[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 155 (Wednesday, December 1, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H7845-H7852]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1940
                     MODERN DAY SLAVERY REPARATIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Titus). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, it's my privilege to be recognized 
here on the floor of the House of Representatives in this great 
deliberative body that we are. And it is a blessing and a gift to the 
American people that we can have our debates and our discourse that 
rages back and forth here on the floor of the House. And sometimes 
we're not so polite to each other. I regret that. But the passions 
arise here rather than have them arise in the streets of America.
  So in a way, we take a lid off the pressure cooker here in the House. 
And we vent these issues, and we find a way to at least sort out the 
policy that can be accepted or accommodated by the other side. And 
often we're able to come to a good product that's good and right for 
the American people.
  Madam Speaker, I come to you tonight with a number of things on my 
mind and the primary issue that concerns me is what took place here in 
the House yesterday with the debate on the rule and on the bill and 
subsequently the vote spent another $4.6 billion, unbudgeted, 
unauthorized, unacceptable--and not just 41 cents out of every dollar 
borrowed, a lot of it from the Chinese and the Saudis--but all of this 
money, all of this unbudgeted funding is a hundred percent borrowed 
money because it goes above that level. It was unnecessary money to be 
spent. So every bit of it was borrowed money.
  And by a vote of 256-152, this lame duck Congress, this invalidated 
Congress, this reputed Congress, this rejected Congress, has gone down 
the path over and over again of spending money that we don't have for 
causes that don't have the support of the American people spent by a 
Congress that's no longer the valid representatives of the people. 
That's why it's called a lame duck. We should have shot this lame duck 
a long time ago. It still limps along and it still flares up, and it 
still steps in and goes against the will of the American people.
  Now, I would submit, Madam Speaker, if this Congress had reflected 
the will of the American people, the gavels would not be changing hands 
come January 4 of 2011. They'd stay essentially in the same hands with 
a smaller switch in seats.
  But we can see this happen over the last 4 years as the San Francisco 
agenda began to manifest itself here on the floor of the House of 
Representatives. And it didn't really get enough traction that the 
American people really understood what was going on until such time as 
President Obama was elected and his agenda matched up so closely with 
that of the Speaker's agenda here--that San Francisco agenda--that the 
American people could see clearly. By the way, coupled with that of the 
gentleman from Nevada from down through across the rotunda on the 
Senate side, the three of them, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and President 
Obama. I said this more than 2 years ago, 2\1/2\ years ago, If you 
elect this ruling troika, they will be able to go into a phone booth 
and do what they will to America, and they won't be accountable to 
anybody. And I should have said, Until the subsequent election.
  Well, the American people did elect Barack Obama, and they sent Nancy 
Pelosi back here in a position to become the Speaker, which she was, 
and Harry Reid maintained his position as the majority leader in the 
United States Senate. And they did to the best of their extent what 
they could to America.
  There's a whole list of things that aggrieve me and very much that 
must be undone. Some things that passed the House that didn't make it 
through the Senate were painful votes for some of the Members that will 
be going home. And I regret some of the friends that I have made on the 
other side of the aisle that I'm saying goodbye to this week and the 
next week and the next week. There are some good Americans that have 
served this country well that were voted out of office because of the 
anchor that was attached to them by the San Francisco agenda.
  But there's this agenda, this agenda that I've called modern-day 
slavery reparations. And some think that might be a rhetorical stretch. 
But, Madam Speaker, I'll point out not only did John Conyers, as the 
chairman of the Judiciary Committee, hold impeachment hearings for 
President Bush and Vice President Cheney--he said they weren't 
impeachment hearings but they were, in fact, impeachment hearings, the 
basis of it I still don't know but I sat in on them--not only did he 
hold those, he held hearings on a whole number of things including 
hearings on slavery reparations.
  And I made the argument that you cannot fix something that happened a

[[Page H7846]]

century and a half ago. You can't go back and put the blood back in 
people's veins when they've paid in blood to put an end to slavery. And 
you can't hold the generations, six and seven generations hence, 
responsible for the sins of the great great great great great great 
grandfathers.
  And the chairman, Mr. Conyers, a respectable individual whom I count 
as a friend and have always had a good personal relationship with, told 
me, That's why we're having these hearings to find out. You think we 
can't fix these problems by providing reparations, and we're holding 
hearings and we're going to see if we can figure it out.
  Well, that's the mindset. I mean, if we're actually having a 
discussion about whether you can compensate people for labor that they 
did while they were slaves in the first half of the 19th century and 
earlier to those descendents, how do you sort out who's descended from 
slaves and who's not? They don't know how to answer that question. They 
just think somehow there should be a redistribution of wealth.
  Well, this redistribution of wealth is something that also comes out 
of the mouth of our President. It was very clear when he made the 
statement to Joe the Plumber when he said, Share the wealth. And it's 
been very clear as he's played the class envy card time after time 
after time and divided Americans against each other for a whole series 
of reasons--and a lot of it that has to do with how much money each of 
us make, forgetting that it is the American Dream to become a 
millionaire, to pile another million on top of that, the second million 
is easier since the first. How long has it been since we've heard that? 
It might be harder than the first because this President wants to 
punish that first million and the second million and the third million. 
Hopefully, that gets resolved this week. We've reached a bit of an 
impasse on it. But the redistribution of wealth goes on.

