[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 60 (Thursday, May 5, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H3096-H3102]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IMPORTANT POINTS FOR AMERICA TO CONSIDER
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bucshon). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor and privilege to
address you here on the floor of the United States House of
Representatives and to have an hour to invest in laying out some points
here that I think are important for you to consider. And as America
listens on, hopefully it will stimulate some of the thought process and
help bring people to some conclusions.
The first thing that I think that any one of us wants to speak of and
to is the President's announcement which took place very late on Sunday
night that the Special Forces team had been successful in taking out
Osama bin Laden.
Our first response to that news, that happy news for all of America,
I think, is to congratulate the team that fast-roped down into that
compound, those who put their lives on the line to put an end to the
life of perhaps the most evil man on the planet, Osama bin Laden. And I
congratulate the President of the United States for issuing the order
and making the decision to go into that compound in the fashion that
they did.
{time} 1410
He had a number of options. As the news has reported, and I accept
this to be fact, that the President sat in and led five different
discussions to evaluate the quality of the intelligence that was
available and the tactics that might be used in that compound and that
he gave the order.
Some have said it was the most courageous order a President had given
in their memory or lifetime. They were all from the administration. It
was a good order, there's no question. I don't think it was the most
courageous. It didn't lack courage. But there are a number of other big
decisions that stand up there, I think, in a higher profile than this
one. But it was the right decision, it was a good decision, and the
President had to take a chance.
He could have ordered a massive bombing raid on that compound and, as
some have said, turned it into a glass parking lot, which would have
raised the level of the degree of success but firmly eliminated the
chance to show that Osama bin Laden was in that compound. He could have
dropped a single bomb, a one-ton-plus bomb from a Predator, that would
have had a reasonable chance of succeeding in taking out the most evil
man on the planet. Or he could have just done nothing. Or he could have
ordered the Special Forces in to fast-rope inside that compound and do
what they did. Of those options, I believe the President chose the
right one, and I congratulate him for that decision.
Yet in sitting here and listening to the gentleman from California
(Mr. Lungren) talk about the situation with the intelligence that we
had, it is clear to me, and it has been clear to me for a long time,
that one of the essential links in the intelligence that led us to
Osama bin Laden in the compound in Pakistan was information that was
given up in part by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in enhanced interrogation
encounters that he had, probably before he went to Gitmo. That
information then was worked, it was matched up with other information,
and the thread was followed. In fact, the courier was followed to the
compound in Pakistan.
It's ironic that the President of the United States campaigned
against such enhanced interrogation tactics. It's ironic that many whom
I serve with on the Judiciary Committee lined up against George W. Bush
and accused him of ordering torture against people who had been
attacking and killing Americans, terrorists of the like of Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed and a very small number of others.
I agree with the gentleman from California. Waterboarding is not
torture. If it were torture, we would be torturing our own Special
Forces troops. I would be willing to wager--and this I can't verify not
knowing the identities of the individuals who did fast-rope down into
that compound--that a number of those very same forces that went into
the compound that took out Osama bin Laden in their training were
likely waterboarded as a part of their training. I've sat in my office
and I've gone out in the field and I've talked to those Special Forces
personnel who were waterboarded as part of their training. It is not a
painful procedure, but it is one that gives one the sensation that they
are drowning. It's easy enough to go on the Internet and read the
material there, Mr. Speaker. It's an enhanced and effective
interrogation technique, and in all of the research that I did--and I
read back in story after story of this and had others dig down in it--I
found one case where there was a fatality that was nearly a century ago
that was because of the brutal tactics that they used in conjunction
with the waterboarding. In any case, there are many Americans that are
alive today because of the information that our people were able to
acquire because of enhanced interrogation techniques, and it's ironic
that President Bush approved the methods that acquired the thread, the
significant thread of information, without which no one can explain to
me how we would have found Osama bin Laden in that compound.
And so the very President who campaigned against the tactics that
George Bush was employing is the one that was able to take the
information from those tactics and make the right decision to take out
OBL. I'm glad that George Bush made the decisions that he made. I'm
glad that he was strong and courageous and defended America's ability
to gain information in the fashion that they did, because anyone will
tell you that was involved with the interrogations, especially of
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, that once he understood what waterboarding was,
he sang like a canary. If he had not warbled in the fashion that he
did, I don't think we would be celebrating in the fashion that we are
the end of the life of the most evil man on the planet.
So, I agree with the gentleman from California that the cloud of
investigation around the American interrogators who are being
investigated for the tactics that they were assured by the Justice
Department were constitutional and were legal and now we have a Justice
Department with a different opinion, it's putting some of our
interrogators through an investigation with the cloud of an eventual
indictment hanging over their head for doing the same type of tactics
that were used with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a very few others to
gather the information that allowed us to take out Osama bin Laden.
This paradox needs to be resolved, Mr. Speaker, and I am hopeful that
the President will give the order for the Justice Department to accept
the conclusions that were drawn by the Bush administration and adopt
that policy so that Americans can continue to be protected and safe in
the face of this threat that we have from without, this threat that
comes from radical Islam.
We are fighting radical Islam. Radical Islamists are seeking to kill
Americans on a regular basis because they
[[Page H3097]]
disagree with western civilization and our philosophy. It's why they
attacked us on September 11. That's why they attacked the Khobar
Towers. That's why they attacked the Twin Towers the first time in the
early nineties. That's why they attacked the USS Cole, the Marine
barracks, the list goes on and on, the times that we have been attacked
by people who reject our free society. They feel threatened by the
liberty and the freedom that is America. They're threatened by the free
enterprise that we are. They're threatened by the robust nature of our
culture and our economy and our innovativeness where we lead the world
in patents and trademarks. Because of that, we need to stand strong and
hold ourselves confident.
