[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 165 (Tuesday, November 1, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H7200-H7203]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
AMERICAN BEDROCK
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hanna). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is
recognized for 30 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It's always my privilege and an honor to be recognized to address you
here on the floor. As is often the case, I come here and hear the end
of the debate that has gone on before me and feel compelled to address
it from a bit of a different perspective.
As I listen to the gentlemen and the gentleladies talk about the
right to vote, I think it would be important for us to remind the body
that there has to be a qualified voter. It isn't that everybody has a
right to vote. You have to be old enough for one thing, and you need to
be an American citizen for another. As I've watched things change over
my adult lifetime, the integrity of the vote has been damaged.
The gentleman from Maryland made the statement that there is no
evidence of any widespread voter fraud. I know that it's difficult to
put this into the Congressional Record, Mr. Speaker, but I would hold
this up as, let me just call this, evidence number one:
This is an acorn. It's an acorn that I carry in my pocket every day.
I carry it there every day to remind me of what that organization ACORN
has done to the integrity of the vote in the United States of America.
How much more widespread would you have to be than operations going on
in nearly all, if not all, of the 50 States--the major cities--and
millions of dollars spent to pay people to go out and fraudulently
register voters? There are over 400,000 fraudulent voter registrations
that this acorn symbolizes that they have admitted to going out and
purchasing on a commission basis: We're going to pay you to get these
fraudulent voter registrations. Oh, they can be legitimate, but they
can also be fraudulent, and ACORN didn't differentiate between the two.
They just paid out in commissions. They violated the laws of the State
of Nevada, and they violated the laws of the State of New York.
This Congress shut down the funding to ACORN, and the national
organization of ACORN collapsed. So for the gentleman to say--and I
quote--there is no evidence of any widespread voter fraud, I think
there is massive evidence of widespread voter registration fraud, and
from that flowed fraudulent votes as well.
We have watched the integrity of the voter registration and the
election system be undermined over the last generation in almost a
calculated way. Issue after issue has eroded the integrity of the
qualified voter in these ways: motor voter during the Clinton years. If
you show up for a driver's license--and we know how well that works.
How many of the--I think it's 15 of the 19--September 11 hijackers had
driver's licenses, that breeder document for false identification? You
show up for a driver's license, and they say to you in their native
language, Do you want to register to vote? If you answer in the
affirmative in any language, they put you down and register you to
vote.
People don't understand that they're bound by perjury laws. We don't
know about the prosecutions that may or may not be taking place. It's
not considered to be as serious an offense by, let me just say, the
Department of Justice as it should be. After all, they have their
prosecutorial discretion. They have testified before the Judiciary
Committee, where I serve, that they select which laws they want to
enforce and which ones they do not want to enforce.
With regard to voting rights in the civil rights division of the
Department of Justice, we know how that works. They have a policy that
has been testified to under oath under several different scenarios that
they will not move a voting rights case if it damages a minority.
That's the policy of the Department of Justice, and it's the policy of
the most recently departed Loretta King, who found that, in Kinston,
North Carolina, that voted like 70 percent of the communities in
America to have nonpartisan local elections for mayor and city council,
they voted to abolish the partisanship and go to nonpartisan elections.
So that would be a common practice, and 70 percent of the cities and
municipalities have done that. But in Kinston, North Carolina, they
were forbidden by the Department of Justice because, if you read the
Department of Justice's agent's letter on that--and that was Loretta
King--African Americans--no, she said ``blacks''--wouldn't know who to
vote for if they didn't have a ``D'' beside their names. Therefore, she
forbid them from abolishing partisan elections in a city council and
mayor's race in Kinston, North Carolina. That's one example.
There is another example of the intimidation that took place with the
[[Page H7201]]
New Black Panthers of Philadelphia, who were standing out there,
calling people ``crackers,'' smacking their billy clubs in their hands,
taking an offensive posture in paramilitary uniforms. That's all on
videotape--most of America has seen that--and we saw this Justice
Department write off the case. The case was made. The convictions were
there. This Justice Department canceled those convictions and released
everyone except for the one individual, the most egregious violator,
who got the tiniest little message. He got an injunction: Don't do this
again right here in this city at least for the short term. That was the
injunction.
Tom Perez, the Assistant U.S. Attorney, testified under oath that
that was the most severe penalty that they could have under law. Not
true. Under oath, he uttered words that were not true, and we should
bring him back before the committee and call him to account for this.