  The hard-core leftist agenda is still driven. The leaders and many of 
the Members of this lame duck 111th Congress, if they got the message, 
their message back to us is a spiteful message against the American 
people, which is, So you didn't like debt and deficit and you'd like to 
have jobs and a better growing economy. Well, on our way out the door--
you've thrown a lot of us out of office--on our way out the door, we're 
going to give you a little more of what you didn't like. They're saying 
to the American people, Oh, you didn't like what we gave you in the 
111th Congress or the 110th Congress, you didn't like what we gave you 
under President Obama. Well, if you didn't like it, here's some more. 
That's what's going on in this lame duck Congress.
  If the American people don't like what's been served to them by Nancy 
Pelosi and President Obama and Harry Reid, they're saying, Madam 
Speaker, to the American people, here's some more.
  Well, here's some more that came at us yesterday: the Pigford Farms 
issue tied together with the Cobell issue that has to do with how 
resources were managed for certain Native American tribes. And I'm not 
an expert on the Cobell issue. I have been drawn into the Pigford 
issue.
  But, Madam Speaker, Pigford Farms is this: it is the largest class 
action suit in the history of the United States. And the single largest 
recipient of that, her name is Shirley Sherrod. You remember Shirley 
Sherrod. She's the lady that announced on July 22 of 2009 that she 
would be the largest recipient in the largest civil rights case in 
history, which turns out now to be $2.3 billion to compensate for 
discrimination--an amount that--I agree there was discrimination and I 
agree we should compensate people who were discriminated against. It's 
a very difficult task to quantify, however.
  But Shirley Sherrod received the news of the award of $13 million to 
her and whoever the people she might decide to distribute it to. We 
don't have access to those records. These cases are apparently sealed.
  On 22 July, 2009, Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, hired her 25 
July 2009. Because she's the largest civil rights recipient in the 
largest case in the history of America, and the case is Pigford versus 
Vilsack--the Secretary of Agriculture.
  Timothy Pigford filed the suit and the class action lawsuit and so 
his name, the first plaintiff's name, is listed as the name of the suit 
versus the Secretary of Agriculture, which was Glickman, and it became 
then the successor Secretaries until it became Tom Vilsack. But it was 
Tom Vilsack that was named then in the suit as successor, Pigford v. 
Vilsack, and the largest recipient was Shirley Sherrod. And what does 
he do 3 days after the $13 million was announced that she would 
receive? Hires her.
  I can't fathom hiring somebody who had sued me, who had pushed for a 
settlement that turns out to be $13 million. The next piece is, what do 
they need the job for, and why would I reward them with a job? What 
else was going on in the mind of the Secretary and Shirley Sherrod that 
he would put her on the payroll and make her the director of USDA rural 
development in the State of Georgia?

                              {time}  1950

  This all came to light because there was a YouTube clip of Shirley 
Sherrod's speech before the NAACP that in its edited version appeared 
to make some racist statements. And I saw the speech in the totality 
enough that I accept the overall message on what she learned from that. 
And so I am not taking issue with the totality of her speech. But she 
was fired apparently for the clip that was out. And the clip I think is 
a clip that was available to the Web site that posted it, what was 
available at the time.
  But in any case, $13 million recipient in the largest civil rights 
case in the history hired by the people she sued 3 days after the 
settlement announcement came down. And that's just a piece of Pigford 
Farms. Pigford Farms has been dragging on for years. And what happened 
was Dan Glickman, then Secretary of Agriculture under Bill Clinton as 
President, stepped up and announced that they had discovered that there 
was discrimination taking place by U.S. Department of Agriculture 
employees against black farmers primarily in the South, because that's 
where they lived. And when that happened, it opened up the class 
action. The lawyers went to work and they produced what's now Pigford 
I, the first settlement consent decree.
  It was approved by Judge Paul Friedman. I brought his opinion, Madam 
Speaker, with me to the floor tonight. And if those might think when I 
say this is a modern day version of slavery reparations, I would point 
out that in the case the first words in the opinion of Judge Paul 
Friedman are this: ``Forty acres and a mule.'' Forty acres and a mule.
  Madam Speaker, he goes on to lament that he can't fix all of the 
wrongs that come out of slavery and the segregation in one civil rights 
suit. One can read between the lines that he is sorry that he can't fix 
it all. One can read between the lines that he may well be glad to hear 
a Pigford II proposal come before him so that he could ratify it once 
Congress has appropriated an additional $1.15 billion.
  Here is what Judge Friedman wrote about the Pigford settlements, 
these $50,000 settlements that were paid out to black farmers for--they 
had to meet four criteria: had to be African American. They had to have 
farmed or wanted to farm. They had to have believed they were 
discriminated against. And they had to attest that they filed a 
complaint, that could have been verbal, to a USDA employee, a Member of 
Congress, a couple other categories. That's four criteria. Actually, 
the fifth one was then that someone, not a close family member, had to 
sign an affidavit that attested that they had not only believed they 
were discriminated against, but they had complained about it, not 
necessarily in writing, but it could have been verbally to any USDA 
employee under any circumstances. It didn't have to be a public meeting 
with witnesses.
  It could have simply been walking down the street and you meet 
someone who might be the director of your county FSA, and you say, I 
don't think your people treated me right. I should have had a loan. 
That would be all it would take. If you didn't get the loan, you 
wouldn't even have had to apply. You just maybe had to think you 
weren't going to be treated right and failed to apply for the loan. 
That's enough. You don't have to prove discrimination. You just have to 
allege it

