[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 161 (Wednesday, December 8, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H8255-H8261]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        IT'S NOT A ZERO-SUM GAME

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to address 
you here on the floor of the House of Representatives and the 
opportunity to express some things that are on my mind, perhaps while 
others are sleeping and perhaps while others are having trouble 
sleeping, for they see what happens around this Congress.
  I am very, very grateful to the C-SPAN cameras and the transparency 
that exists here in the House. And I think back those years now, maybe 
as far back as almost 20 years ago, maybe even more, when I sat in my 
living room, and I watched what was going on in this room. And I 
listened to the speeches, and I analyzed the presentations that came 
from the various Members of Congress on either side of the aisle.
  As I sat back, as an American who was busy building a business and 
creating jobs and meeting payroll for 1,440 consecutive weeks, trying 
to build capital where there was none that existed and shape that 
together so that we could take care of the longevity of my family and 
that of the families of the people that I had hired that worked for me 
and did so well to help build the business with us all together, while 
all that was going on, I was watching what was going on in Washington, 
DC, in Des Moines, Iowa. And I saw and heard the voices of the people 
that came forward to tell America there was something wrong in this 
Congress. And as I listened to them, they inspired me. They inspired me 
to get more involved in public life, to get engaged in politics, that 
there were a lot of decisions that were being made in this city and in 
the capital cities in the States across the land that were affecting 
the very lives of the American people down into their families. And a 
lot of folks didn't know it. They weren't paying attention.
  So I started to pay attention. And from those years forward, I saw 
what was going on. The irresponsible spending that was taking place and 
the dysfunctional Congress that had rolled itself up into a point where 
it no longer represented the American people, but it seemed to exist 
for its own purposes and not for the purposes of serving the American 
people. And as this unfolded, personalities that were here on the 
floor--Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey and a number of others that stand 
out in my mind and cause me to think that I might be able to make a 
contribution at some level, whether that be the State level or the 
Federal level--but they convinced me that there was a broad 
philosophical disagreement in America. And on the one side of the 
aisle, you have people that believe in growing government, that 
government is the solution and that higher taxes are necessary in order 
to fund this growing government. And if there's a problem that exists 
out there, even if it's for a single individual, there is somebody over 
on this side of the aisle that will try to pass a law to fix that 
problem for a single individual, and government grows. And they won't 
look at empirical data, by the way.
  I offer study after study, and they turn a blind eye to those 
studies. They simply want to try to reach out and touch people's 
heartstrings and tell the anecdote, the single anecdote. And with 300 
million people, we always have someone who got the short end of the 
stick. That's this side of the aisle. The case of the people with the 
``poor me's,'' the ones that think that these greedy capitalists are 
victimizing the poor proletariat, and that it's a zero-sum game, and 
the glass is half empty, and it would have been maybe three-quarters or 
maybe, let me say, it would have been not as empty as half empty if 
these people that went out and got out of bed and went to work every 
day and produced something hadn't been taking from that glass. It might 
have been full from them, they wouldn't have had to do anything.
  But truthfully, Mr. Speaker, it's not a zero-sum game. And anybody 
that thinks their glass is half empty, their resolution of that is to 
go to government and ask government to tax the person whose glass has 
got the same level in it. But theirs, over here on this side, this is 
the half full side of the

[[Page H8256]]

aisle. These are the people that believe and understand that it's not a 
zero-sum game, that this is a growing economy, that we don't have all 
of this capital that we have in the United States of America because it 
was a zero-sum game. We built things. We produced goods and services 
that had a marketable value to each other, yes, and to the rest of the 
world, certainly. We exported a lot of that, and America became more 
wealthy, and we developed our skills.
  This idea of a zero-sum game that's over here on the Democrat side of 
the aisle, Mr. Speaker, is a self-defeating philosophy from which you 
could never build a great Nation. It's already a self-defeating 
philosophy. If you get up every day and you think you have a bad case 
of the ``poor me's,'' and somebody is out there working industriously 
and taking from this pool that you have some right to for not earning 
it--if you have that attitude, you're not going to be contributing to 
the whole. And our job--and it should be our job on both sides of the 
aisle--is to increase the average annual productivity of all of our 
people.
  Now, it doesn't mean that we won't have some people who aren't 
producing at all. Some can't, and we need to take care of them. Some 
won't, and they need to take care of themselves. And some aren't doing 
enough, and they need to do more. But if we increase our overall 
productivity, that increases our average annual productivity, that 
increases our gross domestic product, that strengthens us economically. 
It puts us in a position where we're no longer borrowing 41 cents out 
of every dollar we spend from somebody--often the Chinese. It puts us 
in a position where we can balance a budget. And, by the way, the 
people that are out there working and producing every day, every 
working day, at least--and hopefully taking Sunday off to worship--
those folks aren't putting pressure on government for services.