I point out, also, that the probability that the intelligence was
correct and that Osama bin Laden was inside the compound where the
attack came from our Special Forces on Sunday, the probability that he
was there was a probability that was probably less than 50 percent
chance. The President took the chance. If they had gone in and attacked
the compound and Osama bin Laden had not been there, I would like to
think we would have never heard about it, Mr. Speaker. I don't have any
information that says that they tried any other compounds or tried any
other locations, although I suspect that we have checked a few more
places. I'd like to think we checked a lot of caves up there in the
mountains in Pakistan. It's where a lot of us thought he was. That's
where our intelligence was telling us that he was. So I would like to
think that we were going into some of those locations. But if they had
gone into that compound in Pakistan and Osama bin Laden had not been
there, we would have never heard about it, which is appropriate and
proper, because the odds of this kind of intelligence being spot-on are
always less than 100 percent, and in this case I believe it was less
than 50 percent. In fact, if you compare the value of the intelligence
that said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before we went
in there, when you had a universal intelligence conclusion that was
drawn by the Israelis, the French, the Americans, as the universal
global intelligence said, Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction. The probability of those weapons being there in Iraq if
you analyzed it from the intelligence we had at the time made that
probability for WMD in Iraq greater than the probability that Osama bin
Laden was even in the compound last Sunday when the attack came.
I make these points, Mr. Speaker, so that we can look back across
this continuum of history and understand that intelligence isn't an
exact science. It's a series of judgment calls. It's a series of
connecting different threads of information together and following
hunches and then coming to that and following the hunch and making the
decision. President Obama made the right decision. The value of the
intelligence we had, it wasn't a 100 percent piece of information that
he had to work with, so whatever was the hunch, whatever was the
conviction that caused him to make that decision, there's times you're
going to be right and there's times you're going to be wrong. He was
right this time. I'm glad he made the decision. I'm glad the world has
seen the end of Osama bin Laden.
With regard to whether a photograph should be published of Osama bin
Laden to give the world a higher measure of proof, I will give some
deference to the opinion that came from the chairman of the Select
Committee on Intelligence, Mike Rogers of Michigan, who said his
measure is, does it make it harder for American military to work with,
say, the Afghan people for intelligence and information on the ground
in Afghanistan?
{time} 1420
Does it make it harder or does it make it easier? Are the chances
better or worse that our troops on the ground in Afghanistan will have
a more successful time if the picture comes out or if it doesn't?
In addition to that position, I would say this, Mr. Speaker, that if
the rumors that it's a hoax grow so great that they're able to use
those rumors to recruit more al Qaeda, and if the rumors that it's a
hoax strengthen the recruitment of the Taliban, then we should release
the picture or the pictures or enough information that people can be
completely convinced. I don't have any doubt Osama bin Laden was in
that compound; Osama bin Laden is in the bottom of the Arabian Sea. And
I don't have any doubt.
But we may have to get to the point where we have to erase the
doubts, and I suspect it will be very hard to keep the pictures of this
operation completely with a lid on them, although if anybody can do it,
our Special Forces can. If that's their order, I expect that they will.
I just don't know that the Pakistanis aren't sitting on something now
that would get released.
Just another little irony I would point out as I transition, Mr.
Speaker, into a little bit different subject matter. The compound is
reported to have had 12- to 18-foot walls around it with barbed wire on
top. It's pretty interesting that the Secretary of Homeland Security
made a trip over to that part of the world to advise Afghanistan on
border security and compared the Afghanistan-Pakistan border with the
U.S.-Mexican border. It's interesting that the Secretary of Homeland
Security has long said: You show me a 50-foot wall; I'll show you a 51-
foot ladder.
It's interesting that the 12- and 18-foot walls weren't scaled by
Special Forces personnel with 13- and 19-foot ladders. They put
helicopters over the top of the compound and fast-roped down inside.
The wall was effective and the wire on top of it was effective. That's
why they put them there. They don't build all of these walls with wire
on top all around the world if they're not effective. It isn't like
ladders aren't available in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
My point is, and I often facetiously respond to this idea, that if
you show me a 20-foot wall, I'll show you a 20-foot ladder, as if that
just makes fun of anybody that thinks we can protect our borders with a
wall. If anybody has been to a military compound, you will know there
are fences and walls around the military compound. Why is that? It's to
keep out enemy infiltrators. No, they don't keep out everybody. You
have got to still guard it. People come along with wire cutters and
they come along and dig underneath and they will detonate and blow a
hole in a concrete wall. They did that in the wall around the Embassy
in Saigon, if you remember. So it isn't that they're the only solution.
And when I say we need to build a fence, a wall and a fence on our
southern border, Mr. Speaker, I'm not advocating that we build that and
walk away and let somebody come up to the other side with a 21-foot
ladder. I'm suggesting that, first of all, we don't have to build 2,000
miles of fence, wall, and fence, that we just build a fence, a wall,
and a fence with a patrol road in between in those locations and build
it until they stop going around the end.
If anybody has been down to the border, you will see the beaten path
that goes through, sometimes right through what they're declaring to be
fence, the 600-some miles of fence that they declare that we have. 646
I think is the last number that I saw. And when you go down and look at
the real fence that's there, some of it is triple fencing that they
call tertiary fencing. That's a little too sophisticated for me. If you
go to the San Luis area in southwest Arizona, you can see 24-foot-high
fences, triple fences. When I was down there last, I asked them
directly, Has anyone defeated this triple fencing? Their answer, after
several evasive responses and me point-blanking the question several
times, was, No, they go around the end. Of course they do. It's a short
fence. It doesn't go far enough. And so people go around the end.
