White House
is going to concede and sell some General Motors shares off into the
marketplace. They will take a little loss, maybe even a big loss. I
think that's a good step, and I encourage a lot more of it.
In fact, I'm hopeful that by the time the 112th Congress gavels out
roughly 2 years from now that the Federal Government will have divested
itself of all of those private sector entities that have been taken
over. And I am hopeful that the first act of the 113th Congress, a
little more than 2 years from now, will be to finally pass the final
version

[[Page H7586]]

of the repeal of ObamaCare so that that can then go to the desk of the
next President of the United States for his signature to finally repeal
ObamaCare.
As we sit here in this Congress and we're watching the importance of
jobs, the American people said they've had it up to here with debt and
deficit. It's about jobs and the economy, and it's about freedom and
liberty and being able to order our own lives instead of being ordered
within our lives by a nanny state.
And ObamaCare is the flagship of socialism that has been delivered to
us over the objections of the American people by the tens of thousands
who poured into this city multiple times to peacefully petition the
government for redress of grievances. Tens of thousands of people, for
the first time that I know of in history, put a ring around this
Capitol Building. They held hands and said, Keep your hands off of my
health care. It wasn't just one set of people with long arms holding
hands, ringing the entire Capitol. They were six or eight deep all the
way around the Capitol and clustered in the corners by the thousands
who just didn't bother to get in the line. They said, Keep your hands
off of our health care; and Speaker Pelosi marched through the middle
of all of that with her oversized gavel to come do what she believed
needed to be done for the American people who couldn't apparently think
for themselves and said, We have to pass the bill to find out what's in
it.
Well, ObamaCare that passed could not have passed here in the House
even with the strong Democrat majority if it were not for legislative
maneuvering in an unparalleled way, including a promise that there
would be a reconciliation bill that would circumvent the filibuster in
the Senate that would be passed over there and come over here to amend
the ObamaCare bill that had yet to be passed.
So if you are going to do that, why can't you amend the bill and make
it say what you want it to say, and send it back to the Senate? The
reason for that is, Mr. Speaker, the Senate wouldn't pass the bill
either because they elected Scott Brown in Massachusetts. They were so
appalled at socialized medicine coming to America that the people in
the Bay State sent Scott Brown to the Senate to put the brakes on
ObamaCare. He put the message out pretty strong and pretty loud, and
the people of Massachusetts clearly did.
But the Senate could not have passed the legislation that passed in
the House on that day, or any day since. The House could not have
passed it either if it weren't for the promise that reconciliation
would come from the Senate. And even then, it couldn't pass the House
unless there was a fig leaf that was brought up which was by the
President to give the pro-life group of Democrats--the Stupak Dozen,
it's called--their fig leaf protection, as if an executive order could
amend a statute of the United States of America.
So, Mr. Speaker, here is the situation: we have the 2001 and the 2003
tax brackets that need to be extended or we will be seeing a huge tax
increase, perhaps the largest tax increase of our lifetimes poised to
hit us at midnight December 31 if this lame-duck Congress doesn't act.
The negotiations on that are taking place. I do believe that there is
more leverage in the Senate on this issue than in the House. If we
don't get that resolved, Mr. Speaker, then our job is going to be--the
first job, H.R. 1, bill number one--to make those tax brackets
permanent so that no one faces anything but a temporary tax increase.
And I mean that I would love to see this done in the lame-duck. If it's
not done, it must be the first order of business in the new Congress in
January. The estate tax, it is a painful thing to think about that
kicking in in a diabolical way.