                              {time}  2250

  They just say, Take the taxes you have to take from me and don't take 
any more than you have to take, and leave me otherwise alone. I will 
take care of myself and my family. That's the American spirit. That's 
the American way. It's part of the American Dream.
  And so as I use that word, Mr. Speaker, ``dream,'' the American 
Dream, we saw a bill come across this floor today, turned through this 
system with lightning speed. Who says the House of Representatives 
can't move quickly if the Speaker of the House determines it shall move 
quickly? Let's take the word ``American'' off of it and call it the 
DREAM Act. They can't call it the American DREAM Act, because that 
would be a high level of hypocrisy. They just called it the DREAM Act, 
which we described as the nightmare act.
  This is an act that's been churning through the publics here for a 
good number of years. And what it is, it's designed to give a path to 
citizenship to young people that came into this country before their 
16th birthday, who have resided in the United States for perhaps as 
long as 5 years, who are willing to enter into an institution of higher 
learning or sign up for the military, and it would give them a path to 
citizenship, give them a green card right away. It would triple the 
number of green cards in America right away.
  And these young people, they were young maybe when they came here, 
but still it's an amnesty bill. And amnesty, to grant amnesty is to 
pardon immigration lawbreakers and reward them with the objective of 
their crime. Now, somebody comes into the United States illegally on 
the day before their 16th birthday, this DREAM Act gives them amnesty.
  We have lots of people that sneak across the border that aren't 16 
years old. Some of the accomplished coyotes are under 16 years old. 
Some of the accomplished drug smugglers are under 16 years old. You 
have got a murderer down in Mexico that was reported in the news who 
is--I will call him a serial contract killer that's just been arrested 
that apparently--I mean, it's alleged, and he is not yet convicted, 
that multiple times he has executed people in the drug wars, and he is 
14 years old.
  So this DREAM Act would give everybody that came into the United 
States illegally, whether it was on the first day of their life, 
perhaps they were born across the border and they came into the United 
States on the first day of their life and were nurtured here and went 
to school here, gives them--the result is an in-State tuition discount 
to go to college or perhaps go off to the military in the United States 
on a path to citizenship and the ability to bring all their families in 
on the family reunification plan. All of that offered to somebody that 
maybe was brought into the United States on the first day of their 
life.
  But it also is the same reward for somebody who came into the United 
States on their own illegally, as well, on the day before they were 16 
years old. And that's good up until such time as they are 30.
  So let's see. We can do the math on this. Fourteen years, and if this 
bill becomes law tomorrow, and it's possible, because it passed the 
House in lightning time. The Senate may or may not take it up. There is 
a cloture vote apparently that's scheduled. I don't think they have the 
votes. They should not have the votes.
  But in any case, if someone comes into the United States the day 
before their 16th birthday and this bill becomes law the day of their 
30th birthday, they would be covered under the DREAM Act. They would be 
able to apply for an application--that's presumed that they would have 
entered into an institution of higher learning. So you don't have to be 
going into a 4-year college to go off and become a brain surgeon. You 
could simply be entering into a tech school to become a plumber or an 
electrician or a barber or a beautician or whatever it might be that 
would be a 12-month study or more. Enter into it.
  You don't have to get a degree. You have to have a high school 
degree, which can be gotten. A GED can be picked up, and then you could 
have never gone to school. You could pick up your GED and then apply to 
go off to beautician school. Those things are all that's required, and 
you would get approval for your permit that would give you immediately 
a green card, access to the welfare system, and the ability down the 
line in a little ways to bring in, through family reunification, all 
your family members. They could number in the scores, of your family 
members, all come in. This reward for somebody that next week might 
turn 30.
  And the chairman of the Judiciary Committee tells me never fear, 
because they have good background checks and they have good, solid 
biometrics that they are using--checking out his word here--biometric 
information that's there with a good background check with the FBI 
doing this good background check, Mr. Speaker.
  Well, I will tell you that it doesn't do lot of good to ask the FBI 
to do a background check on somebody that came into this country before 
or after their 16th birthday that doesn't have a legal existence in 
their home country. If they were not born in a hospital in Mexico, for 
example, it's almost all the time there is no birth certificate. And 
about half of the time they are not born in hospitals.
  So with no birth certificate, there is often not a record of their 
existence. And they could be anybody saying they were anybody coming 
here, declaring that they came here at any time without a record to 
back it up. All the way to 30. And they will say, well, I came into the 
United States. My parents brought me in against my will the day before 
my 16th birthday, and next week I am going to be 30. I am qualified. I 
am signing up. And they will give them protection under the DREAM Act.
  That's what they have passed off the floor of the House of 
Representatives tonight. It is a reward for lawbreaking. And it isn't 
for kids alone. These are old kids, a lot of them. Old kids that are in 
their twenties, kids that are in their thirties, kids that will perhaps 
be as near as--very close to or even possibly in their forties by the 
time that they would receive the citizenship that's promised to them 
under this DREAM Act.
  Would we do something like that? Mr. Speaker, Thomas Jefferson once 
said that large initiatives should not be advanced on slender 
majorities. Well, this was a slender majority here tonight. It came 
very close. The vote was tied up on the rule, within one vote for a 
long time. There were 37 Democrats voted ``no'' on the rule.

[[Page H8257]]

