[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 42 (Thursday, March 21, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H1815-H1819]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    LABOR, LABOR LAW AND THE BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Massie). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa 
(Mr. King) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, again it's my privilege to address you 
here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, this 
great deliberative body. And I listened to the presentation in the 
previous segment, it brought a number of things to mind that I expect 
I'll address because there certainly is a different viewpoint, as we 
all know.
  But before I get into the breadth and depth of the topic matter, I'd 
be very pleased to yield as much time as he may consume to the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry).


        Introduction of Legislation Addressing Security Concerns

  Mr. PERRY. I thank the gentleman from Iowa.
  Mr. Speaker, I'd like to call attention to legislation addressing 
security concerns that were drawn out in the aftermath of the September 
2012 attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya. As you know, terrorist 
attacks carried out that year took the lives, needlessly, of four brave 
Americans.
  In December, the Accountability Review Board released its findings 
and recommendations. This Board found that, prior to the Benghazi 
attack, some senior State Department officials demonstrated, as they 
coin it, a serious lack of management and leadership ability that 
contributed to the inadequate security posture at the consulate.
  Now, while this Board can recommend disciplinary action against State 
Department employees who are found to breach a duty, they also 
concluded that poor performance in the course of one's employment does 
not amount to such a breach of duty, which I find fascinating and 
completely unacceptable. As completely unacceptable as that is, it also 
requires legislation to change that.
  So, while I disagree that it should require legislation, it does. And 
with that in mind, I have drafted a bill, with the help of the 
honorable gentlelady from New York (Ms. Meng) that adjusts these 
criteria.
  With this legislation, if the Board finds that a State Department 
employee's unsatisfactory performance or misconduct has significantly 
contributed to a security incident, the Board can recommend that the 
employee be disciplined appropriately. I would ask, at this time, that 
all our colleagues join us in supporting this bipartisan legislation.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania for his presentation here. And as I listened to his 
presentation, the Benghazi incident comes to mind. And whether this is 
relevant or not is a question that I'm not necessarily prepared to 
answer, Mr. Speaker.
  But I do want to make a statement on Benghazi. And I would remind 
people that we lost an Ambassador, we lost other brave Americans. We 
had multiple injuries and casualties there that perhaps, they run in 
numbers that might be counted in the dozens.

[[Page H1816]]