So, Mr. Speaker, I want every American citizen who is qualified to
vote. I don't want anybody slowed up at the polls and intimidated
because of any reason. But to imply that people are denied their right
to vote in this country as if this were 1960 all over again really is a
false premise to establish this on. We're all about legitimate voters,
and I'm all against illegitimate voters that erode the vote and dilute
the vote of the legitimate voters.
{time} 2120
I just mentioned motor voter. Absentee ballots themselves have been
stretched out, and they can pass through numerous hands, and the
various States have different policies. And whenever a ballot goes from
one hand to another hand to another hand, it opens up the opportunity
for fraud. I can remember a case in Iowa where near the end of the
election, they found 444 ballots, absentee ballots that had not been
turned in yet that were--where did they find them? Oh, Democrat
campaign headquarters; 444 absentee ballots. So, Mr. Speaker, there is
an example of the election fraud. I would call it widespread voter
fraud that is taking place. There are convictions in Troy, New York,
for example.
I also listened to testimony before the Judiciary Committee by the
Secretary of State of the State of New Mexico who had to admit under
oath that if I were working the election board and am a resident of New
Mexico in good standing and am registered to vote, if I went in to work
and figured that I would vote at the end of my shift, and somebody
walked in, and they said that they are Steve King--me--and they lived
at my address, whatever it might happen to be in New Mexico, even if
they alleged that they were me, and I am working the board, I can't
challenge them by law in New Mexico. That's a law that encourages voter
fraud.
So what happens when they call up an hour before the polls close and
they say, Sally, we know that you voted, but your husband, Joe, is
registered to vote, and he's not been in to vote yet. Can you send him
down? And Sally says, Well, no. Joe is in a truck in Maine. He isn't
going to be voting. And 15 minutes later, somebody shows up and says,
I'm Joe, and he votes as Joe. How do you catch that? How do you police
that? I suggest you do so with a picture ID, a government-issued
picture ID.
We need to have a number of things go on. We have people voting on
the rolls that--dead people are voting. People are voting in New York
and voting in Florida; that happened in the year 2000. We know about
those cases. When you have fraud within the States and that fraud flows
over State lines, and when people get in buses and take a ride across a
State line and go into the polls, and they vote same-day registration
in voting, it opens up the door again for fraud. And the people that
want to game it and invest money in it are marginally winning those
close elections.
So this acorn that I carry in my pocket every day, it isn't because I
have such an abiding dislike for ACORN, as an entity. But it's because
I understand--and I want the American people to understand--what
happens to the United States of America if the people that are
perpetrating widespread voter fraud get their way. And it's this, Mr.
Speaker: the Constitution of the United States is the foundation of
this country. It is the foundation of our law. It is the supreme law of
the land, coupled with Federal law that's written within the guidelines
of the United States Constitution.
We often look at it, if we hold on to the Constitution--because if we
fail, our Republic will fail and collapse as well. And I embrace the
Constitution. I hold on to it. I have one in my pocket every day, and I
refer to it on a regular basis. But there's something underneath that
Constitution.
When you think of the edifice of a building, and you go down and you
build a foundation, a foundation on sand, for example, or a foundation
on something unstable, no matter how good your foundation is--the
Constitution--no matter how good that foundation is, if it's on
unstable soil, it will collapse. No foundation can be sustained just by
the strength of the foundation itself. And the underpinnings, the
bedrock upon which this foundation of our Republic, called the
Constitution, sits is free elections, honest elections, legitimate
elections, elections where qualified voters, American citizens go forth
and redirect the destiny of the United States of America.
But they have to be free elections. They have to be open elections.
They have to be legitimate. They have to be fair. And we cannot have
noncitizens voting. We cannot have fraudulent votes. We can't have dead
people voting. We can't have transients that are not American citizens
voting. If that happens--and it is happening--and if America loses
confidence in the election system that we have, this bedrock that
upholds our Constitution collapses. That bedrock of legitimate
elections collapses. And if it does, the Constitution itself falls with
it, Mr. Speaker. That's why it's important that we have voter
registration lists that are free of duplicates.
And where the States have laws prohibiting the voting of felons--like
Iowa, for example--free of felons, free of deceased--free of deceased,
duplicates, and felons, we require a picture ID, and we need to require
that the Secretary of State certify that the registered voters are
citizens, and we need to enforce it, and we need to police it. And we
need to say to the Department of Justice and the attorneys general
within the States that have jurisdiction to bring these cases, that you
must set this as a high priority.
Prosecutorial discretion, when there's an assault on the bedrock that
is the underpinning for the foundation of the United States, the
Constitution, when that assault comes, it must be enforced to the
fullest extent of the law. And this society and this culture and this
Congress should rise up and demand that we have legitimate elections in
this country.