Thirty-eight Democrats voted ``no'' on the bill, almost all of them 
Blue Dogs.
  A lot of the Blue Dogs have been defeated in the election last 
November 2, and they are here for this week and next week. And for most 
of them, and possibly all of them, it will be the last time they serve 
in the United States Congress. And most of them are pretty good people, 
and they were pushed into this hardcore leftist agenda by Speaker 
Pelosi. They had that San Francisco agenda shoved at them over and over 
again--to use the Speaker's expression, I believe it was--made them 
walk the plank.
  Well, the Speaker tried to get the Blue Dogs to walk the plank one 
more time tonight on this DREAM Act, this not aptly named, the wrongly 
named nightmare named the DREAM Act. It's a nightmare act. Tried to get 
the Blue Dogs to walk the plank, and they said ``no.'' They said ``no'' 
in numbers of 37 on the rule, 38 on the bill, because they are not 
going to go out of this town having handed the Speaker another victory 
that goes contrary to the best wishes of America and contrary to the 
American Dream.
  Now, I believe in an immigration policy that's designed to enhance 
the economic, social, and cultural well-being of the United States of 
America. I believed that for a long time. And I think that American 
leadership has believed that, perhaps not articulated that the same 
way, but believed that for a long time.
  And I reflect upon my grandmother coming over here through Ellis 
Island. And as I went through that tour at Ellis Island, it would be 
about 4 years ago--not quite--3\1/2\, I learned a good number of 
things. They gave everybody a very quick once-through physical. They 
watched them walk. They watched how they moved. If anybody was 
obviously pregnant, they put them back on the boat. If there were 
people that weren't good physical specimens, they went back on the 
boat. If they had signs of disease, back on the boat. If they had signs 
of not being mentally stable, back on the boat.
  They screened them before they got on the boat in Europe and looked 
them over and gave them all those same kind of tests before they even 
let them board, because the United States of America, even at the 
height of our immigration heyday, at the peak of Ellis Island--in fact, 
the peak of Ellis Island was April 15, 1905--excuse me. I have got to 
get this year right. Think about it. April 15, 1907, when they had the 
largest processing of legal immigrants in the history of the country 
poured through Ellis Island on that day. April 15, 1907, 11,557 were 
brought through into the United States across the floors on the Great 
Hall.

                              {time}  2300

  On average, you could do the math, cut it down 2 percent, went back 
on the boat and went back to Europe, wherever they came from, because, 
they didn't meet the standards. Even though they had been screened 
before they got on the ship, they were screened before they could get 
off Ellis Island. And I don't know how many were screened out before 
they boarded, but I do know that 2 percent got sent back.
  Why do we do that? Because we had it in the immigration system that 
was designed for America. It was designed to improve the economic, 
social and cultural well-being of the United States of America. Because 
we believed in something then that the folks on this side of the aisle 
believe today.
  We believe, and I believe, in American exceptionalism. We are an 
extraordinary country, Mr. Speaker. We are extraordinary for a lot of 
reasons.
  There are a series of pillars of American exceptionalism, beautiful 
marble pillars, stable, solid pillars that have been carefully cut and 
hewn and polished and our Founding Fathers understood that and they set 
them in place. And I think God moved the Founding Fathers around like 
men upon a chess board to shape this Nation.
  When I look out across the world, and I think down through the 
heritage of nation after nation, and I look for a country that has a 
history that's even similar to the history of the United States--and I 
don't mean that as far as the chronology of the events that took place, 
the wars, the depressions, those things that happen--the foundation of 
our country. The foundation of the United States of America is 
absolutely and completely and utterly unique to any of that in the 
world.
  If you look over the last 250 years or so, the most successful 
institution in the world, part of it, has really been our religious 
institutions. But arguably the most successful institution has been the 
nation state, nation states that emerged out of city states when they 
were merged together.
  What did they come from? Peoples that had a common language banded 
together from city states into nation states and that's what brought 
about all of the myriad of nation states in Western Europe, for 
example. That's what has set up the boundaries of our nations across 
the globe.
  If you speak Russian, you lived in Russia. If you speak German, you 
lived in Germany. It's not true, Mr. President, if you speak Austrian, 
you don't actually have--no one speaks Austrian. But if you speak 
German in Austria, chances are you are home. And Czech in 
Czechoslovakia and the list goes on. French in France, Spanish in 
Spain--it's not too implicated when you think about it.
  But why do we have the nation states? Because people with a common 
interest, commonalities, banded together, protected their interests, 
defended their boundaries and their borders and made sure they took 
care of each other and they built their nation states.
  England, you speak English. United Kingdom, they spread their 
language throughout the United Kingdom all the way into Asia and out 
into the Pacific and over to the Americas. They believed in their 
culture and they did glorious things for the world. Wherever the 
English language went, freedom accompanied the language.
  But still no nation has been founded upon these principles of liberty 
and freedom like the United States of America. And you could say that 
we had a continent that needed to be settled, and you could argue that 
it was the quirk of history that brought this about, but, Mr. Speaker, 
it's far more unique than that.
  If we look around and we could think South America was a continent to 
be settled, so was Central America. And what's the difference between 
the United States and Canada? I could give you a few, they are pretty 
close to us.
  And then we could roll our vision down to Australia and see a 
continent there that's about the size of the United States that had to 
be settled, settled with a Western European influence. Still, they 
don't have the rights, they don't have the liberty that Americans have. 
The dynamics of their country, however good they are, they have been 
very good to us as allies, don't match that of the United States.
  The things that bless this country are completely unique. We are 
founded on a core of our Judeo-Christian principles. The settlers that 
came here came here for freedom of speech and religion, freedom to 
worship as they saw fit. They wanted to get away from King George, and 
they wanted to come to a place where they could be free to worship God 
in their way.
  It's true that Old English common law and these concepts of Western 
Civilization and the English-speaking component of the age of 
enlightenment were established there in old England. And that old 
English common law arrived here in the New World.
  In fact, there is a plaque down here at Jamestown, Virginia, I think 
I will get the year right, and may well have been 1607, or really close 
to that--that old English common law arrived in the New World, 
Jamestown, Virginia just down the coastline here a ways. All those 
things, gifted to this Nation, blessed this Nation, made us unique, is 
American exceptionalism.
  And the rights that emerged in the Bill of Rights, freedom of speech, 
religion, the press, freedom to peaceably assemble and petition the 
government for redress of grievances, the right to keep and bear arms 
shall not be infringed, the Fifth Amendment property rights, the right 
to be protected from double jeopardy, the concept of federalism that 
pushes those rights, rights of government that are granted to 
government by the people and rights that come from God. Now those are 
new concepts. Those concepts still don't exist in the world in the way 
they do here in the United States.
  So when we get into these debates where people want to undermine the

[[Page H8258]]

rule of law and tell me that their version of compassion is worth 
risking these beautiful marble pillars of American exceptionalism, that 
we ought to have enough compassion that we could just, for the moment, 
set aside these values that made this a great Nation. How can people 
think like that?