                              {time}  1300

  The public doesn't yet know a single name of any of the survivors. 
None of those on, let me say, our side of this argument of the incident 
in Benghazi know a single name of the survivors. We don't know the 
depth of the injuries that took place--and some of them were severely 
injured. They've been kept under wraps. They've been told, purportedly 
by the news, Mr. Speaker, that they should not speak and talk about 
what happened in Benghazi.
  Now, I remember when Osama bin Laden met his justifiable end. This 
administration couldn't wait to come out before the cameras and tell us 
how that all unfolded and couldn't wait to tell us about every detail 
that wasn't classified on the end of Osama bin Laden's rein as the head 
of al Qaeda. They even showed us a picture of the situation room and 
who was in it. We saw the expressions on the faces of the people in the 
situation room, including the President, including the Secretary of 
State, including the Secretary of Defense. And we knew when they came 
into the situation room, when they heard the reports, how the decisions 
were made in that White House, and we knew when people left the 
situation room perhaps to go do something else. I don't remember any of 
them just simply going to bed.
  But what we don't know is this--and this is what this Congress needs 
to put together. We need a committee that's comprised of the best 
individuals that we can find from the relevant committees here in this 
Congress, or any other individuals in this Congress that have special 
expertise that would raise their knowledge base and their credibility 
to the point where we can get the maximum report coming out of this 
Congress.
  The circumstances that we have today on looking into the Benghazi 
incident and the events that flowed from that are several committees 
that have part of the jurisdiction. The Select Committee on 
Intelligence has part of the jurisdiction, and they've held some 
hearings and they have some knowledge. We don't know what that is. Much 
of it is classified. Much of it just isn't disseminated because that's 
not the nature of the Select Committee on Intelligence to disseminate 
information to the public.
  Another area might be our Judiciary Committee, under the jurisdiction 
of what was lawful and what wasn't lawful on what took place there and 
what might we have been able to do. The Foreign Relations Committee has 
some jurisdiction. Armed Services has some jurisdiction. That's four 
committees that I can name off the top of my head, Mr. Speaker. Each of 
them have taken some kind of look into this.
  But here's what happens. If you take a situation like Benghazi, or 
any major incident, and you break it down into four components and you 
assign, or the jurisdiction of each committee chair would look at this 
and claim jurisdiction, which they rightfully can do in this Congress, 
they would take their component of it, study it. They might write out a 
report, and it might be complete and it might be completely accurate. 
They can send that out, the unclassified portion, to the American 
people. That report goes out. Say that's the Select Committee on Intel.
  Then, Mr. Speaker, the Foreign Affairs Committee can meet and they 
can call the witnesses that they choose to and gather that information 
and perhaps write a completely objective and completely truthful report 
and send it out to the public, all of that that's not classified. The 
same thing can happen with the Armed Services Committee. The same thing 
can happen with the Judiciary Committee or any other committees that 
might have some jurisdiction.
  But, invariably, what you have are silos of information--a silo of 
information coming out of the Select Committee on Intel, part of it 
classified that would stay in there; a silo of information coming out 
of Armed Services, out of Judiciary, out of the Foreign Affairs 
Committee. And these silos of information, just like silos, don't match 
up. You can't square the circle with the information that comes because 
there are gaps in their jurisdiction and because there are gaps in the 
expertise that doesn't match together like a hand in glove or a finely 
machined gear. And even if they did match perfectly, you would still 
have four reports from four different committees presented to the 
public. Each one would have to be deciphered by whom? Scholars? The 
press? Who might it be?
  So if we are going to get to the bottom of Benghazi, we've got to put 
together a selected committee that represents all of the jurisdictions 
in the United States Congress and all of the oversight in the United 
States Congress. And if we do that, then we have the kind of committee, 
a commission, that is similar in nature to that of the 9/11 Commission, 
or the Warren Commission, which produced, in the end, one composite 
report, a book, Mr. Speaker, that the American people can look at, that 
they can count on it being factual, they can count on it being 
objective. They can count on it, and they can critique it if they have 
information out there that challenges it.

  The Warren Report was challenged, but it stands still as an accurate 
representation of the facts of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. 
The 9/11 Commission stands alone. That report stands alone as the 
broadest and most objective and complete report that Congress could put 
together. And we have acted and reacted on recommendations from the 9/
11 Commission.
  We need to do the same thing with Benghazi. If we do not, Mr. 
Speaker, history will forever question whether there was a coverup on 
what happened in Benghazi. In fact, we already know there has been. We 
know that the administration went out and sent Susan Rice out to five 
different talk shows on Sunday, just several days later, to tell us 
that all of this violence that erupted in the streets of Benghazi came 
about because of a movie, a video that was produced.
  Now, as far as I know, the individual that exercised his First 
Amendment rights to produce that video may still be in jail. That's the 
only punishment that's come out, that I know of, from Benghazi. I think 
he should be released. But that's the first story.
  And then we've got different stories that were brought out of the 
administration, pried out, because usually the press, but sometimes an 
American citizen, found that information, got it out on the Internet, 
the press found it, and we've been picking up pieces of Benghazi for 6 
months. And we still don't have the truth. The people who survived 
Benghazi need to come before this Congress, under oath, and tell us 
their story.
  Now, if there are components of this that are classified, if our 
national security is at risk, then Members of this Congress should be 
called into a classified setting and told these are the reasons why 
we're covering this up. If this administration came open with Members 
of Congress, we would honor the reasons for a classified standing, but 
they have not. They tried to cover it up in the first place. They tried 
to convince us it was a video.
  Since that time, the argument was made that there was no military 
relief that could have come into Benghazi because it was logistically 
not possible. That, I would say, is questionable at best. Piece after 
piece needs to come out into the public, Mr. Speaker. And I'm a strong 
advocate for Frank Wolf's proposal that we set up that committee to 
examine all of this and produce a report for the American people.
  And so that's simply triggered by my questions when I listened to the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania. And I would expect that you would ask to 
yield if any of that was inaccurate.
  I would be happy to yield to the gentlelady from North Carolina.


