[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 63 (Tuesday, May 7, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H2479-H2482]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      SNAP AND IMMIGRATION REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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, I appreciate the privilege to address 
you here on the floor of the House of Representatives and also the 
times that I've had to be here on the floor and listen to the dialogue 
and the debate that's delivered by Members of both sides, the 
Republican and the Democrat side of the aisle. I listened with interest 
as my friend and colleague on the Agriculture Committee, Mr. McGovern, 
talked about the SNAP program and the necessity to maintain the dollars 
that were there.
  I was a little surprised that he didn't ask for more dollars going 
into the SNAP program as opposed to opposing any reduction in the 
programmed increase in the SNAP program. We have about $78 billion a 
year that are going into food stamps now--$78 billion, a little more 
than that. And by next year it will be $80 billion.
  Now, we do calculate our budgets and spending in a 10-year budget 
window, so that means $800 billion is the universe of money that he's 
talking about, and he's pleading with us not to reduce that growth from 
a little bit more than $78 billion a year up over $80 billion a year. 
So of that $2 billion a year that's programmed between this year and 
next year over the period of time of 10 years there would be $20 
billion trimmed off of $800 billion, which comes to about a 2\1/2\ 
percent decrease in the overall projected expenditures of the food 
stamp program known as SNAP.
  Now, after all of that technical gibberish, the bottom line is a $20 
billion cut is a $2\1/2\ billion cut in the increase. $20 billion 
spread out over 10 years is not something that's going to be 
noticeable. When the gentleman speaks of how we would ``literally take 
food out of the mouths of hungry Americans,'' Mr. Speaker, it's 
important to point out, literally taking the food out of hungry 
Americans has never happened as an action of government in the history 
of the United States. It is very unlikely to ever happen into the 
future of the United States. And it certainly isn't something that 
would be the result of a piece of legislation that would come out of 
this Congress and specifically out of the Agriculture Committee and 
specifically from the subcommittee which I chair.
  No, Mr. Speaker. There is not going to be any literal taking food out 
of the mouths of hungry Americans, to quote the gentleman from 
Massachusetts. Literally means ``really.'' It means ``actually.'' It 
means it physically happens. Now, if you're literally going to take 
food out of the mouths of hungry Americans, you would have to think in 
terms of some way to extract it once they have put it in their mouth. 
That's what the man has said. That's a little bit perhaps over-the-top 
rhetoric, and I understand he's passionate about the issue.
  But even figuratively speaking, it's a little bit of a stretch to 
argue that a 2\1/2\ percent reduction in anticipated expenditures of 
the food stamp program over a 10-year period of time is going to do 
something to starve kids when we're addressing the eligibility for the 
food stamp program. And we are seeing narratives--facts, actually--of 
people that are using their EBT card--that electronic benefits transfer 
card, that card that has spawned rap music about its easy accessibility 
and its marketability on the street--to get tattoos, and using that 
food stamp EBT card to bail at least one individual out of jail.
  There has to be a place where the gentleman from Massachusetts and I 
would draw the line and say, enough. Enough. We've taxed the taxpayers 
enough. We've punished the producers enough. We've borrowed enough 
money from the Chinese and the Saudis. We should not be borrowing money 
from the Chinese and the Saudis to fund somebody's tattoos, to hold up 
a tattoo parlor that in the neon sign says, we take EBT cards. No, Mr. 
Speaker, there has to be a place to draw the line and actually say no. 
The gentleman from Massachusetts gave me no indication, even though I 
listened to every word, of where he would say enough is enough, or even 
an amount being too much.