So we just keep building a fence, a wall, and a fence until people
stop going around the end. If we end up with 2,000 miles of fence,
wall, and fence, we must have needed it because they were continuing to
go around the end.
We can do this, and we can do this for a lot less money than we're
spending today to chase people across the desert 70 and 100 miles north
of our border.
Here's how the math works out, Mr. Speaker. We're spending about $12
billion protecting our southern border. That's 2,000 miles. Already,
smart people have done this calculus and taken $12 billion and divided
by 2,000 miles and come up with a unit price conclusion that we're
spending $6 million a
[[Page H3098]]
mile to defend our southern border--$6 million.
Now, imagine this. For me, I'm an Iowa guy and I live out in the
country on a gravel road, and it's a mile to concrete from where I live
in any direction. So my west road, no one lives on it. It's a full mile
of gravel.
If Janet Napolitano came to me and said, Congressman, I've got a
proposal for you. I need you to guard this mile. Will you guard this
mile and see to it that the people that go across it--you can let 75
percent of them through. No problem. Let 75 percent go through. And the
25 percent that you're required to stop, or you should be stopping, you
just have to turn them around and send them back south again. And, by
the way, I'm going to pay you, Congressman, $6 million a mile to defend
this mile of your gravel road. I'd look at that and say, Could you give
me a 10-year contract? That's what we do here in this Congress. We
budget out for 10 years. That's $6 million a mile for 10 years. It's
$60 million for the budget window of 10 years to guard a single mile.
The population that's going across that, 75 percent of those that try
are getting through; 25 percent are being interdicted. This is a little
bit dated information, but it's testimony before the Immigration
Committee.
And so if they were going to pay me $60 million to guard this mile
and I didn't have any kind of efficiency standard except turn 25
percent of them back, or so, first, I'm going to want an efficiency
standard. I want a 100 percent efficiency standard. We ought to be
developing infrastructure that gets us to that point. And so it
wouldn't take me $60 million to build a fence, a wall, and a fence on
that mile, that mile that runs from my house west. That's $6 million a
year for 10 years, $60 million.
I would tap into the first year's annual budget and take one-third of
it, $2 million, and I would build a fence, a wall, and a fence for the
full mile. So it's 3 miles of structure. I would put a concrete wall in
the middle of it. It would have a concrete foundation that made it
difficult to dig underneath.
And one thing you know about concrete is you don't get through it
with wire cutters. You don't get through it in a simple fashion like
you might with a wire fence.
I would put a concrete wall in the middle. I'd have a fence down near
the border. I'd move in about 60 or 100 feet and put a concrete wall in
that's about 14 feet tall with wire on top, and I'd put another fence
inside that. So if they got over my concrete wall, there's another
corral. I would then hire fewer Border Patrol, and with needing less
equipment, less pension plans, less benefit packages, I would put the
first front money up in the infrastructure. You know that by the time
they get through the fence, the wall, and the fence, you'll have a
chance to catch them. We would put the sensory devices in, put the
cameras up, put the vibration sensors in. Maybe we could get Boeing to
perfect their system and add that to the fence, the wall, and the
fence.
But it is foolish for us to think that we can just keep hiring more
and more Border Patrol--we've more than doubled our Border Patrol--and
then back off into the desert 70 or 100 miles and begin chasing people
around in the sagebrush. That's not the way to do this. We need to shut
off the bleeding at the border. This is not a recreational sport to be
defending our border and chasing people down in the desert. If we can
stop them before they get into the United States, that is the preferred
way to go.
I have gone across the English Channel from England over to Calais,
France, where the Brits have leased a chunk of ground because they want
to stop the illegals before they get across the channel. They have
leased this piece of ground from the French and they've set up a high
security system there, and the trucks that come through go on ferries,
and the ferries haul them across the English Channel, cars and trucks,
just a constant rotation of ferries going back and forth across the
English Channel.
The British have leased this piece of ground. They raised their
technology and their manpower there to preempt access into the United
Kingdom because they would rather deal with them on French soil than
they would on British soil, because the British laws get a little
sloppy like ours do. Once you pick somebody up inside the interior of
the United States, they've got an opportunity to appeal, be
adjudicated. It can cost us a lot of money.
{time} 1430
The important thing is to keep them out of the United States. Let's
build a fence, a wall, and a fence. We can do the whole thing for about
$2 million a mile, and that leaves $4 million the first year left over
to hire Border Patrol and to pay them wages and salary benefits and
retirement packages and to give them some equipment with. Then the next
year, there's another $6 million available every year--a little
maintenance on that wall but not a lot. So that's a $60 million
contract, Mr. Speaker, for a decade on a single mile. You put $2
million up front, and now you've got $58 million to play with.
I'll submit that we can do a better job by building infrastructure
and using it to protect our border than we can by hiring a lot more
personnel and chasing people around in the desert. It is a simple
business equation. This political arena doesn't lend itself very well
to simple business equations, but that is one, Mr. Speaker, and I'm
going to continue to push to build a fence, a wall, and a fence; and
yes, we need to put something on top of that. I don't care if it looks
a little bit bad. If they don't want to see wire on top of the wall at
the border, why do the Mexicans build walls at the U.S. border with
concertina wire on top? They're not offended when they put up it up.
Why would they be offended if we put it up, Mr. Speaker?