[[Page H7847]]

and get a friend to sign the affidavit. That's all that's required 
under Pigford I.
  And then according to Judge Paul Friedman, he writes this: ``The 
consent decree accomplishes its purpose primarily through a two-track 
dispute resolution mechanism that provides those class members with 
little or no documentary evidence with,'' and I am quoting from this 
opinion, Madam Speaker, ``a virtually automatic cash payment of $50,000 
and forgiveness of debt owed to the USDA.'' And anybody who believes 
that that's not enough, they can actually sue on their own and prove it 
by the preponderance of the evidence.
  But there is no proof required to receive the $50,000 virtually 
automatic cash payment except to get a friend to sign the affidavit 
that says that you complained about it and you believed you were 
discriminated against. And then all it had to be was to allege that you 
were turned down for a loan or a farm program of some type or another.
  Madam Speaker, $1.05 billion was distributed under no basis beyond 
that, no requirement or proof for discrimination. And a very, very low 
level of even asking them if they actually ever complained or filed a 
complaint. And no verification required that they ever farmed or ever 
applied for a USDA loan or program. You didn't have to farm. You just 
had to say I am black, I wanted to farm, and I believe they 
discriminated against me, and I complained about it, and I have got a 
friend that will sign the document. That's it, Madam Speaker.
  And $1.05 billion was distributed on that basis. And virtually 
automatic payments, much of it debt forgiveness included. And if anyone 
actually was a farmer and actually did have debt with the USDA, all of 
their debt was forgiven also. And Judge Paul Friedman said a virtually 
automatic payment if you didn't want to go through track two and get a 
bigger check than the $50,000 and the debt forgiveness, which Judge 
Friedman calculates that the average settlement would be $187,500.

  Now, we don't have an accounting from the USDA on how large the 
average settlements are. We don't have the spreadsheet of the 22,500 
applicants that poured in after the direction of this opinion by Judge 
Friedman and the consent decree that accompanies it directed that there 
be town hall meetings across the South, that the attorneys on this 
case, in order to earn their contingency fees, needed to go out and 
promote this. And they needed to put newspaper ads in and radio ads in. 
I believe there was also television. I can't verify that for sure. And 
hold meetings and call people to them.
  And we have reports from throughout the South that there were 
meetings that were held in churches, in town hall meetings, and they 
were told this is your 40 acres and a mule. You need to come and sign 
up for this. And this is what you have to attest to in order to get the 
$50,000 check. And if you have any debt, it will be forgiven.
  Now, if you present that, if you have attorneys working on 
contingency fees, you have the perfect mechanism for fraud. And so as 
we look across the South, I can't believe that all of the counties 
discriminated against their African American population equally. I 
would have to believe that if discrimination took place--and I believe 
it did--that it took place sometimes in a county there would be none, 
because the culture of that office in that county would be such that 
everybody gets treated equally, with respect and promptly, with all the 
help that they can give with the staff that they have. I believe that 
takes place in at least some of the counties in the South. And I 
believe it has for a generation or more.
  I suspect--and I don't have reason to believe, but I suspect--there 
were counties on the other side of that spectrum where they as a matter 
of practice discriminated against African Americans. And these are the 
cases that I believe needed to be compensated. But I can't believe that 
it was the same level of discrimination across all of these counties.
  And when I see applications, and I have a stack of these 
applications, most of which were paid out, and they name the same USDA 
employee as the one they complained to, and they give the location and 
the date, and that USDA employee was not at that location, could not 
have been at locations as far apart as they were claimed, as many dates 
as were claimed. And why would it be that one USDA employee had all of 
these complaints and yet nothing was done about the discrimination? 
It's this, that they offered the name over and over again.
  It's kind of like if you see an individual's name, and when you look 
through all these applications, and I have looked through stacks of 
them, when I look through them and I see often the same name of the 
USDA employee, I see the same handwriting on application after 
application, I can see the narrative has been changed just slightly 
from application to application. If they were numbered chronologically, 
I can just about tell you what's going on. There is an attorney's staff 
that is sitting there filling out these applications. They may actually 
be interviewing the individuals. The individuals had to sign because 
they were going to get the check. And the attorney's going to get a 
contingency fee out of that. And we don't know how much that is. And 
that's not in this opinion. It's not in the consent decree. But what is 
in there is that the IRS gets paid also as a matter of settlement.

                              {time}  2000

  So if it's a $50,000 virtually automatic payment, as Judge Friedman 
says, there is also a $12,500 check that accompanies that that gets 
mailed off to the IRS.
  And so now it becomes $62,500. Judge Friedman estimated the average 
debt would be $100,000. And so the debt forgiveness at $100,000 would 
automatically send the check to the IRS for $25,000 to pay the tax 
liability that comes from the debt forgiveness that would become a tax 
liability for those individuals.
  Those things went on. His estimate, $187,500 per settlement, 
believing that the applicants, or at least presuming to believe that 
the applicants for the Pigford settlement were applicants that actually 
were engaged in programs within the USDA. Now I can tell you whether we 
can get a decent insight into whether there are actual farming 
participants that are predominantly part of these Pigford settlements, 
the 14,500 that have received their first payments under the first 
version of Pigford I.
  If we can go back and look at all the data, check their name, 
address, contact information, the amount of the check that they got, 
how much got sent to the IRS, how much debt forgiveness there was, how 
much got sent to the IRS. And we can look down through there, and we 
can see what percentage of them had debt with the USDA that was written 
off.
  And then we can take a look at the addresses and see--some of those 
who have analyzed this more deeply than I would tell me that if you 
take out a map of the United States and start down through these 
applications and start sticking pins in the map at the addresses of the 
applications, you will find that many of these pins go directly into 
the inner cities and into the urban areas of America.
  It's true that people can move from the farm to the city. They have 
been doing that for a long time. But the preponderance of the pins tell 
a story that doesn't appear to be consistent with the allegations of 
the depth and the level of fraud that they say are there.
  I sat down with USDA employees. I have had these applications handed 
to me. I have had them come back sick at heart that they had to 
administer these settlements in Pigford farms and tell me that they 
believe that the minimum fraud level in the applications that they were 
required to provide a virtually automatic payment for, a minimum fraud 
being at 75 percent. I hear numbers from USDA employees that dealt with 
more application of this that go into the upper 90th percentile.
  I want to look at these numbers and see. It's amazing to me that we 
can have 22,000 applicants, 14,500 settlements, payments that are made, 
and throughout all that time not have a single USDA employee that has 
been fired or disciplined or even identified as a perpetrator of 
discrimination. If we really care about ending discrimination in 
America--and we may have actually cleaned up the USDA, I don't allege 
that's the case today. In fact, I would argue that it wasn't nearly as