The second thing, let's just presume we get it negotiated, and this
Congress in lame duck resolves the issue of the '01 and '03 tax
brackets, so we are not faced with a tax increase.
Then, Mr. Speaker, if that's resolved, my sense of this is--and I
think I have a vast amount of support, including 173 signatures on a
discharge petition--that we must then use as the first order of
business the repeal of ObamaCare. H.R. 1, repeal of ObamaCare. The new
Congress will pass that in a heartbeat, to pull ObamaCare out by the
roots, lock, stock, and barrel, so there is not one vestige of it left
behind.
And then we start down the path of shutting off the funding that
would be used to implement or enforce ObamaCare. We owe it to the
American people. We owe it to the constitutional conservatives that
rose up all across this land and rallied together to fight ObamaCare.
That's the biggest reason why you have this vast change. The biggest
change in majorities here in 72 years has taken place because ObamaCare
was the crown jewel of the agenda that was driven that the American
people have rejected. So I'm encouraging that we move forward with
that.
I have no appetite for tying together repeal and replace. Those are
two separate subjects. We didn't have ObamaCare as a law of the land
until late March of this year. We got along fine without it. Having it
is worse than having nothing, but we need to win the debate on repeal
of ObamaCare, win that debate, and then move down the line with the
pieces that we would pass that would improve the health care for the
American people that hold together, that hold together the doctor-
patient relationship and the free market component and let people have
their choices. That's the only way America works.
We are not a dependent Nation. We are not a Nation that can submit to
a nanny state or an onerous Federal regulation. We are a proud, free,
independent people, totally unsuitable for the European style of
socialized democracy. We have freedom. We have vigor. We have rights
that come from good God. We are a unique race of people. And the vigor
of America's history attests to that, and the destiny of America's
future attests to that.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time to the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. Gohmert).
Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate my friend very much. Stirring words, and
accurate at that.
This being a time when we are recessing today through the
Thanksgiving holiday, it is that time. We have so much to be thankful
for. One of them is that we have a newspaper article--of course we've
heard in the last week or so that it looks like the Obama
administration was going to put off yet again the trials of the five
charged in the 9/11 attacks as planning them. But the article from The
New York Times says that the five Guantanamo detainees charged with
coordinating the September 11 attacks told a military judge Monday they
wanted to confess in full. And that was a move that seemed to challenge
the government to put them to death.
At the start of what had been listed as routine proceedings Monday,
Judge Henley said he had received a written statement from the five
men, dated November 4, saying they plan to stop filing legal motions
and to announce our confessions, to plea in full. Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed said, ``We don't want to waste our time with motions.'' You
had one of the detainees, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, tell the judge, ``We the
brothers, all of us, would like to submit our confession.'' Mr. bin al-
Shibh is charged with being the primary contact between the operation's
organizers and the September 11 hijackers.

{time} 1540

In one outburst, Mr. Bin al Scheib said he wanted to congratulate
Osama bin Laden, adding, ``We ask him to attack the American enemy with
all his power.'' So that's the good news. They're going to plead
guilty. We can be delighted with that.
The tragic thing was that was their announcement, according to the
New York Times, back in December of 2008. December of 2008. But no,
this administration wanted to play games with this country's safety and
with justice. And so now, 2 years later, they're going to put it off
for another couple of years, wait till after the next election so that
he doesn't have to deal with it. These guys were ready for justice.
They were ready to plead guilty until this administration played games.
And even in the pleading that was declassified, written apparently by
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on behalf of all five, they have quotes in here
like: We fight you with Almighty God. So if our act of jihad and our
fighting with you cause fear and terror, then many thanks to

[[Page H7587]]

God, because it is Him that has thrown fear into your hearts, which
resulted in your infidelity, paganism, and your statement that God had
a son, and your trinity beliefs.
Another statement he makes is: We will make all of our materials
available to defend and deter and egress you and the filthy Jews from
our countries. God has ordered us to spend for jihad and his cause.
This is evident in many Koranic verses.
He also says: We fight you and destroy you and terrorize you. The
jihad is God's cause and a great duty in our religion. So we ask from
God to accept our contributions to the great attack, the great attack
on America, and to place our 19 martyred brethren among the highest
peaks in paradise.
So, you know, they filed that, but this administration wants to play
games with these guys who were ready to plead guilty, filed no more
motions until this administration offered them a big show trial. So, we
have a lot to be thankful for in that regard. They're in prison, where
they should be. And justice should have already come swiftly, but at
least they're behind bars.
Well, I want to finish the time the gentleman has yielded to me.
William J. Federer does such a great job of putting together much of
American histories and proclamations and prayers and really a great job
of our godly heritage, just like David Barton does. This book,
``Prayers & Presidents--Inspiring Faith from Leaders of the
Past,'' among so many other things, has proclamations of Thanksgiving,
and I thought it would be appropriate--though this will not be the last
hour of today--today is the last hour before Thanksgiving, just so
people know, Mr. Speaker, that this is our heritage.

