[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.

                          ____________________