[[Page H7848]]

bad as they would like to have us believe.
  And so if a discrimination took place, we should have been able to 
identify the perpetrators, and they should have been punished. And I 
think that it's irresponsible on the part of the secretaries of 
Agriculture, who have supported this Pigford settlement, to also say I 
can find not just 22,000 people that will apply; now we have 
applications and an additional 70,000 or so.
  Now we are looking at applications in Pigford II of as many as 94,000 
altogether, an additional 70,000 or so, 72,000 added to the 22,000 
original claimants. And we end up with a total number of claimants of 
94,000 who say that they were discriminated against. That's a really 
effective and efficient marketing result on the part of the attorneys 
that have been set up on these contingency fees and who are charged by 
the consent decree, the original consent decree, of holding these town 
hall meetings and getting the word out to African American farmers so 
they know if they have been discriminated against they can apply.
  Again, no proof required that they were discriminated against. Early 
on they were required to prove that they were denied benefits compared 
to a similarly situated white farmer, and they complained that that was 
too hard. So they waived that similarly situated, and it turned out 
then there is no proof required that they ever farmed or applied for a 
program; they just have to say they wanted to farm, and that they 
believe they were or would have been discriminated against, and that 
they complained about it, and have their friends sign their affidavit.
  That's what up: 94,000 applications all together. Perhaps a few less, 
but these are the estimates I am working with: 94,000 applications. 
John Boyd, President of the National Black Farmers Organization that 
has pushed on this and actually was formed for the purpose of bringing 
forth the Pigford Farms issue, testified before the Judiciary Committee 
that there are 18,000 black farmers in America, 18,000.
  Now, granted there were more a generation earlier. There were more 
farmers a generation earlier. A lot of my neighbors went broke. I 
burned and buried a lot of farm sites across western Iowa in those 
years as the farm crisis went into its downward spiral, and there were 
people there that carried debt. There were people that were out of debt 
that took on debt in order to stay in business.
  And as the downward spiral came, the value of their land went down, 
their machinery went down. The commodities prices weren't there for 
their crops, and bank after bank closed. And, in fact, my bank closed 
April 26, Friday afternoon, 3 o'clock, 1985. I will never forget that 
day.
  I had a company to run, I had customers, most of whom were also 
customers of the bank that was closed--two branches shut down--a 
payroll to meet. I had 2 pennies in my pocket, literally 2 pennies to 
rub together, just almost a symbol of how hard it was. Rub those two 
pennies together and hope and wish and work and pray to figure out how 
I could meet payroll with my employees, keep the business running, find 
some customers that could pay because I had my customers, all their 
accounts were frozen like mine was frozen.

  We found a way to get through. It was difficult. But I watched that 
crisis hit, not just the bank closing in my neighborhood, all across 
the Midwest, especially. I watched it crush people. I watched family 
farms move off and load their things and move to the city.
  So some of those pins that get stuck in the city are pins of people 
that were on the land that had to move off in the farm crisis here. But 
my point is this: That thousands of farmers went broke during the farm 
crisis years of the 1980s. The entire decade of the 1980s--actually 
starting in 1979 and flowing through, were farm crisis years.
  These are the primary years where they alleged discrimination against 
black farmers. And where it took place, it's hard to quantify because 
its laid over the top of the disaster of the farm crisis years of the 
entire decade of the 1980s. Many people went broke. Many people were 
denied farm program benefits and loan programs. There were many that 
were not viable, and the USDA concluded that they couldn't work with 
them because they were going to go under.
  They were already upside down. And to put good money after bad was 
not a good decision, not when things were spiraling downwards.
  I saw banks close, new owners come in. I saw them interview the 
people that would come in with their loan application form, their 
financial statements. And I saw them go down through the financial 
statements. I mean I was a part of this, and I engaged with my 
neighbors that were going through this as I was.
  As they would look at the assets and they would say, let's see. You 
have got this nice new combine here. Well, you are going to sell it. 
And you have a pretty nice pickup that's 2 years old, we are going to 
sell it. And by the way all the livestock that's here, you know, it 
could die or get sick, but it's very liquid. It can go to the sale barn 
this week. We will sell all of that.
  And you won't need that feed so you can auction off all that hay you 
have got there for the cattle that are in the feedlot, you can sell 
them. And you don't need the horse, and you don't need your best 
tractor. We can get you down to a small tractor, and you can hire 
somebody to come in and custom combine, and you can borrow your 
neighbor's planter, and we will keep you on some of this land. We will 
take the mortgage on it. We will take a first and a second mortgage on 
it, and we will keep you operating for a little while, but you are 
going to work for the bank.
  Now I am not picking on the bank; that's what they had to do to keep 
some of these people alive and keep them functioning. That's part of 
the farm program, or that is part of the crisis. The farm program did 
come in, and it was helpful in 1983. It gave us another boost in 1985. 
It got us through that decade, and now we are relatively prosperous 
compared to those years.
  But whatever color you were, if you were farming in the 1980s, you 
were having trouble. And a lot of people went under, there was farm 
sale after farm sale. I remember the bills hanging up, the sale bills 
hanging up in the gas stations around, in the sale barn, where there 
would be farm auctions.
  You could go to farm auctions, several of them a weekend every 
weekend, and we did that for a long time, and it hurt a lot. And I saw 
tears run down people's cheeks because they were standing on the land 
that had been homesteaded by their ancestors, and they were losing it. 
And it was their identity. It's who they were.
  So I know, I know from personal experience how painful this is to go 
through those years. And to completely discount that component of the 
economy and argue that a lot of African American farmers that went 
under in the 1980s would still be farming today if it hadn't been for 
the discrimination in the USDA offices, it denies the starkest facts of 
the economy altogether. But they can't be untangled; they are tangled 
together. It's impossible to quantify.