It's part of our immigration situation that we need to address, and
I'll continue with that in that ``stop the bleeding at the border.''
That is the way to do it. We can force all traffic through our ports of
entry, and we should beef up our ports of entry, widen them out, and
invest in infrastructure there. We should put personnel there so that
we can use surveillance techniques that are state of the art so that we
can efficiently move through the traffic that is relatively safe and
that is unlikely to have contraband in it. Then we can even better
scrutinize those pieces of traffic that are likely to have illegal
persons or illegal contraband in them. That would stop the bleeding at
the border in a significant way.
We forget that 90 percent of the illegal drugs consumed in America
comes from or through Mexico--90 percent. The drug enforcement people
tell me that, of every illegal drug distribution chain in this country,
at least one link in that distribution chain is someone who is here in
the United States unlawfully. Many times, the whole chain is a chain of
custody of illegal drugs going from Mexico through and up into the
United States--pick Chicago--and all the way to the end user, and the
drugs never go into any hand except of somebody who's here illegally in
the United States. Imagine, 90 percent of the illegal drugs in America
come from or through Mexico.
Headless corpses are showing up by the dozens in Mexico, and they're
starting to show up here in the United States. I went to a meeting in
Columbus, New Mexico, a town hall meeting. There were people there who,
on their way to church, drive parallel to the border. On their way to
church on a Sunday morning, four heads were on display for them to see,
which was a warning to, apparently, the other drug cartel. This is
spilling over into the United States. Those heads were on the Mexican
side, I'll point out, Mr. Speaker, for the point of accuracy, but
they're showing up on the U.S. side of the border.
The drug trade here in the United States is extremely lucrative. I've
been trying to get these numbers from the drug enforcement personnel,
and they've been very hard to get. Yet Fox News reported that the
illegal drug trade in America is a $40 billion industry--$40 billion.
It has been reported that at least $60 billion is wired from the United
States into points south. A lot of that may come from the wages of
people who are working here in the United States--and a lot of them
working here illegally. There are around 8 million illegals working in
America, taking jobs that legal immigrants or American citizens should
be doing. But there is $60 billion a year wired south.
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Half of it, $30 billion, goes into Mexico, and the other $30 billion
goes into the Caribbean, Central America and some into South America--
$30 billion into Mexico, the other $30 billion scattered around in the
rest of the southern part, south of us, in the Western Hemisphere.
We don't know and they don't speculate on how much of the $60 billion
is just laundering illegal drug money. I don't know the basis of the
$40 billion number that Fox News reported on the value of illegal drugs
that are consumed in America. That's just the only number that's out
there that I can find. I don't think we have the basis of enough
intelligence to be able to bring a real solution to this.
I don't think our people at the top have done enough work to quantify
the problem. They're not talking about the problem. Instead, I see an
emphasis on our southern border, a shift that took place under the
Obama administration, that causes some of our Border Patrol to pivot.
Instead of looking south to say, Hold it. Don't come into the United
States illegally, they started to turn around and look north and try to
interdict cash and guns that are coming from the United States and
going into Mexico. A lot of these guns, by the way, are perfectly legal
in the United States but not legal in Mexico.
So do we have the personnel to filter that at the Mexican border?
It's fine to interdict the cash, because that raises the transaction
costs of those who are smuggling drugs into the United States, and it's
fine to work and cooperate with the Mexicans if they need a little help
on guns that become illegal when they get across the border; but we
need to focus on people who are smuggling illegal drugs into the United
States. We need to focus on illegal people who are being smuggled into
the United States. The value of this has not quantified the loss in
American lives. Quantifying the loss in treasure is one thing: $60
billion wired south, $40 billion worth of illegal drugs consumed in the
United States, violence in Mexico, and headless corpses by the dozen.
I began to ask these questions some years ago, have finally had some
response, Mr. Speaker. It's as a result of two studies that I've
commissioned over the years by the Government Accountability Office,
GAO studies. One came out in April of 2005, and the other one came out
just this past month--released within the past few weeks, actually, but
it's dated March of 2011.
We've had witnesses come before the Immigration Subcommittee. First,
they'll say America is a Nation of immigrants, as if that's the be all-
end all of the conclusion we should draw and that we shouldn't try to
limit illegal immigration into America, let alone eliminate it, because
America is a Nation of immigrants.
My response to that, Mr. Speaker, is: Yes, sure enough. Could you
point out for me a nation on the planet that is not a nation of
immigrants? I asked that question of witness Ms. Hernandez some few
years ago. I asked if she would care to tell me of a nation that is not
a nation of immigrants.
She sat there at the witness table--under oath, mind you--and
presented as an expert witness. Her eyes kind of rolled a little bit
back in the back of her head; and she said, Well, that would be the
Incas and the Aztecs.
So I said, Who, according to an anthropologist, came across the
Bering Straits about 12,000 years ago. Would you like to try again, Ms.
Hernandez?
Of course, she didn't want to try again, and no one has succeeded in
pointing out a nation that is not a nation of immigrants. The closest
you could come is with the Japanese, and there are two ethnic groups in
Japan that are identified by their locales and by the accents and the
languages that they have. They believe that both of them came from
Polynesian origins centuries and centuries ago.
Every nation, Mr. Speaker, is a nation of immigrants. People have
migrated around this planet since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden,
and they always will. So we don't carry a certain responsibility
towards setting aside the rule of law in America because we are a
Nation of immigrants. We have a responsibility to preserve, protect and
defend the pillars of American exceptionalism--and of course, the rule
of law is an essential pillar of American exceptionalism.