When you think, Mr. Speaker, that a single State and a handful of
votes, 537 votes in the State of Florida in the year 2000, determined
the President of the United States--it may well have been for the next
8 years rather than the next 4 years--and each recount of those votes
in Florida came back to the same or a very similar total--there's not a
legitimate argument any longer that Al Gore really won that race. He
did not. History cannot write that. Even the recount down by The Miami
Herald comes back to George Bush winning marginally by very nearly the
same number that the Secretary of State certified by 537 votes.
But how many votes in Florida were fraudulent votes altogether? How
much closer was that election because of election fraud? How many
people voted in Florida that also voted in the State of New York? How
many deceased voted? How many felons voted? We've got some records of
those. And even though the felons that are voting that we know of are
not in great numbers, this could have come down to a handful of votes.
This could have come down to one vote. And if a State doesn't have a
legitimate election process, and that State's electoral votes determine
the President of the United States, and we would stand here and argue
that anybody that came into the polls should be allowed to vote
because, if not, their vote might be disenfranchised even though they
took no responsibility to register themselves to vote, to go to the
right polling place to vote, that they should be motor votered and
same-day registration votered and walk into any precinct and vote, and
that can be sorted out after the fact.
[[Page H7202]]
That happened in my State. My former Secretary of State, Chet Culver,
who later became Governor, amazingly gave the order that anybody could
vote in any precinct at any time, and they would sort that out
afterwards. So the election that he presided over--where Iowa is the
first-in-the-Nation caucus, we were the last in the Nation to certify
the vote. And he is the one that also supported an executive order to
grant the felons the right to vote, even though a State statute
specifically prohibited such a thing.
I came to talk about a different matter, Mr. Speaker, and I will
endeavor to do that. But legitimate elections with integrity in our
voter registration rolls, requiring citizenship, and devoid of
duplicates, deceased and felons, where the law applies and a picture ID
where the people that maybe can't figure out how to vote under the
rules that every other citizen can meet, such as a picture ID, will pop
out their picture ID to rent a movie, for example, or to get on an
airplane is another example. They can have their picture ID, but they
can't be bothered to show up with that.
When we're choosing sometimes by a handful of votes the next leader
of the free world within the jurisdiction of the States, that if one
single State has a corrupt election process, even one that isn't as
clean as it can be, even one that's just sloppy where illegitimate,
illegal voters cancel out the votes of the legitimate voters and,
thereby, by a marginal vote--like we saw in Florida, perhaps--change
the results in that State and by doing so shift the electoral votes
over to one side or the other for the Presidency, and America gets a
President that we really didn't vote for because we didn't have
integrity in the voting process.
{time} 2130
And we could watch, not so much just the fraud, but if America loses
confidence in the electoral system, if we don't have faith that the
decisions of the American people emerge through the election process,
then we lose confidence in our Republic altogether, and that's when the
United States, our Constitution, could collapse, Mr. Speaker.
So this is a high and important goal that we have. And ACORN was cut
off from Federal funding by a massive outpouring of votes in the House
and the Senate. When they saw what was going on inside ACORN, even some
of the strongest left wing Democrats that sit over here voted to cut
off the funding to ACORN.
I had introduced the first amendment to cut off ACORN about 4 years
earlier, but I'm going to carry this in my pocket because they're
reforming. They're reforming in localities and cities and States across
the country again. They're coming back, some of the same faces with a
little bit different names. They're organizing, by the way, in the
Occupy Wall Street effort in New York. Should've known. You know, we
could have called that shot early from the beginning.
But, Mr. Speaker, I want to make a couple of comments in a
transitional discussion here. I didn't set myself up with a segue, and
so I'll just jump right into it, that is, I have the privilege to
represent a good part of Iowa here in the United States Congress. And
I've had the privilege to be involved in and engaged in the first-in-
the-Nation caucus process for quite a long time now.
It came about somewhat in this way, and that would be an Iowa
legislature from years gone by decided to establish the first-in-the-
nation caucus. A lot of the rest of the country didn't pay much
attention to it. It didn't attract the Presidential candidates in the
fashion that they would have envisioned early on.
But in 1976, a little-known candidate and low-profile candidate for
President who was the Governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, came to Iowa.