  The thing that we should protect the most is our core faith and these 
beautiful, marble pillars of American exceptionalism. We must protect 
them. That's our oath. We take an oath to uphold the Constitution of 
the United States. That's our commitment.
  You can't take an oath to a Constitution that's living and breathing. 
You can't take an oath to what some activist judge might decide it's 
going to be in a year or two or five or ten. The very last nine people 
on the planet that should be amending the United States Constitution 
are those nine Supreme Court justices. But occasionally they, in 
effect, do amend the Constitution. And I don't believe there should be 
anybody sitting on the bench that doesn't adhere to the deepest 
conviction that the Constitution means what it says and it means what 
it was understood to mean at the time of its ratification or the 
ratification of the succeeding amendments.
  That's what the Constitution is. It's a contract. It is a guarantee. 
And our Founding Fathers made it very clear, our rights come from God. 
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
  Our rights come from God, and the rights come to the people and the 
people grant the right to govern to their elected representatives and 
the Constitution guarantees us not a democratic form of government, not 
a democracy, as some would say. The United States Constitution 
guarantees us a Republican form of government, and I mean that as a 
representative form of government that's not designed to put our finger 
into the wind. It's designed to elect representatives who owe their 
constituents and everybody in this Nation their best effort and their 
best judgment, and we have to keep that oath to uphold the 
Constitution.
  These are just some of the foundational principles of this great 
Nation, and its concepts of American exceptionalism, which is at risk 
because of what we saw happen here tonight, the people that would 
undermine the rule of law and reward people for breaking it and give 
them a free college education at the expense of people who are having 
to pay for it and don't have the access to that benefit are undermining 
the rule of law. They are damaging the concept of American 
exceptionalism and rewarding the people that have undermined our rule 
of law itself, American exceptionalism, and it comes from these things 
that I said.
  They are the Bill of Rights, most of them. All of these rights, 
freedom of speech, religion, right to keep and bear arms, property 
rights, no double jeopardy. The list goes on. The Bill of Rights has 
most of them. It leaves a couple of them out.
  One of those is free enterprise capitalism, the ability to be able 
to--and I mentioned property rights, Fifth Amendment property rights. 
But the ability to own property and know that if you pay the property 
tax on that property, government can't come take it away from you and 
that the assets of that can be used as collateral to leverage, to 
invest in businesses and start jobs and do the things we choose to do.
  There are a myriad of individual decisions. That's another 
foundational concept. The free enterprise component of this, why is it, 
Mr. Speaker, why is it? At country after country, they don't form 
capital. They might start businesses, but they are in a little 
subsistence business where they are selling trinkets or selling snacks. 
But they are hand to mouth, getting by, not investing that capital, not 
building let's just say if you have the hot dog cart out there, they 
just go every day and sell the hot dogs.

                              {time}  2310

  But they're not turning it into a franchise. They're not building a 
restaurant, not building a chain of restaurants, not getting an idea on 
now I have all this equipment in here; I can start a stainless steel 
shop that will build all this restaurant equipment and market it to the 
world.
  Americans are full of ideas. We're a dynamic people. We're not 
suitable to live under any other form of government because we are a 
robust, vigorous society. And since I've gone through this list of 
reasons for American exceptionalism, and it's not exclusive, I have 
this other piece, Mr. Speaker, and it's this: Americans are full of 
vigor. We're the cream of the crop of every donor civilization on the 
planet that sent legal immigrants here. We're the cream of the crop.
  The reason we are, when I say ``we,'' I'm a descendant of, but the 
biggest reason we are is it was hard to get here, but there was a great 
reward that you could earn when you got here. And some people came here 
believing the streets were paved with gold, and others came here and 
paved their own streets with gold because there was room to achieve in 
the United States. And the people that came here had an extra vigor 
because their dream drove them to do that.
  And so there's a filter that's been set up worldwide. It sets up at 
the borders of the United States, this the sovereign Nation, with our 
borders, and you can't be a nation state if you don't have borders and 
you can't call them borders if you don't defend them. But our borders 
were set up and people had a hard time getting here and getting through 
the system.
  They had a hard time, like my grandmother, walking across the Great 
Hall at Ellis Island, and getting, being granted entrance into the 
United States of America, but they had vigor and they had a dream. They 
had things they wanted to build, and they didn't waste time. They 
didn't let grass grow under their feet. They went to work, and they 
committed themselves so much to this country, that they expected that 
the first one of my family that passed away here, the rest of them will 
be buried around her, and to a certain extent that seems to be the 
case. And I don't know the whole history of it and so I'm cautious 
about speaking it into the Congressional Record, Mr. Speaker. But I do 
know that my grandmother came here and sent some of her sons back to 
Europe to fight in the war against the fatherland. She was committed to 
America. She directed my father, who went to school, not speaking 
English, to never speak anything but English in the home so she could 
learn it because she said, I came here to become an American, and you 
shall go to school and learn English and bring it home and teach it to 
me.
  English needs to be the official language of the United States of 
America. A common language is what binds us together. And this vigor of 
Americans that comes from every country in the world and every walk of 
life, this unique vigor, because of this filter, kept the slackers out. 
The doers got here because it was hard to get here and it helped to be 
inspired by a dream, and they came.
  And so every donor civilization contributed to America, their vigor, 
the cream of their crop. And now here we are. We are--some people will 
disagree with this, but I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, we're a race of 
people. There is an American race of people. We're not just sometimes 
what we look like, all of these colors and different configurations of 
God's creation in his image. We're more than that. We're a lot more 
than that. We have common interests. We have a common bond. We've 
experienced a common history. We have common rights, common privileges 
and a common dream, and that's to leave the world a better place than 
it was when we came and pass it along to our children so they can do 
the same. It's in our culture. It's part of our being. It's who we are. 
We are a common race of people as far as looking at us as Americans, 
but we are uncommon as compared to the rest of the world because of all 
of these reasons that I have said.
  And we need to understand that. We need to understand what made us 
great. We need to preserve and protect and defend and polish those 
beautiful marble pillars of American exceptionalism. We need to 
understand what made us great and protect it and preserve it and 
enhance it.
  And these things that go on here in this House of Representatives, in 
this lameduck Congress still being driven by the repudiated majority, 
that can take a bill that they call the DREAM Act that's been rejected 
by the American people over and over again, at least in the polls and 
of those that understand what it is, and suspend the