                              {time}  2010

  And so the leftists in the country have decided they're just going to 
pay everybody that applies. That's what Pigford I was. And there was a 
deadline. It was filed on April 14, 1999. So you get 6 months for 
everybody to sign up and go out and have all these meetings, do your 
fish fries, meet in the churches, advertise on the radio, in the 
newspaper, wherever you can, and hold all these town hall meetings. And 
they held them--42 of them in Alabama alone, 42 meetings. And people 
signed up. When the deadline came 6 months after that April 14 date, 
then they found they had things so ginned up there were a lot of other 
applicants.
  So even though $1.05 billion was paid out under this Pigford 
discrimination claim, there were Members of the House and the Senate 
that introduced legislation to open up a second one, Pigford II. And 
they tried to do it, but they didn't get it done. This Congress 
wouldn't buy it. We had already seen the level of fraud in Pigford I, 
and to open it up again and extend the closing deadline for the consent 
decree so that all of these other applicants could come pouring in, 
this roughly 70,000, at least 66,000 that had accumulated, wasn't 
bought by this House and Senate in the same form. It bounced back and 
forth. It passed in a couple of versions on one side or the other, but 
this Congress never got together on

[[Page H7849]]

that, never got together on the authorization to extend the date.
  We did get together on one thing, Mr. Speaker. We got together on the 
2008 farm bill to address Pigford in a way that the House and the 
Senate agreed, and the President signed it. It was brought forward here 
on the floor, right over there from that microphone, by the chairman of 
the Agriculture Committee, Collin Peterson, a late amendment of 
language that came into the bill, into the farm bill that we worked on 
for a long time. And it's a hard job to bring a farm bill through this 
Congress. And I'm sure that the weight of that weighed a little on the 
chairman and weighed on all of us, more on him than on anybody else. It 
had to have. But I argued with him at the time, the language in the 
farm bill authorizes $100 million to close the Pigford issue so that if 
there were any remaining claims that had not been resolved, they would 
be put underneath the $100 million amount, and they would all be 
resolved.
  I argued, Mr. Chairman, you are opening up Pigford for an additional 
$1.3 billion in liabilities. And it's full of fraud. And I sat way into 
the night in a markup on the farm bill with a representative of the 
USDA who had lived this and went down through anecdote after anecdote, 
circumstance after circumstance, and convinced me completely that 
there's a very, very high level of fraud that was taking place. But yet 
the structure of this settlement was such that they couldn't look into 
the fraud because you didn't have to meet the standard of being 
discriminated against; you just had to say you believe you were 
discriminated against.
  So we had our debate, Chairman Peterson and I, outside the record of 
this Congress actually. I said it's $1.3 billion; this is a placeholder 
and a marker that opens up the door for $1.3 billion. He said, no, $100 
million puts an end to it. And that's what we're doing. We're cleaning 
it up, and we're putting an end to Pigford. And I said, I don't think 
so. We went around on that dialogue which ended with him walking away. 
I don't know if I blame him for that.
  But here is what's in the bill. He says the maximum amount, farm bill 
2008, H.R. 2419, the total amount of payments and debt relief pursuant 
to actions commenced under subsection B shall not exceed $100 million. 
That's what the chairman said. And here is the intent, intent of 
Congress as to the remedial nature of the section. It is the intent of 
Congress that this section be liberally construed so as to effectuate 
its remedial purpose of giving a full determination on the merits for 
each Pigford claim previously denied that determination.
  In other words, if there are 66 or 70,000 applicants out there that 
didn't get in before Pigford closed in October of 1999, if those 
Johnny-come-latelies wanted to pour their applications into this, this 
Congress said, here is $100 million, that's it, it's going to take care 
of all the claims and no more; this is the end by law. This is the 
section that's cited by the current Secretary of Agriculture that he 
says gave him the authority at the direction of Congress, actually, 
acting at the direction of Congress to open up and create a Pigford II 
settlement where he, Secretary Vilsack and Attorney General Eric Holder 
sat down with John Boyd, the head of the black farmers organization, 
and they cooked up Pigford II, not authorized by the House and the 
Senate and the President as would be required if he's going to act in 
the fashion that he told me, in fact, not authorized at all, $100 
million cap put on this Pigford I to put an end to it. By the way, I 
disagreed with $100 million. I thought we went too far with the first 
$1.05 billion.
  But in any case, there exists no authorization that came from 
Congress and no legislation that was passed by the Congress and signed 
by the President that gave the authority to the Secretary of 
Agriculture and the Attorney General to sit down with the head of the 
black farmers organization and arrive at an agreement early last year 
in February that would tap the taxpayers for an additional $1.15 
billion. But that's what they agreed to. They went on their own and had 
these negotiations.
  Now, where would this inspiration have come from? If Congress said 
it's capped at $100 million, how would Cabinet members, full Cabinet 
members, come to a conclusion that they needed to go sit down with John 
Boyd and tap the taxpayers for an additional $1.15 billion? Where would 
this come from?
  Well, Mr. Speaker, I will tell you where I think it may come from, 
and that would be from the President of the United States who, as a 
United States Senator, introduced the Pigford II language that opened 
up the filings for a second round of Pigford claims as the United 
States Senator, led by Barack Obama, and over on this side led by Artur 
Davis of Alabama and Bobby Scott of Virginia.
  They pushed that. They tried to push it through the Judiciary 
Committee. It didn't go. They slipped it into the farm bill at $100 
million. They got their placeholder. Now I ask you, Mr. Speaker, who 
was right? Who was right? Was it Steve King or Tom Vilsack or was it 
Collin Peterson? Because we are here today lamenting what happened on 
the House floor yesterday, which was a vote to send $1.15 billion 
additional into this Pigford II settlement that I will tell you even 
though they have put some provisions in here still result in--still 
result in a virtually automatic payment to those claimants that will 
come. That's what will happen, Mr. Speaker.