So that question of, first, are we a Nation of immigrants, yes, we
are; but we are a Nation of laws, and we must adhere to and protect the
rule of law.
When we look at the policies that we have, it's important for us to
shut off the jobs magnet here in the United States, not only control/
stop the bleeding at the border, but we have to shut off the jobs
magnet here in America. One of the ways that we do that is to enforce
our laws, of course. E-Verify is an important tool. It's a Web site-
based software program that allows an employer to run, I call it, the
name, rank and serial number--the Social Security number--of an
employee through that database. It will go back, and it will search the
Department of Homeland Security's database, the Social Security
database, NCIC, and come back and tell you if that information
represents that that individual can lawfully work in the United States.
We use it. I've tried to fool it and I've tried to scramble it, and the
longest delay I can get out of it is 6 seconds.
{time} 1440
It's very fast. It's very accurate. The software package is only as
accurate as the data behind it, and when we find a mistake in E-Verify,
it's almost always because someone got married and forgot to change
their name or some piece of information like that that needs to be
upgraded. Easily fixed. The only way you make E-Verify even better is
to use it and use it and use it so that database gets cleaned up, and
it's set up to do that with a 72-hour notice of cure.
So using E-Verify is a good tool. I have a better tool out there that
I will soon be introducing, Mr. Speaker, and I have introduced it in
previous Congresses. I've been waiting for the right time, and we will
set up a press conference and roll out a bill called the New IDEA Act.
Now, they say there are no new ideas in this Congress, that it's a just
repackaging of old ideas. This one I think actually is a relatively new
idea, and it comes from this concept that, well, who enjoys enforcing
the law? Who's effective in it? Who do the American people believe will
come forward and enforce the law?
And as I was thinking that through, it occurred to me that the IRS
probably has the maximum respect of all of the law enforcers in
America. They have better tools to work with than many of the other
agencies out there, and we expect they will come in and they will
conduct an audit, and they're going to look to see if they can find
something wrong with your tax return. Anybody that's been through an
audit doesn't want to go through another audit. Frank Luntz put out
some numbers that showed that a majority of Americans would rather be
mugged than go through an IRS audit; 58 percent would rather have a
root canal than go through an IRS audit. I'd like to have the IRS
helping us with immigration law.
So I drafted legislation called the New IDEA Act. It's the New, and
the acronym IDEA stands for Illegal Deduction Elimination Act. What it
does is it clarifies that wages and benefits paid to illegals are not
tax deductible, and then it gives the employer safe harbor if they use
E-Verify. So, if the employer in good faith runs their employees
through E-Verify, it will give the employer that credit that he used E-
Verify, and he can deduct the wages if E-Verify should happen to be
wrong, for example, and it won't be.
But otherwise, if the IRS then comes in during a normal audit--we
don't accelerate audits, we don't initiate any more audits than we'd
normally have--but if the IRS comes in during a normal audit, they
would run the Social Security numbers and information of all the
employees through E-Verify, and if any of those employees were kicked
back at them as not lawful to work in the United States, the IRS then
would take a look. They'd give the employer an opportunity to cure, but
they would look at that data and say, all right, I'm sorry, the wages
that you paid this illegal are not going to be a business expense for
you, so they come off the Schedule C and they go over into the profit
column in your tax form.
Imagine if you're an employer and you paid $1 million to illegals and
the IRS came in to do the audit and they said, I'm sorry, that $1
million that you had as a business expense is not an
[[Page H3100]]
expense. You can't expense wages and benefits paid to illegals. So now
that $1 million goes over into the profit side, and the IRS looks at
that and says, you know, you're going to have to pay interest on that.
You had a tax liability that you unlawfully claimed. You're going to
have to pay interest on that tax liability, and you're going to have to
pay a penalty, and you have to pay the principal, which is a tax
liability.
So if it rolls it over to a 36 percent tax rate, plus the interest,
plus the penalty, the net result is that turns your $10 an hour illegal
into about a $16 an hour illegal, which means that there will be
Americans out there that will be taking those jobs at $12, $13, $14,
and $15 an hour that didn't have an opportunity to do that before
because illegals were in there working for $10. This will open up jobs
for Americans.
We saw a big number of new jobless reports pop up today. This
unemployment number is not getting better. It is just zigzagging and
stagnating at a number that hangs in there close to 9 percent. This is
a very, very slow recovery. One of the things we can do to help recover
is to pass the New IDEA Act, let the IRS come in and do their normal
audits, and employers will decide that they don't want to wait for the
IRS to get there. They will want to clean up their workforce as soon as
they practically can.
That's part of the beauty of this. This isn't a hard and fast piece
of legislation that requires employers to fire all their illegals at
once. They can make their decision on when they will take the risk, but
what it does do is accumulates a 6-year statute of limitations. So that
if an employer gets by this year without an audit and he keeps illegals
on the payroll the next year without an audit, he has to go a full 6
years before that first illegal year drops off, and he's still liable
for the IRS to go back through the books a full 6 years, which means
that employers are going to look at this, and they're going to think,
I'm paying $1 million out to illegals; if I get to the end of a 6-year
cycle and the IRS comes in and audits me, they're going to deny $6
million that I have written off as business expenses, put that over
into the profit side, and you could be looking at $6 million worth of
income, and all of that with interest and penalty attached to it. And
so your $6 million probably becomes something greater than $3 million
in penalties out of the $6 million that were formerly a writeoff.
That's how this liability accumulates with a 6-year statute of
limitations. That's why employers, even though they may not be able to
transition their workforce into a 100 percent legal workforce the first
year, the pressure to do so every year will be so great because getting
through 6 years without an IRS audit and knowing that you're going to
carry with you a full 6 years of risk will cause employers to clean up
their workforce on their own.