[[Page H8259]]

proper function of this Congress and bring a bill like that to the 
floor, how?
  Well, here's the proper way first, Mr. Speaker, in case that's not 
something that you've had an opportunity to evaluate. The proper order 
is this: some Member of Congress comes in, writes up a bill, says I 
think we need this in the law of the land. They go down here and file 
the bill here at the well at the Clerk's location here at the well, and 
then that bill is referred to a committee. Now, if it gets enough legs, 
if it gets enough cosponsors on it where you think it has some 
substance, there can be a hearing before a subcommittee or two or three 
or four.
  The subcommittee then can take action on it and perhaps vote it and 
pass it into the full committee. The full committee can then hold one 
or two or three or four hearings also to inform all the other members 
of the committee. And they can then, when I say pass the bill, at each 
point of committee action it's an unlimited number of amendments that 
are germane and in order, but an unlimited number of amendments that 
can be offered to seek to perfect the legislation.
  That's how it's been set up. It's got to be set up in such a way that 
you can actually fix a bad bill before it gets to the floor. And so a 
bill that's introduced goes through a hearing and markup process in the 
subcommittee. Then it goes through a hearing and a markup process in 
the full committee. Then it goes up to the Rules Committee, the hole in 
the wall up here on the third floor, where sometimes they run into a 
little trouble because those folks don't work out in the light of day. 
They work sometimes at night. There's no television camera in there. 
Reporters don't go up there; they think it's a little boring and maybe 
it's not really news. If they'd come up there more often I might go up 
there and make some news, Mr. Speaker, because I think it would be nice 
to let the American people know what's going on.

  So then the Rules Committee passes a rule that sends the bill to the 
floor. Actually, it sends a rule to the floor. We debate on whether we 
want to accept the rule. If we vote the rule down, it goes back up to 
the Rules Committee and we say get it right and send it back to us 
again. So we deport the rule back up to the Rules Committee in the hole 
in the wall, just to keep it descriptive in my language, and they come 
back and try again. It doesn't happen very often that a rule comes 
down, but once a rule is there it sets the parameters by which we 
debate a bill.
  And our Speaker-designate Boehner has told the world, and I'm very 
glad that he has, that we are going to have far more transparency and 
far more open rules on our bills. So that allows Members to offer 
amendments and try to perfect this legislation. That's how it's 
supposed to work.
  So a bill would come to the floor, in theory, under an open rule that 
would allow any Member to offer an amendment, debate it here on the 
floor, force a vote, force a recorded vote, or require a recorded vote. 
I shouldn't use the word ``force.'' It should be a process that people 
in this Chamber are willing to go through and are actually eager to 
improve legislation that otherwise might not be as good as it can be.
  And then, once the amendments are all heard and voted on and 
resolved, then the bill can be certainly debated in its form, final 
form, and placed upon its passage or, if the House passes that 
legislation, we message it to the Senate, right down that hallway, and 
they either take it up or kill it. If they take it up, they go through 
a similar process. That's how it's supposed to work.
  The DREAM Act, this nightmare act, had an entirely different 
experience than I've just described, Mr. Speaker, because it didn't 
really exist in this House of Representatives anywhere in the form that 
it came to the floor today.
  It worked out like this: Speaker Pelosi decided that she wanted to go 
along with the majority leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, and they 
would force a vote on the DREAM Act, whether it could ever become law 
or not. And so, instead of going through the hearing process and the 
markup process, subcommittee, full committee up to the Rules Committee 
and down, they just went to the Rules Committee. At some 3 this 
afternoon, this bill that I don't know that anybody had an opportunity 
to read it before it was presented to the Rules Committee. I know that 
I didn't, but I maybe could have caught up with it a couple of hours 
earlier.
  In any case, all these versions floating around, nobody can figure 
out what's going to move. Down from the Speaker's office comes a bill, 
dropped into the Rules Committee. They take this up. A little e-mail 
goes out to some of our staff to let us know that they're going to be 
hearing testimony on the rule. No amendments allowed. Some Members, 
myself included, go to testify before the Rules Committee. We know 
they're going to say no to any suggestions that we make, including any 
amendments that we might try to offer, even though there wasn't really 
time to configure them upon notice.
  They report out a same day rule that says, this Congress is going to 
hear this bill right away. So the Rules Committee meets on a bill we 
haven't seen at 3 in the afternoon. A few hours later it's here on the 
floor for a vote on the rule. A few hours later it's here on the floor 
for 30 minutes of debate on this side, 30 minutes of debate on this 
side. And an amnesty bill that's twice the size of the 1986 amnesty 
bill passes off the floor of the House of Representatives.