  And so the chairman of the Agriculture Committee that said this is 
the end of it at $100 million, who would he disagree with? Tom Vilsack 
or Steve King? I'm sure he remembers the conversation. I'm sure he 
remembers that I said it's 1.13 billion, and this is just a placeholder 
that opens it up, this $100 million is a placeholder that opens it up. 
We disagreed we had that conversation. One of us is going to be right.
  Did he know when he brought the language to this floor that $100 
million was going to turn out to be a placeholder for $1.25 billion? 
That's $100 million plus the $1.15 billion. Did he know that? Or was 
the chairman of the Agriculture Committee apparently was he misinformed 
by someone else? Did the President of the United States direct his 
Cabinet members to go negotiate and reach an agreement for an 
additional payout under Pigford II of $1.15 billion? Where would it 
come from? Would the Secretary of Agriculture take it upon himself if 
he could have ended this to open it up again? I don't think so. Would 
the Attorney General take it upon himself to open this up if it was 
ended by the farm bill of 2008? I don't think so.
  I think the American people, Mr. Speaker, will suspect, as I do, that 
since the President was the initiator of this Pigford II legislation as 
a United States Senator, it was the President of the United States more 
likely to order his Cabinet members to go sit down and negotiate with 
the president of the black farmers organization and then try to figure 
out how to get Congress to fund it. Because the deal, the settlement 
proposal, and it's not a consent decree, a judge hasn't ruled upon it, 
a settlement proposal was something that was agreed to be contingent 
upon, conditional to Congress appropriating the funds to pay.
  Well, last night Congress did that by a vote of 256-152. Now, if I 
were completely wrong on this--remember, this is a repudiated Congress. 
This is the lame duck Congress. This is the Congress that the American 
people have said enough already, shut it off. Take the shovel out of 
the President's hand; he's dug a deep enough hole. Stop your spending. 
We're going to send people to the Congress that will do the battle for 
fiscal responsibility and stop spending.

                              {time}  2020

  Those folks have not arrived yet, those 87 new freshmen Republicans 
who will be here taking the oath of office on this floor on January 4, 
2011. They are not here yet, so we have the old troika ruling. We have 
the old troika ruling, and still, still we produced 152 ``no'' votes on 
this Pigford funding of $1.15 billion that came through here yesterday.
  Mr. Speaker, I will tell you that I believe that all 152 who voted 
``no'' on that either deeply suspect or are convinced that there was a 
significant amount of fraud in Pigford I, and that the fraud in Pigford 
II will be substantially greater than it was in Pigford I because 
those, at least in theory, who were most discriminated against are the 
ones most likely to have filed the

[[Page H7850]]

application in Pigford I in a timely fashion. Those who got the news 
late, once the inertia of the recruitment went on across the South, 
they are the ones who lined up a little later. It is kind of a chain 
letter effect.
  There were 152 who voted ``no.'' It was a bipartisan objection to the 
funding of Pigford. It wasn't all Republicans this time. By Speaker 
Pelosi's definition, it would be clearly bipartisan. There were three 
Democrats who voted ``no.'' Those Democrats, I presume, were making a 
statement that they believed either that those who had been 
discriminated against had been compensated or were making a statement 
against the fraud that they must believe exists. I have not talked to 
them so I can't take a position as to what they believed and why they 
voted ``no.''
  But it is curious to me that two of the three Democrats who voted 
``no'' on Pigford were two that were defeated in the last election. So 
one can presume that they are votes of conscience that they put up on 
their way home from this Congress. I thank them for their service to 
this country. We have one that won his election who is seated from the 
South who also voted ``no.'' I would like to hear from him. He happens 
to be a Rhodes Scholar, a man with a brain and a conscience that voted 
``no.''
  So now it is up to us here in this upcoming Congress to take a look 
at these records, to go down and compile the spreadsheet and analyze 
the data and interview the people that were involved in administering 
this to get a real picture of what was going on. I am very well aware 
there are good, solid people who are responsible constitutional 
conservatives who don't want to touch this. I am very well aware of 
that, Mr. Speaker, but we have an obligation to the American people to 
shine a light on this. And I intend to move forward to do that within 
the limitation of the time and the resources and the cooperation I am 
able to get in the 112th Congress.
  There has been a massive amount of fraud defined to me in the 
interviews I have done with USDA employees. To the extent, as I said, 
that African American employees of the Farm Service Administration who 
worked within the offices, presumably if they worked there, they would 
not allow themselves to be discriminated against. And if they never 
farmed and never filed an application but received a check anyway, it 
is pretty clear that there is levels of fraud that need to be exposed.
  And so, Mr. Speaker, there is much to be said about Pigford II. It is 
not a consent decree. There is only an agreement that has been 
negotiated between Tom Vilsack and Eric Holder and John Boyd. They have 
negotiated that agreement. They have negotiated the amount. They have 
succeeded in getting it past the Senate after the Senate reached a 
point of exhaustion in fighting it. That is my reports from some of the 
Senators over there. They did pass it through the House after 
vociferous objections, 256 to 152, but with bipartisan objection; 
southern Democrats voting ``no,'' not urban but southern Democrats 
voting ``no.''
  It is on its way and we are pretty sure the President will sign it 
because, after all, it has been his baby since he was in the United 
States Senate. It is really odd that a man from Chicago would take such 
an interest in an issue that he can't have personal experience with, 
not having personal experience that we know of in the rural areas.
  And here we are, Mr. Speaker, anticipating the President will sign 
it. When he does, if and when he does, then I believe they will take it 
before the same judge that started out the Pigford I opinion with these 
words, ``40 acres and a mule,'' and laments that he can't fix all of 
the problems of slavery and segregation in one class action suit. Well, 
he has got a second one now. It is likely to come to him. I am pretty 
sure Judge Friedman will approve this. And I am really confident that 
the Secretary of Agriculture, and if you can get the Attorney General 
to speak, will say that they put all kinds of safeguards in here, 
safeguards like lawyers have to sign off. Yeah, well, they had to sign 
off on the first one, too, and that didn't really resolve this issue. 
It is just to the best of their knowledge they think it is true. That 
is not a very strong statement. There is no requirement for evidence. 
They did put some language in there that allows the administrators, if 
they think there is fraud, to ask more questions and require more 
documentation. Okay. But if they are instructed not to think there is 
fraud, they will not find fraud.