  So I would suggest that I have watched as the numbers of Americans 
that have signed up for the food stamp program have gone from 19 
million people to 49 million people. Think of that. Thirty million new 
people on the food stamp program, millions of dollars being spent by 
the U.S. Department of Agriculture to advertise food stamp sign-ups so 
that we can expand the numbers of people that are on another government 
program and encourage them to sign up. What for? It grows the empire of 
dependency which grows the empire of politics of the people on the

[[Page H2480]]

left. They know that. They are not stupid. They have a whole different 
set of motives than I have, but they understand what they're doing.
  Not any longer are there 19 million people on food stamps. There are 
49 million people on food stamps, and the Secretary of Agriculture has 
an advertising budget spending millions to go out there and recruit 
more to sign on.
  Now there are communications going on and publications popping up 
from Mexican consulates that in Spanish say, in foreign countries even 
that you can--we don't have to ask you and will not ask you about your 
status in the United States. If you are here illegally, sign up anyway 
and we'll do that in your native language, and we'll give you American 
benefits and advertise in Mexico to get people to sign up on the food 
stamp program here or there. Do they send the EBT card through the 
Mexican consulate? Or does it just go in regular mail? Or do you have 
to show up to claim it?
  I question all of these things, Mr. Speaker. In the question about 
what do ``they''--and he means Republicans--what do ``they'' have 
against poor people? Here's what we have. We have an aspiration for 
everybody to be the best they can be. We have an aspiration for 
everybody to have an opportunity to succeed to the limit of their God-
given abilities and to demonstrate their ambition and to be challenged 
out here in this society. That's why people come here. It's not because 
we offer 80 different means-tested Federal welfare programs, and we 
advertise that if you come here, you don't have to be responsible, you 
don't have to work, and you don't have to carry your share of the load. 
You might have thought that America had a safety net. No, sir; it's a 
hammock. It's a hammock with 80 different means-tested welfare programs 
in it, and they're out of hand. And this administration is promoting 
the expansion of them for political purposes, whatever the level of 
compassion might be of the gentleman from Massachusetts.
  By the way, when he said arbitrarily and indiscriminately cut, and 
that there are 17 million kids that are hungry and 50 million Americans 
that are hungry, this reduction of this 2\1/2\ percent over the next 
10-year period of time that's in the anticipated formula for food 
stamps is not going to be arbitrary, and it's not going to be 
indiscriminate.