One of the problems we have is trying to get the administration to
enforce immigration law. We can pass a law. We can make it mandatory
that everybody use E-Verify. I will probably have an opportunity to
vote for that, and I will. But we cannot require the executive branch
to enforce the law. The President of the United States takes an oath to
take care that the laws are faithfully enforced. That's part of the
Constitution, and it's true for the executive branch employees,
including Eric Holder, the Attorney General; including Janet
Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security. But we can't make them
enforce the law.
I've been in the business of seeking to embarrass the administration
into enforcing the law now into my ninth year here because we don't
have the tools. We can call them forward now that Republicans have the
majority. We can have hearings, bring the press into the hearings
because the press helps us a lot. They convey that message back to the
American people, and the American people understand that there are
things they should be outraged about. But we have no tool other than to
cut their budget or embarrass them, or I guess there's more Draconian
methods that would not be used, and I won't mention those for fear that
they will start an unnecessary rumor.
But all of that said, Mr. Speaker, the IRS will come in and do this
work, and it won't be about us trying to embarrass them into enforcing
the law. It will be about the IRS coming in to turn it into a revenue
generator. It will be. The New IDEA Act, Mr. Speaker, is a tool that
can do the most to bring our immigration laws in this country under
enforcement and to reduce the numbers of illegals that are in the
United States the most dramatically with the least amount of cost. In
fact, it's a plus-up because it will generate more revenue for the
Internal Revenue Service.
Another point on the border, to roll back down to the southern
border, Mr. Speaker, and to make this point is that we have a tourism
industry that has to do with anchor babies. Anchor babies are babies
that are born in the United States to an illegal mother, and the
practice over the years has been to grant automatic citizenship to
babies born on U.S. soil. It is not a law. It is not a constitutional
requirement. It's just a sloppy practice that began that's getting
worse and worse and worse.
We have now in this country somewhere between 340,000 and 750,000
babies born to illegal mothers in America that get automatic
citizenship. They're anchor babies. They sneak into the United States,
many of them, for the purposes of having the baby. They get the little
birth certificate with their little footprints on there. Then they
either stay here or they go back to their home country and wait until
that child comes of age, and they use that child to apply to bring in
the family, the nuclear family, then the extended family, and it's out
of control--340,000 to 750,000 a year automatic citizens to America
that have essentially unlimited ability to bring their families into
the United States.
{time} 1450
We have testimony before the Immigration Committee that shows us that
if you look at immigrants, legal immigrants, and base it on merit, you
would think a country would want to establish an immigration policy
that was designed to enhance the economic, social, and cultural well-
being of the United States of America. Wouldn't any country have an
immigration policy that was designed to help them? I mean, it is not
selfish of America to want to have an immigration policy that's good
for this country. We cannot be the relief valve for all the poverty in
the world.
For every some 6.3 billion or so people on the planet--maybe it's
more than that--they can't all live in America. There are more than 5
billion that have a lower standard of living than the average Mexican.
So if we think we're going to be the relief valve of poverty in the
world, and we bring into America 1 million to 1.5 million legally, and
across the border comes--there are numbers that I have seen testified
to that show as many as 4 million illegals in a year. Many go back and
forth. They are carrying drugs on their back. Maybe they're visiting
family. The net number I guess we don't know. It seems to shake out
pretty odd that you can have that much border crossing, and the numbers
don't accumulate.
When I came to this Congress 8-plus years ago, the number was 12
million illegals in America. Now they're giving us estimates that there
are maybe 11 million illegals in America. How does that work? Did that
many people die? Did we give that many people citizenship that came in
here illegally? So I think that number is significantly higher than 11
million or 12 million. I think it's been growing every year for a
generation. I think it continues to grow.
Anchor babies, babies that are born to illegal mothers in the United
States that get automatic citizenship, cause people to sneak into the
United States to have the baby because they see citizenship in America
as cashing in to the giant ATM, the giant ATM which is America's
welfare cash machine.
Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has done a lot of research
on welfare benefits--he has broken it up in a number of different
ways--that go to households where there is at least one illegal that's
in it.
I need to come back at a later date, Mr. Speaker, and take up the
cost to the American taxpayer of benefits that go to households that
are oftentimes headed up by an illegal. When we look at what has
happened on the floor of this Congress in the last 4 to 5 years, when
the SCHIP legislation passed this
[[Page H3101]]
Congress, they weakened their requirements of proof of citizenship for
Medicaid.
So free medical care for people who are lower income is being
provided to people that should actually be deported back to their home
country because the standard that you had to show proof of citizenship
that was written into the old Medicaid legislation was struck and
replaced with a requirement that you attest to a nine-digit Social
Security number. That's the standard. They lowered it that low because
the people on that side of the aisle wanted to pay Medicaid benefits to
illegals. They want to give them a path to citizenship. They want to
give them an opportunity to vote.
I look back at what Ronald Reagan said: What you tax, you get less
of; but what you subsidize, you get more of. If you reward people for
coming into the United States illegally, and you reward them with
welfare packages and plans, you are going to get more people in the
United States illegally, and you are going to get more people that are
signing up for more welfare.
We have in this country 77 different means-tested welfare programs in
the United States of America. There isn't one person in this United
States Congress that could stand down here on the floor without a cheat
sheet and name every one of them. And there isn't one person in this
United States Congress that can actually understand how each one of
these 77 means-tested welfare programs interrelates with each other,
let alone how it affects the decisions of individuals on whether they
are going to get a job or sit at home. If you are on rent subsidy and
heat subsidy and food stamps, and list all the other Federal programs
that are there, why would you work when you are rewarded for not
working?