                              {time}  2320

  Now it is messaged to the Senate where Harry Reid has asked for it. 
And this sunlight? This is a responsive Congress? No, this is an act of 
a Congress that has been repudiated for the same reasons. There is a 
reason why so many Democrats are going home. And I for one feel a 
little bad that some of the best are the ones who are going home. Some 
of the Blue Dogs are some of the best to work with. They reflect 
American values in my view more than a lot of the others. They have 
been defeated because of these kind of shenanigans, these kinds of 
tactics, these kind of acts that close the system down, lock the 
Members out so the franchise, and there are 435 Members of the House of 
Representatives, and there is not anybody who sits in these seats whose 
constituents deserve less representation than anybody else. Everybody's 
franchise deserves to be heard, and the will of the group should be 
brought up through the leadership and should be manifested in 
legislation here on the floor, sent to the Senate. If it comes back and 
it doesn't match, we should have our say as well. That is not what has 
been happening. The right way is around the corner--I think we take it 
up in January.
  But we Americans, we Americans that believe in American 
exceptionalism, we Americans who take an oath to uphold the 
Constitution, we Americans that adhere to and uphold the rule of law, 
which I believe is implicit in our oath to the Constitution, reject the 
idea of this nightmare act that I believe turned into an affirmative 
action amnesty act for 2 million or more people that could be tripled.
  And our immigration policy that we have here, Mr. Speaker, is already 
so bad. It doesn't reflect the best interest of America. It doesn't 
reflect the economic, social and cultural well-being or enhance it in 
the fashion I believe it should. Existing immigration law is set up in 
such a way that merit is almost out of the question. To evaluate the 
people coming across Ellis Island and turn 2 percent of them back after 
they had already been screened and filtered on the European side before 
they got on the ship tells you there was at least a merit system.
  But here in the United States, if you look at the legal immigration, 
and the legal immigration number will range up to 1.5 million a year, 
there is no country that is even close to as generous as we are with 
legal immigration. But of all of that, some place between, and this is 
testimony before the immigration committee, some place between 7 and 11 
percent of our legal immigration is based on merit. The balance of it 
is out of our control.
  So that means that between 89 and 93 percent of our legal immigration 
is in the hands of the people who are deciding they are going to come 
here rather than in the hands of Americans who would decide which 
people would come here. It is completely out of sync with the values of 
a lot of the other Western civilization countries like Canada, the 
United Kingdom, and Australia. They have immigration policies that are 
designed to bring the best people into

[[Page H8260]]

their country and not put burdens on the taxpayers and their society.
  I can't make the grade to go to Canada because I'm too old. I would 
be relying on the government to feed me too soon, and my education 
level is not high enough. I don't know about my years left to work, but 
you put it into the score system they have, I can visit but I cannot go 
live. That is how they would be. So if they reject Steve King in 
Canada, we should be able to say no to some folks that want to come to 
the United States, especially those who broke our laws.
  This legislation, this DREAM Act, this nightmare act, has a number of 
things in it that the American people need to know. It is a hardcore, 
leftist, liberalism piece of amnesty legislation. It provides for 
protection for people who have broken the laws in this way: They would 
still get a DREAM Act registration that would protect them from 
deportation even if they had been alien absconders, people that were 
set for deportation hearings and skedaddled and didn't show up, those 
people who were going to be adjudicated for deportation, alien 
absconders, they will be protected. They can sign up under DREAM, and 
then they are shielded from being prosecuted and deported. Even if they 
were an alien absconder, even if they were guilty of document fraud, no 
problem, we will give you a college education, sit you at a desk. If 
you have false claims of being a United States citizen, that is no 
problem either. You are still eligible under the DREAM act. We will 
give you a college education, too, even though you have lied about your 
citizenship. Even aliens who have been deported who would sneak back 
into the United States and the deportation records are there, they sign 
up for the DREAM, they will not be deported either. What a reward.
  So there will be all kinds of people who will sneak into the United 
States who will go ahead and sign up right away for this DREAM Act 
because they will be protected from deportation. Even though it 
requires that they be no older than 30 at the time of enactment and 
that they came into the United States before their 16th birthday and 
they have been here for 5 years, who is to know? Who is know whether it 
is valid or whether it isn't? Who is to know how old they are if they 
don't have a real birth certificate? Who is to know if they have a high 
school education, a GED? Who is to know if they have completed a 2-year 
education at a tech school?