  Honoring the Life and Sacrifice of North Carolina's Mason Vanderwork

  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor the life of Marine Corps 
veteran Lance Corporal Mason Vanderwork of Hickory, North Carolina.
  After multiple tours of duty defending liberty abroad, this 21-year-
old hero gave his last full measure of devotion this week in service to 
our country. We can never adequately thank him or his loved ones for 
all they have given, nor can most fully grasp the weight of freedom's 
burden on young servicemembers and their families. But in spite of our 
incomprehension, our hearts go out to Lance Corporal Vanderwork's wife, 
Taylor; his mother, Melissa; and his sister, Katelyn.
  What I have learned of Mason is striking.

[[Page H1817]]

  Before graduating from Hickory's St. Stephen's High School, where he 
was regarded for his work ethic on the field and off, he knew he wanted 
to join the ranks of America's Marine Corps. Days after graduating, 
that's exactly what he did. Friends and neighbors recall his kindness 
and the high caliber of his friendship. They know him as a good man 
with a drive to become an even better man.
  How sad we are for this great loss. In this time of tragedy, the 
country is sobered by the breadth of Mason Vanderwork's sacrifice and 
mourns alongside the people of Hickory. May we remember his loved ones 
in our thoughts and prayers and commit them to the care of Almighty 
God.