He saw that opportunity that the first-in-the-Nation caucus provided
and Jimmy Carter spent a lot of time in Iowa. He traveled the State and
got to know people. He built a network and organization and friendships
within the State. By the time the caucus rolled around in 1976, Jimmy
Carter won the caucus in Iowa, which was a surprise win. People didn't
see it coming. The polling didn't show it. And that surprise win was a
springboard that launched Jimmy Carter on to the nomination of the
Presidency out of this little-known, first-in-the-Nation caucus we have
in Iowa.
And the State law that was introduced says that we shall be the first
competition in the Nation, and it automatically moves the State of Iowa
forward if any other State moves their date. This year it will be on
January 3. So it's earlier than usual, earlier than I would like; but
it will be a significant competition that evening that will give the
country the first look at what Iowa activists think about who should be
the next President of the United States.
Taking us back in history also, something to reflect on, and that
would be Jimmy Carter in 1976 won the nomination because of the
springboard of the Iowa caucus. If he had lost the Iowa caucus, I don't
think we would have heard of Jimmy Carter after that. His campaign very
likely would have died. That was 1976. That was the year, by the way,
that Ronald Reagan challenged unsuccessfully Gerald Ford for the
nomination of the Presidency.
Well, 4 years later, Ronald Reagan was a player in the Iowa caucus,
but he didn't work Iowa very hard. George H.W. Bush did work Iowa very
hard, and Bush won the caucus in Iowa. Reagan expected to, but he took
Iowa for granted and George Herbert Walker Bush won the caucus in Iowa
in 1980, and then Ronald Reagan had the pressure on him when they went
to New Hampshire. And there in New Hampshire Ronald Reagan had the
famous line: I'm paying for this microphone, and he pulled the
microphone forward, and that was the shot. That was the vignette that
went around the country and around the world, and it exemplified the
authority with which Ronald Reagan came to the debate and the authority
with which he had governed as Governor of California and the authority
with which he would later on become the best President of the 20th
century. But that moment in New Hampshire was a moment for Ronald
Reagan that launched him out of New Hampshire and on to the nomination
and on to the Presidency.
But if you'll remember, Mr. Speaker, Gerald Ford was under serious
consideration for the nomination as Vice President of the United
States. And I'm actually glad they didn't make that decision. A former
President as a Vice President would be too much friction, too much
conflict, and not enough room for the new President to operate. But
George Herbert Walker Bush was nominated and became the Vice President
under Ronald Reagan, for two terms, 1980 through 1988, or 1981 through
1989 would be another way to describe that. And was, of course, the
nominee and was elected to become the President of the United States.
So I would just speculate, Mr. Speaker, that had it not been for the
Iowa caucus victory of George H.W. Bush, he very likely would not have
been named the Vice Presidential candidate since he ran a competitive
nomination competition against Ronald Reagan. Gerald Ford was not named
Vice President; George H.W. Bush was. He became Vice President for 8
years, and then President for 4 years. And would we have had a
President George W. Bush? Had we never had Bush 41, we maybe would
never have had Bush 43.
So the continuum of history has shifted itself dramatically on the
results of what was prior to that time a very low-profile, not-very-
significant caucus in Iowa. Now since that period of time, it has been
leveraged up again and again and again. And in the last caucus, we saw
what happened with Barack Obama emerging. His movement began in Iowa.
Iowa gave him his launch to New Hampshire. It wasn't my choice,
obviously, Mr. Speaker; but there's a legacy that will play itself out
again January 3 of this year.
I'm watching all of the Presidential candidates, and I'm watching how
they perform and how they resonate with the voters. I have said since
January, concluded that it was a slow start on the Presidential race.
You know, most people weren't yet clamoring for a Presidential race. I
thought we should start seeing and we should be seeing more activity,
and so we did some things to initiate Presidential activity in the
State, including hosting a Presidential event on March 26 at the
Marriott Hotel in Des Moines. That seemed to galvanize and launch this
caucus process.
[[Page H7203]]
A number of the Presidential candidates came there and made their
presentations, and we intermixed it with good thinkers on policy issues
of the day. That was one of the things that took place. But even then,
as I listened to the Presidential candidates, and as I have the
privilege to talk with them and get to know them, and it is an
extraordinary privilege to know these Presidential candidates in this
way, I like them all. I respect them all. Mr. Speaker, every one of
them, in my opinion, would make a better President than the one we
have. I will have no hesitation about endorsing and campaigning for the
eventual nominee.
But there have been a couple of things missing. One of them is an
economic policy plan. As I listened to the candidates, they would talk
about what they would repeal, but I wasn't hearing very much about what
they would do on the proactive side. So I even toyed with this idea,
Mr. Speaker, and the idea of advancing some of those repeals in my own
way. But as I watched the Presidential candidates, they want to tweak
the tax policy some and they all want to repeal ObamaCare. I think that
looks like plank number one in the platform of the nominee or any of
the candidates as they compete for the nomination going forward. Plank
number one, repeal ObamaCare.