  But I know that I did receive in my email a Web site tonight that is 
in the business of selling these false documents, these false diplomas, 
helping people be in a position where they can qualify already where 
the States have made these provisions.
  It is a big business. Fraud and corruption is a big business. It is a 
big business in the countries they are coming from, and it is becoming 
a bigger business in the country they are coming to, the United States 
of America. We have been a clean country that respects the rule of law. 
We are a proud nationality. We are a race of people. We have a common 
cause, a common belief system. We believe in the rule of law. It is our 
job to uphold that, and this bill, this DREAM Act undermines it.
  And it costs a lot of money. The Congressional Budget Office, the 
CBO, put out a score that has been touted by the other side that 
somehow it turns into a plus for the U.S. budget because some people 
will get a better education, and they will earn more money and pay more 
taxes. I don't think this thinks this through very far, but I can tell 
you in the second decade even the Congressional Budget Office says that 
it is going to be a cost of $5 billion to the taxpayer. And I can tell 
you that the Center For Immigration Studies, CIS, has done a study on 
the cost for State and local government, and that would be $6.2 billion 
a year. That is each year. That doesn't necessarily project out over a 
decade, a couple of years perhaps, maybe longer. They only did a couple 
of years: 6.2, so $12.4 billion is pretty close to what I think they 
will commit to.
  And the tripling of the number of green cards, the billions of 
dollars in debt, the people who get a safe harbor who are alien 
absconders, any alien who has a pending application will be protected 
from deportation. And this amounts to a de facto scholarship for those 
who, if ICE were required to deliver that de facto scholarship and 
before they handed it to them, they would have to apply the law and 
make sure that they woke up in a country that they were legal in within 
a few mornings. Those are the facts.
  And, furthermore, the most egregious aspect of this is this: this is 
going to provide for in-State tuition discounts for people who are 
today illegal in America. And they didn't all come in because their 
parents brought them. Many of them came in on their own, coming across 
the border at age 12, 13, 14, 15, turning 16. Many of them will be up 
to 30 years old saying they were brought into the country when they 
were 10 or 12. There will be no records to prove that. Here is what 
happens. Those people who are here illegally that are eligible for 
removal are today and would be under this act sitting in college 
classrooms with a taxpayer-funded college education, sitting at a desk. 
And in California, a resident of California, zero tuition.
  But if my son or daughter-in-law wanted to go to California to go to 
college, they would have to pay out-of-State tuition. Out-of-State 
tuition for California institutions annually would be $22,021 a year. 
Can you imagine writing a check for $22,021 a year to go to college in 
California, and sitting in a classroom at a desk next to someone who is 
unlawfully in the United States who is getting a free education paid 
for by the taxpayers? How much that would burn you if you are an 
American citizen in good standing, a taxpayer, an individual and a 
family that has funded and contributed to this government in the way 
that most of us do.

                              {time}  2330

  There is no justice or equity there, and it cannot be reconciled. I 
would add to this that it gets even worse, and if this bill passes, I 
am convinced it will exist all over this country.
  People who are illegal here in America will have their taxpayer-
funded and, in some States, free education. In Iowa, it costs them 
about $3,000 a semester, and it costs the out-of-State people about 
$9,000 a semester; but in some States, it's a free education. They'll 
be sitting at desks in a classroom, next to a grieving widow, who has 
lost her husband in Iraq or in Afghanistan and who has elected to go 
across the State line in order to go to college out of State, and she 
is paying out-of-State tuition. It's $22,021 in California. A grieving 
widow of an American patriot, who gave his life defending our liberty 
and our national security, a grieving widow who maybe has children who 
have lost their dad, maybe now is going back for training because she 
knows she is now the principal breadwinner in that family. She is 
paying out-of-State tuition, and is sitting at a desk next to someone 
who is unlawfully in the United States, someone who is getting a free 
college education that is paid for by the taxpayers.
  That is what this DREAM Act sets up. It is irreconcilable. It is an 
impossible conundrum that should not be visited upon the American 
people. This DREAM Act must be killed. We wounded it here in the House: 
37 Democrats voted ``no'' on the rule, and 38 Democrats voted ``no'' on 
the bill. Due to health reasons, we had some Republicans who weren't 
able to vote. Otherwise, it would have been closer. I actually look out 
and think we were close to mustering enough votes to defeat this poorly 
named ``DREAM Act,'' which really is the ``affirmative action amnesty 
act in America.''
  We should know better. We can do better. I am hopeful that the United 
States Senate will step up, will speak up and will vote down this DREAM 
Act when the majority leader in the Senate brings it up, which may be 
tomorrow. I suspect what will happen is that he won't have the votes, 
but he will try it anyway, because this has all been political from the 
beginning. He has realized it is not going to become law, but he made a 
promise to his constituents: If you will reelect me, we will give you a 
vote on this DREAM Act.
  The gentleman from Chicago, who had pushed on this so hard, got his 
vote today. We saw the results of it here in the House in this lame 
duck Congress, in this repudiated 111th Congress that has been led by 
Nancy Pelosi.
  I think about Thomas Jefferson, who once said large initiatives 
should not be advanced on slender majorities. Well, this was a slender 
majority, and this is a large initiative. This initiative