                              {time}  1310

  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, and saying a 
prayer myself: God bless that marine and the United States of America.
  As we do this transition here this afternoon, Mr. Speaker, I'd like 
to take up some of the topic of the previous speaker in the Democrat 
hour who spoke about labor and labor law. It was a strong message from 
often the opposite side of my viewpoint, and I'm compelled to speak to 
it in this way, and that is this:
  First of all, labor is a commodity; it's a commodity like corn or 
beans or gold or oil. That labor is the supply, and its demand of labor 
sets the price of it, just like any other commodity. Yes, it's human 
beings and it's lives and it's families. As an employer, I met payroll 
for over 28 years--1,400-and-some consecutive weeks. There were times 
that we didn't go to the grocery store during those hard economic times 
because we met payroll first. That was always the highest priority. The 
first cash that came into King Construction in the worst years, even 
when the bank was closed by the FDIC, I met payroll.
  When that bank was closed, it was, let me see, April 26, Friday 
afternoon at 3 o'clock. They posted a highway patrolman outside the 
door with a red tag on the front of it. I found out that they had not 
only closed up my account, but the accounts of many of my customers. I 
actually reached into my pocket because I literally had two pennies in 
my pocket to rub together--it's almost a joke around our family. We 
still met payroll. We found a way to do it even though I couldn't write 
a check because the bank was closed.
  I thank a lot of the people that work for King Construction and the 
people that we have worked with and for throughout the years. I've been 
in the trenches with them. I'm the guy that if they're on an air 
conditioned cab in a machine, I'm down in the ditch with a shovel. I 
want to make that job go as good as it can.
  I walked in my office before Christmas one year and I found that my 
secretary had decorated our Christmas tree in the entryway of the King 
Construction office with these gold decorations printed out like a 
Christmas tree--a baby Jesus, a snowflake, a star of Bethlehem. When I 
looked at that tree and I looked at the decorations, the gold emblems, 
on the front side was engraved the name of one of our employees, or 
their spouse, or one of their children. These were the people that I 
went to work with every day, our employees; but the tree was decorated 
with the names of all the people that were directly affected by those 
jobs being available.
  We would never be a company that's looking at soon celebrating our 
40th year in business if it weren't for people that had worked for us 
for a long time and been part of this family. When there is a death, we 
go to the funeral of a family member. When there's a baptism, we go to 
the baptism. When there's a wedding, we go to the wedding. These are 
people that are like family--actually, there is even occasionally a 
little connection of blood that goes on, but it's like family, it is 
family. I have great respect for the people that do labor every day. 
And I am a blue collar guy here and at home in Iowa.
  But there are two viewpoints here. Another point I want to make, 
though, is that labor has a right to collectively bargain. They have a 
right to bargain as a bargaining group is another way to define that. 
Nobody has a right to intimidate others. Nobody has a right to be 
heavy-handed about it, but they do have a right to bargain, and I will 
always defend their right to bargain.
  But one of the points that is a big problem for our budget, for 
example, is this: that the organized labor unions in this country 
strongly support and promote the Davis-Bacon Act. Now, Davis-Bacon is a 
law that was passed back in the early thirties by a couple of 
Republicans from New York. Now, they remind me that it was Republicans 
that passed that law. I would be the last guy to stand here and say 
that Republicans are always a hundred percent right, but they were 
wrong when they did that.
  They wrote Davis-Bacon, this Federal law that requires that any 
construction project that has $2,000 or more Federal dollars in it 
shall be by prevailing wage. The definition of prevailing wage, then, 
is they go out and survey the pay scale and the benefits package that 
is normal and typical within that labor market. I can say with utter 
confidence that that scale is a union scale, not a prevailing wage, but 
a union scale. They're the people that negotiate this. The people that 
sit down on the boards and the panels do so. They're not measuring 
prevailing wage; they're simply measuring union scale and applying that 
to the Davis-Bacon wage scale.
  The result is these projects, these Federal projects cost an average 
of 22 percent more. Now, I have records that go back for years. We do 
some Davis-Bacon wage scale projects and some are not, so we're 
flipping back and forth. We've got a pretty good set of records 
that we've accumulated over the years. In our records, someplace 
between 8 and 35 percent is the percentage of increase in the cost of a 
project where there is a federally imposed wage scale. Part of that 
time is they doesn't know what the wage scale is, and part of the time 
it is because they're imposing at higher wage than prevailing wage. 
Part of the reason for that gap is some projects are material intensive 
and other projects are labor intensive, so you get that gap between 8 
and 35 percent. But a standard here is 22 percent--I often say 20--22 
percent increase.

  Now, think of that; think what this means. If this Congress were 
fiscally responsible and they looked at the unnecessary spending that 
is part of the prescription of the Davis-Bacon wage scale mandate, then 
we would see the cost of our Federal project--if we repealed Davis-
Bacon, we'd see the cost of our Federal projects be reduced by 22 
percent.
  Now, what would that mean? If there are Federal dollars in a school, 
that means we could build five schools instead of four. You know 
there's Federal dollars in a lot of our roads. We could build five 
miles of roads instead of four. We could build five miles of interstate 
highway, for example, instead of four miles of interstate highway. We 
could build five bridges instead of four.
  How many roads would have been built by now if we hadn't had the 
federally mandated Davis-Bacon wage scale put in place? How far would 
we be with our infrastructure? We're a long ways behind in our bridge 
reconstruction in particular, but also our highway construction. And 
every year that I've been in this Congress people come to me and they 
will say we have to raise the road use tax because we don't have enough 
money to build our roads.
  Now, road use tax, that really should cause a person to think. That 
is a user's fee. We pay it in the gas that we buy. We expect that when 
that nozzle goes into our tank and when we squeeze the nozzle to buy 
the gas, we watch the dollars--and they go up really fast when you see 
gas that's over four bucks a gallon--we watch those dollars go up on 
the pump. But we also realize that between the State and the Federal 
Government a lot of us are paying 40-plus cents a gallon to build the 
road that we're wearing out with the car we're putting the gas in. 
That's a user's fee. But when I came here and started to break this 
down and ask the question: Of that one dollar's worth of gas tax/user 
fee that is a Federal piece of this--18.3 cents a gallon--of one dollar 
of that, how much of that actually goes into roads and bridges? I'll 
tell you, it adds up like this--then we reduce it a little bit on this 
number:
  Three percent, 3 cents out of that dollar went for trails, for bike 
trails and automobile trails and that kind of thing--3 percent. There 
was at one time $16 million in one of our appropriation bills to clean 
graffiti off the