  This administration does not think there is fraud or they would be 
looking for it. It is amazing to me--18,000 black farmers, 94,000 
claims. Even if you presume that 100 percent of the black farmers were 
discriminated against, we still have four and a half claims for every 
black farmer. How does this work? It should be fraud. It can't be 
described any other way.
  And the percentages of these claims, there is no question that comes 
out of this administration, out of the White House or the Department of 
Agriculture or the Attorney General's office. They are not saying we 
are looking into the fraud. They are saying, if it exists, it is so low 
it is really not an issue. But we are going to satisfy your concerns by 
having an IG report come out in 6 months. The money is gone. You won't 
be able to get it back.
  If you want to learn something about how to protect against fraud in 
Pigford II, let's look at Pigford I. We already have the data. Let's 
dig into it. So what I think we have to do is dig into both. And we owe 
it to the American people not to be paying out 40 acres and a mule. You 
cannot right wrongs from a century and a half ago. But if they were 
righted, Abraham Lincoln told us how: For every drop of blood that was 
drawn by the lash be paid by a drop drawn by the sword. That's done. 
That is behind us. We have an American future. We can't be paying 
modern-day slavery reparations thinking we compensate what took place 
in the past. We have the future to worry about. Let's make sure 
everybody has equal opportunity and let's build for the future.
  I see my friend, the gentleman from Texas, Judge Gohmert has arrived. 
And when Judge Gohmert comes to the floor, I know that there is some 
real important input that the American people need to know, and so I 
yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. GOHMERT. My dear friend from Iowa has made some really important 
points. But it seems to be part of a pattern, what we have seen for the 
last 4 years, of the majority here in the House dividing America, 
playing class envy, trying to just really take--it is not Robin Hood, 
because Robin Hood took money back from people that stole it to give it 
back to the people who had actually generated the money. So I know 
there are some friends on the other side of the aisle who think that 
they are being a bit of Robin Hood, but they need to understand Robin 
Hood better. He didn't take from people who earned the money; he took 
from people who basically stole it and gave it back to people that 
generated it. And yet that is the kind of stuff we see going on.
  There is so much fraud in Medicare and there is so much fraud, waste, 
and abuse in the government itself. And yet still we hear this class 
envy being trumpeted. I know my friend from Iowa agrees 100 percent 
with me, if anybody in America makes more money, they should pay more 
income tax. If you had a flat income tax, that would be the case. You 
do have people like the renowned Warren Buffett who says he should pay 
more taxes. Many people like him pay less money in income tax than 
somebody making $30,000, $40,000 because they have all kinds of great 
ways of getting around having to pay taxes.
  But I just am so deeply grieved to my soul that this class envy that 
is being played up by people across the aisle to avoid helping the 
economy by giving some certainty to people who are wondering whether 
they will be able to afford to hire people right now when it comes 
January 1 because they know the capital gains rates are going up, every 
marginal rate is going up.

                              {time}  2030

  It is outrageous that we have played games for 2 years now--4 years 
under this majority--and we have done nothing to give certainty to 
employers so that people will not have to file suit to try to get a 
job. There will be jobs created because there is certainty out there.
  Most people who know about job creation know the old saying: 
``Capital is a coward. Capital goes to where it feels

[[Page H7851]]