Then they have their tax cut plan and how they would structure the
taxes. But I have not seen all year long a significant economic
proposal. One of those that has emerged now that people can identify
with is Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan. The 9-9-9 is a bumper sticker that
does get people's attention. They can remember it. It has a unique ring
to it, and it causes them to pay attention and look into it and
understand each of the three components. Well, there's a marketing
brilliance in the 9-9-9 plan. I'm going to try to avoid discussing the
economic components of it, but there's a marketing brilliance.
Then Mitt Romney had, prior to that, a 59-point plan. Mr. Speaker,
I'm sorry, I can't get through 59 points. What I can't memorize, I
can't defend and explain. But subsequent to Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan,
then Rick Perry's 20/20 plan. Let's see: cut, balance and grow, or
pretty close to that. I call it the 20/20 plan--that also caught
people's attention--to go to a flat tax. Steve Forbes is one of the
advisers on it. It looks like Art Laffer is one of the advisers on
Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan. Both are very respected economists.
{time} 2140
I'm one who goes for a fair tax, so it's hard to move me on these
other policies. But we're starting to see now the Presidential
candidates differentiate themselves on their economic policies.
But, Mr. Speaker, what I bring this up for is that I'm looking yet
for a candidate for the Presidency who can articulate a vision for
America on what their view is, what their vision is on how to take
America to the next level of our destiny. What does America look like
in a generation if they're able to bring their policies into play and
lead with the bully pulpit of the Presidency of the United States? What
does America look like? What are our fundamental principles that can be
inspired by a President with that kind of vision? And how does that
mesh in, how does that couple with the policies that they would
advocate?
I take you back, Mr. Speaker, to Ronald Reagan, again, who for his
entire political career talked about America as the shining city on the
hill. He didn't talk about the shining city on the hill that he
promised we were necessarily going to have. He said, America is a
shining city on a hill and standing strong and true on a granite ridge.
That is pretty close to a Reagan quote. It may not be exactly right,
Mr. Speaker, but this gives you the concept. All of his political life,
he had the vision for America as a shining city on the hill. He
articulated it. When we heard it from him, maybe we didn't see it with
the clarity that Reagan did, but we knew he saw it with the clarity.
That was the vision thing. That is what inspired America to come behind
Ronald Reagan, and that's what inspired America to become, again, this
resurgent Nation where the malaise speech was put behind us and the
imagination, the hope and the robust future for America unfolded from
the Reagan administration. That's the biggest reason why we see him as
the greatest President of the 20th century.
The next President of the United States needs to articulate a vision,
needs to tell us what America looks like, what are our foundational
principles, how they will refurbish those pillars of American
exceptionalism, how they can strengthen the measures of life and
marriage, how they can strengthen the family, that basic building block
of our civilization, and how they can restrengthen the constitutional
understanding. I want to hear from Presidential candidates how they
would make appointments to the Supreme Court of Justices who will read
and interpret the Constitution, the text of the Constitution, to mean
what it was understood to mean at the time of ratification.
We have a President who is intentionally nominating activists to the
Federal courts. It's a tragedy that those kinds of judges would remove
the understanding of the Constitution from the American people. And so
far we've kind of moved forward accepting the idea that the people in
the black robes understand more about what's written and what is meant
in this Constitution than other people.
All of us in here took an oath to this Constitution. Our Federal
workers take an oath to this Constitution in the executive branch. Our
troops all do the same thing, and many of our State officers do the
same thing. You can't take an oath to a Constitution that is living and
breathing. You can only take an oath to a Constitution that means what
it says. And some of them take the oath and set about seeking to amend
it de facto, amending the Constitution by redefining it.
I want a President who understands the pillars of American
exceptionalism, who can articulate them and can transfer them into the
future as the timeless values that have gotten us to the present; one
who can articulate the great, great difficulty of moving to a balanced
budget, how we get a balanced budget amendment that will guide this
Congress so we can be bound by our obligation to our constituencies;
one who has an understanding of foreign policy; and one who has a full
and complete tax plan that transforms America.
All of those things are things that fit within the vision. And the
vision, right now, is what I've tuned my ear for. And I'm hopeful, Mr.
Speaker, that we will be able to hear this vision come from the
Presidential candidates and, before we get into January, that we'll
understand or hear with that clarity from the next President what their
shining city on the hill speech is for us.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________