[[Page H8261]]

of amnesty under the DREAM Act is so large that it's twice the size of 
the Amnesty Act of 1986, and we have seen the fraud triple the 
estimates. So, if that's the case, this could become--pick your 
number--3 million to 6 million people who would get amnesty. Then they 
will start bringing in their extended families over and over and over 
again, generation after generation.
  It gets out of control, and this poor America, which has between 7 
and 11 percent of our legal immigration based on merit, based on people 
who are going to encourage and enhance and develop the economic, social 
and cultural well-being of the United States of America, starts to fall 
apart a little more. It gets undermined a little more, and the 
principles that make us great are undermined a little bit more.
  We need to be in the business of refurbishing those pillars of 
American exceptionalism, of not getting out the jackhammer and 
chiseling away at them as was done here today by this Pelosi-led 
Congress.
  So, if Thomas Jefferson said large initiatives should not be advanced 
on slender majorities--and he did--he didn't contemplate about large 
initiatives being advanced by repudiated Congresses that have been 
voted out of office and by Congresses that should go meekly out the 
door in respect for the will of the American people. They should do 
nothing that violates a sense of decency and the will of the American 
people--nothing. Only provide the functions that are necessary to get 
this government bridged over to the other side so that the new Congress 
can be seated and so that those new 87 freshman Republicans and however 
many Democrats there are--nine or so--can take this oath of office here 
on the 4th day of January and go to work, go to work fixing and saving 
America from the debacle that has been visited upon her by a 
dysfunctional Congress that writes bills in the Speaker's office, that 
brings them zigged through the hole in the wall of the Rules Committee 
and zagged down to the floor, bills with no amendments and with 30 
minutes of debate on each side to try to resolve an issue. There is no 
time to penetrate with a concept in 30 minutes. You can't fix a bill 
with talk and with being denied a motion to recommit, which is standard 
practice in this place.
  So there is no possible way to put up a motion that is going to fix a 
bill here. It is a bad bill. It damages the rule of law. It grants 
amnesty. It costs tens of billions of dollars. It rewards people for 
breaking the law. It gives them a tuition discount, an in-State tuition 
discount. If it's Iowa, it's $3,000 a semester versus $9,000 a semester 
in round terms. If it's California, it's free tuition versus $22,021.
  That's the America they are building. Americans saw what was going 
on--debt and deficit, irresponsible spending, damaging the rule of law, 
breaking down the American culture and civilization--a Constitution 
demolition crew at work every day. They said, You're digging us a hole, 
and we aren't going to take it anymore. The American people rose up and 
took the shovel out of the hands of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, and 
they made it a lot harder for Harry Reid.
  So what do we have going on?
  Nancy Pelosi is still digging because, technically, the shovel is not 
out of her hands yet. She lined up all of those Blue Dogs, and said, 
I'm going to make you walk the plank one last time before you go home 
for the last time. They said no. They stepped off the side of the 
plank, and voted against the rule and voted against the DREAM Act, and 
they sent a statement as they walked out the door.
  Well, I think there are a lot of them who deserve credit for serving 
America in the fashion they have. Those who stood up to the courage of 
their convictions deserve our thanks. Those who came to this place to 
work in good faith deserve the gratitude of the American people. As for 
those who disagreed with me and who made a good argument, I hope, if 
you're right, it prevailed. It is my privilege to have served with 
people on both sides of this aisle as I think that the debate is 
essential and important.
  From my standpoint, I will stand up for the things I believe in and 
will debate them with those folks who have beliefs that disagree with 
mine, believing as our Founding Fathers did that, in that debate, we 
will sort out the right policy for this country.
  But when you shut the debate off, when the iron fist of the Speaker 
shuts out the committees and writes the bill in her office and sends it 
to the floor with no amendments and no motion to recommit, you end up 
with a terrible piece of legislation. You break faith with the American 
people, and you break faith with the franchise of every other Member of 
this Congress on both sides of the aisle. That is what has happened 
here over and over again over the last 4 years, and it has gotten worse 
each year.

                              {time}  2340

  This is one of the starkest examples. Who would have thought that in 
a lame duck session, when we had big things to do and big things to 
worry about, the Speaker would push an amnesty act out here in a lame 
duck session in a repudiated Congress and not give all of those 
freshmen an opportunity to weigh in on this? They are the new voices. 
They are the new voices for America. They are the new vigor. They are 
the convictions of this United States of America.
  I look for good things from them, big things from them. I want to see 
them empowered to the maximum. Their fresh ideas and their energy and 
the cohesiveness that I hope is that class. I believe they will put a 
marker down in history that will meet that standard perhaps of the 1994 
class--of which some are here, still here--and take us on up to another 
level. In that class, I expect we will see committee chairs and we will 
see new majority leaders. Maybe there is a Speaker in that class. Maybe 
there is a majority whip in that class or a conference chair, maybe all 
of them. There might be a President of the United States that's coming 
into this Congress that will be sworn in here on January 4. All of 
those things are possible, and most of them are likely, Mr. Speaker.
  I look forward to the new breath of fresh air that is arriving in 
this Congress. I look forward to Speaker Boehner, who will be offering 
transparency here in this Congress. I look forward to the voice of 
every Member being heard with respect. And those ideas that can prevail 
in the arena of ideas, which is here in this debate on the floor of the 
House and in our committees, are the ones that are the best ideas for 
the American people.
  We will get there. We've got a lot of things to reconstruct. We've 
got a lot of undoing to do. And it's not going to be an easy job and it 
won't be a short job. We will be undoing perhaps for the next 2 years 
while we elect a President that will help us do in the following 4 
years.
  America will never be chiselled to perfection, but it's our charge, 
it's our struggle to work on it every day, to get it as close to right 
as we mortals can so that when it's handed off to the next generation, 
they can be proud of the toil that we did here and understand there was 
a vision and a commitment, and that we kept, in this new majority, our 
oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your indulgence and attention here tonight 
and the opportunity to address you here on the floor and close out the 
business for the day, and I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________