safest.'' But to feel safe, investment money has to be placed where 
there is some certainty under the law. It is why it's not pouring into 
Mexico, because they don't know who is going to be in charge, who is 
going to be killed, who is going to be corrupted.
  So all that the community is needing to know is: Is there going to be 
some certainty? Are our taxes going to go through the roof come January 
1 as they are currently scheduled to do?
  The fact that this majority would play this kind of gamesmanship and 
class warfare when people are out of work--they need jobs, and they 
want to have a Merry Christmas. There would be no better Christmas than 
to have a job for Christmas, but we've got this tremendously high rate 
of unemployment, particularly when you figure those who are 
underemployed. Yet this majority, even now in December, is still not 
willing to just say across the board that we're going to not create tax 
cuts--that's not even out there--but just extend the current tax rate 
and say we're not going to play class warfare. Of course the people who 
make more money should pay more money in taxes. That's why their rate 
is 35 percent instead of 15 percent or 10 percent at the lowest rate.
  So it just grieves me. I know people who are out of work, and I know 
there are businesspeople I've talked to who say, I've got to find out 
what my taxes are going to be, what the tax rate will be for next year, 
because if it's going up, I can't hire anybody. If it's going to stay 
where it is, I can hire some people.
  Now, that's a Merry Christmas when you give people a job. You limit 
all the bogus class warfare going on in this body, and just say, Forget 
the games. This is too serious. We are playing with people's lives. We 
are tired with the gamesmanship about how we can squeeze more money out 
of the Federal Government. Forget the Federal Government. Just get out 
of the way so that we can create jobs in America and put people back to 
work.
  Still, unless my friend from Iowa knows differently, as far as I 
know, we're not taking it up, as we didn't on Monday. We congratulated 
some people. We, I think, named a post office, and we did a bunch of 
stuff yesterday--nothing, you know, breathtaking. With the Child 
Nutrition Act, we're going to run up the Federal Government costs.
  Why not give these people an opportunity to have a job so they can 
pay for their own nutrition?
  As far as I know, the tax extension, at the current rate across the 
board, is not coming up tomorrow. It may not come up Friday. We don't 
know when it's coming up.
  So, anyway, I have been grieved to my soul as I think about the 
people I know who don't have jobs and about the people I know who would 
hire people if they knew that the tax rates were not going up. I just 
had to point it out one more time to our friends across the aisle. 
Please don't leave another day leaving the tax rates in limbo. Give 
some certainty. Allow jobs to be created that are not government jobs.
  Perhaps you know when this is going to come up.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time and thanking the gentleman from 
Texas, also my friend, I appreciate the subject matter that you brought 
here to the floor tonight.
  I would add to this: not only do we need to continue the tax rates 
that we have today, but I would make them permanent so there is 
certainty, so that people can do the investments that Mr. Gohmert 
talked about and will be able to plan their businesses and create the 
jobs and plan for the future.
  But there is another one that hangs over the head of many families in 
America today, and that is the estate tax. That one is the most ominous 
of them all. If we aren't able to reach an agreement on these tax 
brackets by the end of this lame duck session and if we are just in the 
condition that we are in today in that there is no certainty and where 
the $1 trillion or $2 trillion of capital that is sitting on the 
sidelines doesn't get released and invested into our economy, that's 
bad. We've already seen a lot of months of it, so another month of it 
doesn't devastate us completely, although it would be a great Christmas 
present.
  I know people would be sitting around the family shop, figuring out, 
We can add onto this production line. Let's hire this person here. 
Let's make this part of our operation go. Let's open up a new business 
over here.
  These things would be going on. That would all happen if we could get 
these tax brackets made permanent between now and the end of this 
wounded, crippled lame duck session that we have of this repudiated 
Congress that has been renounced by the American people.
  Another month of it isn't as bad as what happens if we go another 
month with the estate tax hanging over our heads the way it is, because 
I will tell you that what will happen is there will be thousands of 
Americans who are lying on their death beds--some in hospices around 
the country, some in hospital beds, some of them lying at home--and 
there will be decisions made by them and their families.
  Somebody who is lying there, who has got some years on him and a lot 
of life behind him, knowing he doesn't have much ahead of him, will 
say, Don't put me on life support. Don't give me any life-saving 
treatment. Let me pass away in 2010 because, if that happens, then 
you'll get the full inheritance of my life's work.
  That's what he will say. He'll make that decision.
  He'll tell his loved ones, Don't extend my life. Don't give me extra 
ways to feed me. Don't give me IVs. Let me lie here. Put me in hospice 
now, and let me slowly die.
  That's what will be said over and over again.
  There will be those who will go further. There will be those who will 
decide they want to end their lives so that their children don't have 
to pay an onerous estate tax that will have, as of midnight on December 
31, a $1 million exemption. After that, there will be an up to 55 
percent tax on the balance.

  I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, how that works in the neighborhood where 
I live. Let's just say there is somebody there who is 90 years old, and 
he went out and bought some land early on in life, and he leveraged it 
and bought another piece of land. He slowly paid for that, and ended up 
with a couple sections of land paid for. That's 2 square miles. That's 
640 acres times two. That's 1,280 acres paid for. That's the nest egg 
that he worked all his life for. Maybe he worked 70 or more years to 
put that together. He paid the tax on the income, and retired the 
principal and paid the interest, and there it sits for his children. 
Maybe he has got five children there around that death bed.
  If he passes away in the first second of 2011--by the way, there will 
be death certificates that are backdated, too. They'll be back-timed, 
probably not backdated. They'll be back-timed past midnight so the 
estate tax won't apply. But let's just say there are two sections of 
land, five kids. He passes away in the first second of 2011, and the 
death certificate says so. Here is what happens to those two sections 
of land:
  The $1 million exemption doesn't really touch the value of those two 
good valuable sections of land, so you can take one section out of 
there. There's the 55 percent tax to pay the taxman, to pay the death 
tax. It takes one whole section of land, 1 square mile, to pay the 
Federal Government. The second component of that is the section of land 
that is split up five ways because of the five kids.
  So what they have is actually two sections of land--one that is 
essentially debt free because the other one has gone to pay the taxes, 
and it gets split five ways. Everyone has got 20 percent equity. They 
can't buy that land back and keep it in tact. It takes a long time to 
put a unit together, to put the building site together, to get the 
storage that's there for the grain and the livestock and all the pieces 
to work. It doesn't just work to go out there and say, Well, here's 
another piece of land that's the same or you can operate an operation 
that's half the size with only 20 percent equity. So it wipes out both 
sections of land. They sell out the whole legacy. A century of work or 
more goes out the window because we have a death tax that comes. The 
bell tolls on the death tax at midnight, December 31.
  It is cruel, unconscionable and, I think, a sin for this Congress not 
to address that before that time.
  So, Mr. Speaker, being very well aware of the clock and the duties 
that we all have here, I want to thank my friend from Texas for coming 
to the

[[Page H7852]]

floor and for volunteering that valuable input that we have.
  I appreciate your indulgence here this evening and the privilege to 
address you on the floor of the House of Representatives.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________