This President says we're not a Christian Nation. I will not debate
that with him. But the Presidents of the past, before this President,
knew that it was. Perhaps it's not now.
George Washington, October 3, 1789, these are Washington's words:
``Where it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence
of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits and
humbly implore His protection and favor, we may then unite in most
humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and
ruler of nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other
transgressions, to enable us all to render our national government a
blessing to all the people, to promote the knowledge and practice of
true religion and virtue.''
James Madison, who's given so much credit for writing the
Constitution. You would think the guy would know what was
constitutional and what wasn't. March 4, 1815:
``No people ought to feel greater obligation to celebrate the
goodness of the great disposer of events and of the destiny of nations
than the people of the United States. To the same Divine Author of
every good and perfect gift, we are indebted for all those privileges
and advantages, religious as well as civil, which are so richly enjoyed
in this favored land. I now recommend a day on which the people of
every religious denomination may, in their solemn assemblies, unite
their hearts and their voices in a freewill offering to their Heavenly
Benefactor of their homage of thanksgiving and their songs of praise.''
Now, we have these for virtually every year, every President, so I'm
being very selective here because time is so short.
Abraham Lincoln, July 15, 1863:
``It is meet and right to recognize and confess the presence of the
Almighty Father and the power of His hand equally in these triumphs and
these sorrows.
``I invite the people of the United States to assemble on that
occasion in their customary places of worship, in the forms approved by
their consciences, render the homage due to the Divine Majesty for the
wonderful things He has done in the Nation's behalf, and invoke the
influence of His Holy Spirit to subdue the anger which has produced and
long sustained a needless and cruel rebellion.''
Andrew Johnson, 1865, October 28:
``Whereas, it has pleased Almighty God during the year which is now
coming to an end, to relieve our beloved country from the fearful
scourge of civil war and to permit us to secure the blessings of peace,
unity, and harmony with great enlargement of civil liberty; and,
whereas, our Heavenly Father has also, during the year, graciously
averted from us the calamities of foreign war, pestilence, and famine,
while our granaries are full of the fruits of an abundant season; and,
whereas, righteousness exalteth a nation while sin is a reproach to any
people, I recommend to the people thereof that they do set apart and
observe the first Thursday of December next as a day of national
thanksgiving to the Creator of the universe for these great
deliverances and blessings.''
Ulysses S. Grant, October 5, 1865:
``It becomes a people thus favored to making acknowledgement to the
Supreme Author from whom such blessings flow of their gratitude and
their dependence, to render praise and thanksgiving for the same, and
devoutly to implore a continuance of God's mercy.
``I, Ulysses S. Grant, the President of the United States, do
recommend that Thursday, the 18th day of November next, be observed as
a day of thanksgiving and of praise and of prayer to Almighty God, the
creator and the ruler of the universe. And I do further recommend to
all the people of the United States to assemble on that day in their
accustomed places of public worship and to unite in the homage and
praise due to the bountiful Father of All Mercies and in fervent prayer
for the continuance of the manifold blessings He has vouchsafed to us
as a people.''
Rutherford B. Hayes, October of 1877:
``The completed circle of summer and winter, seed time and harvest
has brought to us the accustomed season at which a religious people
celebrate with praise and thanksgiving the enduring mercy of Almighty
God. Let us, with one spirit and with one voice, lift up praise and
thanksgiving to God for His manifold goodness to our land, His manifest
care for our Nation. I earnestly recommend that, withdrawing themselves
from secular cares and labors, the people of the United States do meet
together on that day in their respective places of worship, there to
give thanks and praise to Almighty God for His mercies to devoutly
beseech their continuance.''
And parenthetically here, in the midst of these Presidential
proclamations, were it not for the teachings of Jesus and the fact that
this Nation is based on biblical principle, you would not have a Nation
in which people, whether Muslim or any religion, would be able to so
freely worship. But it's because of that caring that we're able to do
that here, because, as we know, in so many nations that are non-
Christian, including Muslim nations, they don't have a lot of sympathy
for those who practice Christianity.
Chester A. Arthur, November 4, 1881:
``It has long been the pious custom of our people, with the closing
of the year, to look back upon the blessings brought to them in the
changing course of the seasons and to return solemn thanks to the all-
giving source from whom they flow. The countless benefits which have
showered upon us during the past 12-month call for our fervent
gratitude and make it fitting that we should rejoice with thankfulness
that the Lord, in His infinite mercy, has most signally favored our
country and our people.''
There are just so many wonderful tributes before Thanksgiving.
Let me go to one from Benjamin Harrison, November of 1891--and these
are just partial. Most of them are not the entire proclamation:
``It is a very glad incident of the marvelous prosperity which has
crowned the year now drawing to a close that its helpful and reassuring
touch has been felt by all our people.