                              {time}  1800

  It is going to be a number close to $20 billion. But instead, it's 
going to lower the eligibility so the people that need it less--in 
fact, many of the people that don't need it at all won't qualify. So 
that we're not paying for tattoos and we're not paying to bail people 
out of jail, and that we're not sending food stamps along with 
everybody's LIHEAP claim. Where in the past, if you qualify for $1 and 
the Low-Income Heating Assistance Program, you qualify for the full 
array of SNAP benefits. That's going to be adjusted upwards so that the 
evaluation of LIHEAP raises the bar a little bit. That's a tiny little 
trim and a little haircut that is 2.5 percent, but it's not arbitrary 
and it's not indiscriminate. It will be those that don't need this 
nearly as much as others.
  We're going to protect hungry kids, and we're going to protect people 
that need the benefit; but we're not going to be paying for tattoos and 
we're not going to be bailing people out of jail. By the way, I don't 
think we're either going to be paying for the deposits on those $7 
water jugs that people are going in and using their EBT card to buy a 
big old jug of water, take it out in the parking lot of the grocery 
store, dump it upside down and dump the water out and carry it back in 
and turn it in for the $7 cash refund for the deposit. That is a place 
where millions of dollars have been wasted by people who have EBT 
cards. If they're hungry, they're not going to be spending that EBT 
money on water, dumping the water out in the parking lot, and 
converting the empty jug into $7 worth of cash. The gentleman from 
Massachusetts, I'd like to see him look at some of the fraud that's 
going on here and have some compassion for the American taxpayers.
  Several hundred thousand kids will lose their school meals, he said. 
Mr. Speaker, that may or may not be true. I don't know about the basis 
of that statement, but I know this: that decision is not going to be 
made by the Ag Committee; it's not going to be made under the SNAP 
program. The school lunch program is a product of the Ed and Workforce 
Committee. That will be authorized out of that committee. It will be 
appropriated out of a different committee than what we'll expect this 
farm bill is appropriated under. Several hundred thousand kids will 
lose their school meals, that he's worried about this being part of the 
markup that's coming up of the farm bill in the Ag Committee this 
month. That won't be a subject matter--as much as I'd like it to be.
  If the gentleman from Massachusetts is concerned about hungry kids, 
then I would think he would sign onto my bill--my bill, Mr. Speaker, 
which prohibits the U.S. Department of Agriculture from rationing food 
to our children in the school lunch program. That is what they're 
doing, Mr. Speaker.
  There was a piece of legislation that passed through this House in 
the lame duck session of 2010. It was the First Lady's bill, the 
Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. They always have a way of putting these 
real nice labels on bills that do something else. I understand her 
initiative on this. She wants people, especially young people, to get 
good, healthy, well-balanced meals, get some get exercise; and I think 
that's a good message for the First Lady to send.
  When you promote a piece of legislation, however, and that 
legislation then requires that there be a certain mix of vegetables and 
fruit and carbohydrates and that kind of thing spread out through the 
USDA school lunch program--which the Ag Committee doesn't have 
jurisdiction over--that recommendation on its basis was relatively 
sound, Mr. Speaker. And even though I didn't agree that we should be 
dictating that at the Federal level, I didn't have a major objection to 
that initiative either.
  But we've seen what's happened. The Secretary of Agriculture has 
taken license that doesn't exist within the bill and capped the 
calories to our kids in schools. So they have put a lid on the amount 
of calories that can be served in each of the categories of elementary, 
middle school, and in high school. That cap on the calories, at least 
in one case with the middle schoolers, the calorie limitations that 
they had as a minimum coming into this school year was greater than the 
maximum that they allow for some of those middle school kids today. 
They have put every kid on the school lunch program in this country on 
a diet, Mr. Speaker.
  The administration--a policy supported by the gentleman from 
Massachusetts, a policy driven by--manufactured, I think, out of thin 
air, but with a self-assigned license by the Department of 
Agriculture--is rationing food to our kids in school.
  I listened to the gentleman from Massachusetts and he said that if 
you're hungry in school, you can't focus. I agree. I think kids need to 
go to school, and they need to have food in their belly. They need to 
go to lunch knowing they can get all the nutritious food they want to 
eat because for many of them that's the only decent meal they're going 
to get all day.
  They need to be fed in school. I will make this statement, Mr. 
Speaker: there is not a single kid in America that's getting fat on 
school lunch. That's not where it's happening. It's in the junk food 
afterwards because they can't wait to get out of the school door 
because they've been starved at the school lunch program, shortened on 
calories.
  So if I were going to set up a new franchise and try to make money 
today, I would set up a little junk food wagon like the ice cream truck 
out there in the parking lot outside of the school and as soon as those 
kids are released, sell them all the junk they're going to be out there 
clamoring for. That's what they do: they race to the convenience store, 
they jam themselves full of junk food, then they sit down in front of 
the TV and continue to eat junk food.
  And somehow this administration thinks our kids are getting fat on a 
school lunch program, and so they ration food to all kids. Same level 
of calories to a 70-pound freshman in high school as there is in a 250-
pound high school football player with a high level of activity and 
energy requirement. How is it that one size fits all for four

[[Page H2481]]

grades in school, a 70-pounder and a 270-pounder need the same amount 
of calories? You know that you're going to be starving the biggest kids 
and probably not providing enough opportunity for that younger one to 
grow. Meanwhile, we're not just inhibiting their mental growth; we're 
inhibiting their physical growth as well.