I look at the labor situation in America. There are 8 million working
illegals in America. There are a number of others out there that we
probably didn't find in the data that we have. So here we are with the
unemployment numbers of about 15 million Americans who are registered
as unemployed. There is another 6 to 8 million that are past the data.
They've quit trying, so they're no longer technically called
unemployed. They just quit looking for a job. There is another 6 to 8
million of those. You are up to over 20 million Americans that are on
unemployment, drawing it, or have given up applying for it.
But when I start to add to that number of roughly 20 million, 22 to
23 million Americans that are unemployed or have given up trying and
aren't working, and I go to the Department of Labor's statistics, their
own statistics that come from the Department of Labor, and I begin to
add up the American workforce--that workforce number is a little foggy
in my memory--it's 140-some million people in America's workforce. If
you start adding those who are not currently working--and I start at
age 16 because that's a legitimate age.
You can collect unemployment at age 16 if you have earned enough that
they paid in on your behalf--the teenagers between age 16 and 19, there
are 9.7 million that aren't in the workforce at all, not even a part-
time job of any kind. Yes, they may be students; but there's nothing
wrong with working and going to school. That's what a lot of people
did, and it builds character. You add to that those that are from 20 to
25 years old, and you go on up the line in different age categories. I
went up to age 74 because we pay unemployment at age 74, and Wal-Mart
hires at age 74 and so do a lot of other employers. So the age of the
workforce I am using is 16 to 74. It's a legitimate bracket. We could
narrow that in a little bit, and we would have fewer numbers.
But here's the point: Of the 8 million working illegals in America,
there are 80 million Americans of working age that are not in the
workforce; 80 million people of working age that are simply not in the
workforce. They might have checked out. They are sitting back on some
of the 77 means-tested welfare programs. They might be independently
wealthy and decided to retire. If so, good on them. But they are not in
the workforce for one reason or another, or they are working in the
black market. It might be that some of those people are selling drugs
who are not in the workforce. But if people say there are jobs out
there Americans won't do, name one. Name one job that Americans won't
do. I can take you and show you an American that's doing every single
job definition that there is in this country.
The reason that you see people here illegally and they're out-
competing Americans is because they'll work for less. They'll pile up
in a house with many more people living in the same dwelling. They are
not a threat to the employer to file workmen's comp or an unemployment
claim.
So they are a lower liability for the employer. The employer can
bring in a crew of illegals, get a job done, dispatch them down the
line; and once they leave that job, they are no longer a liability to
them. So it's like being able to lease a machine to come do a job. You
say, take the machine back, and park it in the lot, and you are done.
You don't have to worry about the depreciation or the maintenance.
That's what has happened. In a way, it's a bit inhuman to see this
going on.
If we enforced our immigration law, it opens up at least 8 million
jobs for Americans or legal immigrants; and if people say there aren't
enough Americans to do those jobs, nuts. We have to hire one out of
every 10 that's sitting now on the couch and put them to work. Why
wouldn't you want to increase and enhance the average annual
productivity of our people? Why would you not?
What if we were on a big cruise ship, but it was powered by sails and
oars? So many people have to be trimming the sails. So many people have
to be pulling on the oars. Somebody has got to be in the kitchen
cooking. Somebody has got to be swabbing the deck. Somebody has got to
be up there in the wheelhouse navigating, and somebody has got to be
steering. With all of that going on, if you didn't have enough people
at the oars to pull the load, would you pull that cruise ship off on an
island somewhere and load on a bunch more people to pull on the oars?
Or would you go after the 80 million people that are sitting on the
couch now and have some of those people get up off the couch and grab
an oar and pull?
I want to increase the production of America. I want to increase the
average annual productivity of Americans. If we do that, we increase
our standard of living. If not, if more of us sit back and don't go to
work and don't produce anything, and we bring others in to do the work
that we say we are now too good to do, then our broader standard of
living goes down, and you need more and more welfare programs to pay
the people that are not working, and you still have to carry the social
costs for the people that are working underneath the market value.
You can't sustain a household for some of the wages that are being
paid to illegals. That's why they are tapping into welfare benefits.
That's why they use their child that has been born in America as an
anchor baby as a means to get access to the welfare program.
{time} 1500
And so here we have an America that's underemployed, 80 million
people of working age that are not in the workforce. A lot of them are
living off of the sweat of the brow of somebody else in the form of the
77 means-tested welfare programs that are out there. They don't have an
incentive to go to work, but we pay them with tax dollars if they'll
just stay peaceful, stay in their houses, don't cause any trouble.
Let's not have any violence in the streets. If you do all that, then
we'll hire these other people that are in the United States illegally
at substandard wages and subsidize them both.
What sense does that make, Mr. Speaker, for a Nation to not be
upgrading its standard of living by increasing the average productivity
of our people?
And why would we not be defending the rule of law? And why would we
reward people that sneak into the United States to have a baby so they
can tap into all this giant ATM?
We've got to put an end to anchor babies. I have the legislation to
do it, Mr. Speaker, and I have scores of cosponsors on the anchor baby
legislation that I introduced very early in this session with some good
gentlemen from Georgia, in particular. Rob Woodall came in and was
ready to step up on that, and there are others. Tom Graves is part of
that. I appreciate the work that they are doing, and I'm happy to
[[Page H3102]]
join with them and work together on those issues.