[[Page H1818]]

retaining walls in New Jersey. I thought, can't they get their 
prisoners out there with a wire brush to do that? And 28 percent going 
for environmental and archaeological compliance studies and costs. 
Twenty-eight cents out of that dollar for environmental interests and 
archaeological interests, looking for arrowheads and endangered 
species. Can't somebody else pay for that rather than the people that 
are driving on these roads? When you add Davis-Bacon to that, another 
22 percent.
  So you have 3 percent for trails, you have 28 percent for 
archaeological and environmental compliance, you've got 20 to 22 
percent for Davis-Bacon wage scale, and 17 percent for mass transit to 
buy people cheap Metro tickets in Washington, D.C., or subway tickets 
in New York, or the ``el'' in Chicago, or, what shall I say, the cable 
cars in San Francisco, subsidized by people buying gas. Add that all up 
and you're going to find--if you're good at math and paying attention, 
Mr. Speaker--that number comes to about 67 or 68 cents out of the 
dollar that goes for something else other than roads and bridges.
  Now, how can we justify raising a user fee on the gas tax, as we call 
it, rather than re-prioritizing that gas-tax-dollar pie, where you get 
a third of the money that's going to roads and bridges and two-thirds 
of the money that's going to something else? That needs to be fixed. I 
appreciate the gentleman that spoke earlier. If he would take a stand 
on that, perhaps we could find a bipartisan solution.

                              {time}  1320

  Another issue, though, is child labor. He made the argument that it 
was the unions that drove the child labor issue and now kids don't have 
to worry when they go to work. That's true, because there's no place 
for them to work. Hardly anywhere can young people work.
  Mr. Speaker, I just ask you to think about, let me say, some years 
ago there was a time when you could pull into any gas station and some 
young lad would come running out there with a rag in his back pocket. 
He would fill your car up. He would wash your windshield, check your 
oil, check your tires, and collect your money and send you on your way. 
That doesn't happen anymore. There are few of those full-service 
stations left. One of the big reasons is child labor laws.
  Today, child labor laws are written in such a way that a 17-year-old 
young person that is awaiting their 18th birthday can't get on the 
riding lawnmower and cut the grass around the gas station for pay 
because that's a violation of child labor laws. They can climb in a car 
at age 16 in my State and drive wherever they choose to go, but they 
can't mow the lawn in the gas station that they pull up into to buy 
their gas.
  We saw this administration push child labor laws in trying to get it 
pushed into the agriculture sector. It was the Department of Labor 
working with the Department of Agriculture to write rules like, unless 
you're a son or a daughter of somebody that's got controlling interest 
in a farm--in other words, you can't be loaned out or, as we say in my 
country, farmed out to the neighbors or to your kid's aunt and uncle or 
grandparents to do work. They prohibited youth from participating in 
herding livestock in a confined area, from being more than 6 feet off 
the ground so they couldn't paint the under eaves on the machine shed, 
from having anything to do with livestock that inflicts pain, like ear 
tagging or tail docking or clipping eye teeth or dewclaws on puppies, 
for example. They prohibited them from being involved in that, but that 
same girl that's prohibited from being around when you ring the hog can 
have her ears pierced--or any other part for that matter--without any 
objection from the same people that are advocating this.
  We have a nanny state that's run amok, Mr. Speaker. It's gone 
overboard with child labor laws and tried to push these child labor 
laws into agriculture. There was a major pushback because the family 
farm understood the value of work for our youth. They manage the safety 
best on those farms. They care the most about the people that are 
there. And the Federal Government would only interfere, and then that 
child would not have the experience of learning the work ethic by going 
to the neighbor's or aunt and uncle's or grandpa and grandma's.
  So even though the labor unions have made, I think, a big 
contribution with regard to on-the-job safety--the reference to OSHA 
and the history of that was a good thing. The organization of labor 
unions to negotiate for better working conditions and wages and 
benefits package was a good thing. But there has to be some restraint 
on this. We can't be going backwards.
  This statement about a fair wage, well, we should be thinking, what 
is ``fair,'' Mr. Speaker? You can look up the definition of ``fair'' in 
Black's Law, and you'll find a whole series of definitions for 
``fair.''
  I say the only time you should use the word ``fair'' when you're 
talking about law is when you're talking about the State fair or the 
county fair or the World's Fair, because otherwise, when you use the 
word ``fair'' to talk about justice and equity, you finally come to 
this point that everybody has got a different view on what the word 
``fair'' means.
  Anyone that's raised two or more children, Mr. Speaker, knows that 
there's no such thing as ``fair.'' If you apply a rule to one child, 
the other child will say, ``That's not fair.'' And if you apply the 
same rule to the other child, there will be a reason why the first one 
should be exempted. We can never agree on the word ``fair.'' We don't 
agree on what a fair wage is. That's why supply and demand needs to 
establish the wage, not somebody's idea of fairness.