  If you think that you can reduce calories and ration food to kids 
that are growing and are active and somehow they're going to grow 
physically and mentally in an environment like that, that is a tragedy. 
I'd say to the gentleman from Massachusetts, that's a tragedy we should 
be able to work on together is starving kids in the school lunch 
program.
  I point out that North and South Korea--let me say as close as you 
can get ethnically speaking and genetically speaking--have been 
separated for over 60 years. The people in North Korea don't get a lot 
of diet. The people in South Korea have been successful, and they do 
get a far more healthy diet. The people in South Korea are, on average, 
3\1/2\ inches taller than the people in North Korea.
  So if we're going to starve our kids in school under some myopic idea 
that we're going to train them to eat their raw broccoli and their raw 
cauliflower, and that they'll somehow get enough to eat and that 
they'll be active and healthy and grow, that's a mistake. Give them all 
the healthy food that they want to eat at least once a day. Do not 
starve them. I could go on with the gentleman's statement.
  We're going to write up and mark up a good farm bill that does the 
prudent thing, and it doesn't starve people. It doesn't take food out 
of the mouths of babes or adults or anybody else. It just prohibits the 
utilization of these EBT cards, food stamps, SNAP program, from being 
used by people who aren't needy or by people that use it for something 
that it wasn't intended for.
  That's just the beginning of my response to the gentleman. But this 
fits in with the broader theme, Mr. Speaker, that I came here to speak 
about, and that is the issue here in the United States of this massive 
dependency that's been growing in this country.
  The gentleman is worried about 50 million people that are hungry--I 
don't know where that number comes from. I think we've all been hungry 
at one time or another, so that would be a subjective number. But I 
would point out that we have over 100 million Americans that are simply 
not in the workforce. When you add the unemployed to those who are not 
in the workforce by the definition that's put out by the Department of 
Labor, that number is over 100 million Americans.
  The highest levels of unemployment that we have in the country are at 
the lowest skilled jobs. No skilled jobs, low-skilled jobs, double-
digit unemployment. This isn't a country like it was back in 1849, when 
we needed to build the transcontinental railroad and we brought people 
in from across the ocean or the Pacific to drive spikes and lay ties 
and lay rail coming from the West. We brought people in from Western 
Europe to go build the train tracks from the east, and they met at the 
golden spike territory in that period of time. This country needed 
labor then. We needed low-skilled labor then, people that would put 
their hands and their back to this work.
  Some folks think that America needs that kind of labor today. Well, 
if we did, we wouldn't have double-digit unemployment in the low-skill 
jobs. And here we have the United States Senate that seems to be 
poised--and too many people in the House of Representatives that seem 
to be prepared to support them--to move an immigration bill out of the 
Senate that would be this: it would grant instantaneous amnesty to 
everybody that's in America illegally, with a few tiny exceptions--
maybe later, not right away. It would send an invitation off to 
everyone who has been deported in the past that, why don't you apply to 
come back into the United States. We really didn't mean it when we 
bought you a ticket to wake up in the country that you were legal to 
live in. And it's an implicit promise that anybody that's in America 
after the cut-off deadline--December 31, 2011--or anybody that should 
be able to come after that date--today, tomorrow, next year, next 
decade--all would be granted a presence in America where they didn't 
have to fear that the immigration law would be applied against them 
unless they committed a felony and were brought to the attention of law 
enforcement or unless they committed a series of three misdemeanors--
undefined in the law. That would be the discretion of--I suppose it 
would be ICE or Janet Napolitano. And this open borders policy would be 
perpetual.