But we have to have a Nation of laws and a Nation that respects the
rule of law. We have to shut off the bleeding at the border.
We need to get more of our Americans to work. You notice I didn't say
back to work, Mr. Speaker. We're sometimes into the third and fourth
generation where they didn't work at all. They have learned how to game
the system, and we've accepted it. We no longer require the welfare-to-
work part of this; that you get 5 years total and then you have to go
to work. What we see happen is 77 means-tested welfare programs. Nobody
can monitor all of that. And the will of the American people isn't such
because now half the households don't pay income tax. But they go vote.
And they vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. They vote
themselves welfare benefits. There are people here that pander to that,
and they understand that their political base is expanded when they
expand the dependency class in America.
So what did they do?
They passed legislation in here under Speaker Pelosi over and over
again that expanded the dependency class in America because it
strengthened their political base. ObamaCare is a huge key of expanding
the dependency class. It says we're going to promise you that every
American has access to health care, every single one. It wasn't an
issue. But they conflated the two terms, the term health care and
health insurance.
Anyone in America can show up in the emergency room and be treated.
That's access to health care, and it's probably superior to most
nations. I'm sure it's superior to most nations in the world. I don't
know a nation that it's not superior to.
But then it was the promise that, well, it's really not very good.
It's expensive that you show up in the emergency room without
insurance, so what we really want to do is give everybody their own
insurance policy and insure another 30 million people.
So I look at that, and I do the math and I ask the question, who's
really not insured and doesn't have affordable options?
These numbers came from the United States Senate, the Republican
Senate Conference, the Senate staff, and it came down to this. You
start with about 306 million Americans, and then you begin to subtract
those that are insured, those that are on Medicare, those that qualify,
those that are on Medicaid, those that are qualified for Medicaid but
don't sign up, those that are covered under their employer, and those
that are eligible under their employer and don't sign up, and you begin
to reduce this number of 306 million Americans down. First you take the
insured, subtract that from 306, and then you begin to identify the
Americans that are uninsured. That was those that are here illegally.
I'm not interested in funding their health insurance package. I think
it's wrong and immoral for us to do that. They're not on my list.
When you boil it down, Americans without affordable options numbered
12.1 million. Now, that is a lot of people, but it's less than 4
percent of our population. Yet ObamaCare sought to disrupt and
transform and change and socialize the health insurance industry in
America, 100 percent of it, the health care delivery system, 100
percent of that, in order to reduce the number of uninsured Americans
without affordable options from some number that's less than 4 percent
down to some other lower number.
At what cost?
The cost of American liberty, cost of the United States Constitution.
The cost of our freedom.
ObamaCare is a malignant tumor, and it is metastasizing in the heart
and soul of the spirit of the American people.
We are a vigorous people. We are a people that have skimmed the cream
of the crop off of every donor civilization on the planet, Mr. Speaker.
The vigor that came from people that had a vision and a dream, that
came here across the pond in one way or another because they wanted to
access the liberty and the freedom that we have here is a different
kind of a vigor than saying, well, we got good vigor from Great
Britain, and we got it from France and Germany and Italy, wherever
else, Eastern Europe and around the planet, Greece, name it. No, we got
the best of every donor civilization. We got the vigor from every donor
civilization. We got the dreamers from every country that sent legal
immigrants here, that gives America a unique vigor. It's different than
any other country in the world. That's the reason why we succeed. It's
the reason why we can take free enterprise and do something with it.
It's why America has risen to become the unchallenged greatest Nation
on the planet.
We have all of the rights that come from God that are defined so
clearly and well, not just in the Declaration, but in the Constitution
and especially in the Bill of Rights, and you add to that free
enterprise, and you add to that this vigor that comes from legal
immigrants from all over, from every civilization, and you have an
America that has a spirit and an attitude that's unique on the planet.
It is unsuitable to take a free people and tie the yoke of ObamaCare
around their neck. I will draw the line. I want to see shutting off all
funding to ObamaCare tied to the debt ceiling bill, Mr. Speaker. Before
we even discuss the debt ceiling, I want a guarantee that all of our
troops get paid on time. In the event of a debt ceiling limit or a
shutdown of any kind, uniformed troops in the United States or anywhere
in the world serving Uncle Sam need to know their paycheck is going to
be wired into their account on time every time, no matter what is going
on here in the United States Congress.
Second point, Tom McClintock's full faith and credit bill that sets
up the priority on how we would pay our debts in the event of a debt
ceiling limit being reached. We can set those priorities, and it needs
to be, pay the interest on those who have loaned money to America first
and move our way on down the priority list.
Do those two things, send them out of this House, send them over to
Harry Reid in the Senate, and he can decide. Pick them up and send them
to the President of the United States and let him sign, let the
President sign both of those bills, the Gohmert bill, the McClintock
bill into law.
That, Mr. Speaker, would be the qualifier before we'd even begin to
discuss what we would do about the prospects of raising a debt ceiling.
But for me, I'd put the cutting off of all funds to ObamaCare on that
debt ceiling bill and say there can be no raising of the debt ceiling
here by the House of Representatives unless we shut off all the funding
that's going to implement or enforce ObamaCare, at least until such
time as the Supreme Court should rule.
The President is delaying the action of the Supreme Court. He could
have asked for an expedited review of ObamaCare. We all know it's going
to the Supreme Court. The President is delaying the decision in the
Supreme Court the same way that he delayed bringing his birth
certificate out.
Mr. Speaker, it is so important that we not chase good money after
bad, that the Supreme Court rule on ObamaCare. At least then, then let
Congress decide when they might appropriate rather than these automatic
appropriations.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
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