  The statement about a living wage--a living wage. Well, a living wage 
for someone in New York City is different from a living wage for 
someone that lives, let's say, in a low-cost rural area that might be 
in the Midwest, for example. These definitions of fair wage and living 
wage are all ways to lever some kind of Federal imposition in that 
distorts the law of supply and demand.
  So that takes me around to this concluding part, Mr. Speaker, which 
is that the law of supply and demand has caused people to come into the 
United States illegally and take jobs for a cheaper price than allows 
for them to live in this society. The result of that is that the cost 
for people who are in this country illegally--just for the welfare 
parts that they access--is right at $55 billion. If they are legalized 
in the form that is advocated on the other end of the rotunda in here, 
Democrats and Republicans, in other words, their comprehensive 
immigration reform and all the other adjectives they use to avoid using 
the word ``amnesty,'' the cost goes from $55 billion a year to $75 
billion a year. If you track this group of people--we're talking about 
11.2 million people. If you track them for a lifetime, the cost of the 
welfare benefits becomes $2.5 trillion.
  So, think, Mr. Speaker, this Congress has passed ObamaCare. This is 
right at near the anniversary of that. Today we voted to repeal it 
within the, I'll call it, the Ryan budget. That's about $2.5 trillion 
as it extrapolates itself out on the budget scale. On top of that, 
ObamaCare dropped $2.5 trillion of debt on the American public. If 
comprehensive immigration reform, slash, amnesty passes this Congress, 
that drops another $2.5 trillion of debt on the American people.
  What we need is a balanced budget amendment to the United States 
Constitution, and we need that passed out of the House and out of the 
Senate with a cap at 18 percent of GDP and a supermajority required in 
order to raise taxes or to break the debt ceiling that we have, to 
increase the debt ceiling.
  If we do that, if we put a balanced budget amendment out here on the 
floor of the House and the Senate and if it passes, I'll be ready to 
look at increasing the debt ceiling for the President. If that doesn't 
happen, I don't see a reason to raise the debt ceiling. Let's stare him 
down on that until somebody gives in.
  We need to get this spending under control. Myopic policies and 
fiscally irresponsible policies are not the way to go. ObamaCare needs 
to be repealed. We need to restore the rule of law in this country. 
We've got to shrink down the welfare package that's out here. There are 
80 different means-tested welfare programs in the United States--just 
2\1/2\ trillion for the illegal component of this and a whole lot more

[[Page H1819]]

if we don't get these entitlements under control.
  Mr. Speaker, the solutions are here. They're on this side of the 
aisle. They're actually in the platform, and I endorse many of them. I 
appreciate your attention, and I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________