{time} 1550

``It has been as wide as our country and so special that every home
has felt its comforting influence.
``It is too great to be the work of man's power and too particular to
be the device of his mind. To God, the beneficent and the all-wise, who
makes the labors of men to be fruitful, redeems their losses by His
grace, and the measure of whose giving is as much beyond the thoughts
of man as it is beyond his deserts, the praise and gratitude of the
people of this favored Nation are justly due.''
So many great proclamations.

[[Page H7588]]

Over to William McKinley, 1897:
``In remembrance of God's goodness to us during the past year, which
has been so abundant,'' and then he quotes from Scripture, ``let us
offer unto him our thanksgiving and pay our vows unto the most high.
Under His watchful providence, industry has prospered, the conditions
of labor have been improved, the rewards of the husbandman have been
increased and the comforts of our home multiplied. His mighty hand has
preserved peace and protected the Nation. Respect for law and order has
been strengthened, love of free institutions cherished, and all
sections of our beloved country brought into closer bonds of fraternal
regard and generous cooperation
``For these great benefits, it is our duty to praise the Lord in a
spirit of humility and gratitude and to offer up to Him our most
earnest supplications that we may acknowledge our obligation as a
people to Him who has so graciously granted us the blessings of free
government and material prosperity.''
Theodore Roosevelt, October of 1903:
``The season is at hand when, according to the custom of our people,
it falls upon the President to appoint a day of praise and thanksgiving
to God. During the last year, the Lord has dealt bountifully with us,
giving us peace at home and abroad, and the chance for our citizens to
work for their welfare unhindered by war, famine, and plague.
Therefore, in thanking God for the mercies extended to us in the past,
we beseech Him that he may not withhold them in the future.''
William Howard Taft, the only President to have also been elected to
Congress and to have been on the Supreme Court, actually as Chief
Justice:
``A God-fearing Nation like ours owes it to its inborn and sincere
sense of the moral duty to testify its devout gratitude to the All-
Giver for the countless benefits it has enjoyed. For many years, it has
been customary at the close of the year for the national executive to
call upon his fellow countrymen to offer praise and thanks to God for
the manifold blessings vouchsafed to them.''
Woodrow Wilson says, in part, 1913:
``The season is at hand in which it has long been our respected
custom as a people to turn in praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God
for His manifold mercies and blessings to us as a Nation. The year that
has just passed has been marked in a peculiar degree by manifestations
of His gracious and beneficent providence.''
John F. Kennedy, October of 1961:
``The Pilgrims, after a year of hardship and peril, humbly and
reverently set aside a special day upon which to give thanks to God. I
ask the head of each family to recount to his children the story of the
first New England Thanksgiving, thus to impress upon future generations
the heritage of this Nation born in toil, in danger, in purpose, and in
the conviction that right and justice and freedom can, through man's
efforts, persevere and come to fruition with the blessing of God.''
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas for his
presentation here and setting the tone right for Thanksgiving as we are
departing this city and going back to spend time with our families
again. We are a grateful Nation, and I know that we will have a lot to
be thankful for in the King household, as does America have a lot to be
thankful for.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your attention, being recognized, and all
of our service here to the American people.

____________________