                              {time}  1810

  I knew in 1986 what this meant, Mr. Speaker. Ronald Reagan only let 
me down twice in 8 years. One of them was in 1986 when he gave in to 
the advisers around him and public pressure and signed the amnesty bill 
of 1986. I knew then that the stroke of Ronald Reagan's pen did severe, 
severe damage to the rule of law in this country and that to restore it 
and reestablish the respect for the law was going to be a very 
difficult task indeed.
  But I also lived in fear that if I had job applicants coming into my 
company and I didn't have all of the I's dotted and the T's crossed on 
the I-9 form, if I didn't review the proper identification documents, 
fraudulent or not, and keep my records to protect myself, I expected 
ICE would be knocking on my door at any time--actually, it was INS at 
the time, Immigration Naturalization Services--and that they would be 
scouring through my records to make sure that I didn't violate one of 
the details of the Federal law of the 1986 Amnesty Act.
  Of course, Mr. Speaker, we know the INS agents, later on to be ICE 
agents, never showed up in my office. They didn't show up at thousands 
and thousands of companies where there are employers in the United 
States. And that the roughly a million people--it started out to be 
800,000--roughly a million people that were estimated to be the 
beneficiaries of this Amnesty Act--which at least they were honest and 
called it amnesty then--that that million people became, not a million, 
3 million people because of underestimates and because of a massive 
amount of fraud, including document fraud.
  So the rule of law was eroded in 1986, and Ronald Reagan really did 
intend to enforce the law to the best of his ability. It was undermined 
by leftist and ``open borders'' people in America that didn't really 
want to let that happen.
  Each succeeding President enforced immigration law less and less and 
less from 1986 through Bush 41 through Bill Clinton, who accelerated a 
naturalization process of a million people in 1986 just in time to 
magically vote in the reelection of that year. Following that, George 
W. Bush in his two terms, and now Barack Obama, who says, I refuse to 
enforce immigration law.
  There are 300,000 people on the list that had been adjudicated for 
deportation, and with a stroke of his Presidential edict pen, he 
forbade that the law be enforced and required that they simply waive 
their applications, on an individual basis, I might add. That gets a 
little tiring to read that when it is group and it is class.
  Nonetheless, the President got away with that. He told a high school 
class here in town--if I remember the date correctly, it was March 28, 
2011--that he didn't have the authority to grant the DREAM Act by 
executive order, that had to be a legislative act. And a little over a 
year later, by the stroke of his Presidential edict pen, he did so, 
however, created four classes of people, and gave them a legal status 
by Presidential edict by a memorandum from Janet Napolitano and John 
Morton, supported by a Presidential press conference, gave people a 
legal status in this country unconstitutionally, unlawfully, and 
granted them also a work permit manufactured out of thin air.
  Every document that allows people to be in the United States who are 
not American citizens is manufactured by the Congress of the United 
States, except the President took it upon himself to take on article I 
activity legislation from article II, the executive branch.
  So ICE and the president of ICE, Chris Crane, sued the President, 
sued the executive branch. They had the first decision that came out of 
the circuit in Texas. And the answer is, on 10 points, the judge held 
with the ICE union on nine of the 10. And the 10th one, I think today 
is the deadline for them to come back with their response to this in a 
cogent fashion so the judge can also rule again.

[[Page H2482]]

  I'm hopeful that he'll be consistent in the theme. The theme of his 
decision is this: Mr. President, executive branch, all who we will see 
and hear, ``shall'' means ``shall.'' When Congress means ``shall,'' 
they don't mean ``may.''
  That doesn't mean that the President may do whatever in the world he 
may wish to do. If Congress writes it into law and it's signed by any 
President, it's going to be a preceding President, that means 
``shall.'' You shall enforce the law. You shall follow the directive in 
statute. If you don't do that, you undermine this constitutional 
Republic that we have.
  Tomorrow morning, Mr. Speaker, at 8 in the morning in a ``Members 
only'' gathering, Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation will be 
delivering his report that was released yesterday around 11 or so. This 
report is about 101 pages, of which the executive summary is around 
five. I have read through this. It is definitive economic data that I 
believe will be assailed, but it's logically unassailable.

  He says in this document that ``at every stage of the life cycle, 
unlawful immigrants on average generate fiscal deficits.'' That's 
benefits that exceed taxes. ``Unlawful immigrants on average are always 
tax consumers. They never once generate a fiscal surplus that can be 
used to pay for government benefits elsewhere in society.''
  This situation, obviously, will get much worse after amnesty. And if 
you believe that the second generation will make up for the first, if 
they were all college graduates, they would still have a tremendous 
struggle to make up the $6.3 trillion deficit that's created by this in 
expenditures minus taxes collected from this group of people. But only 
13 percent of their children will go to college, so that will tell you 
how difficult this will be.
  This is a generational economic burden taken on, proposed out of the 
Senate. If the American people take this on, there is no undoing this. 
We must get this right. We must have a Congress that's informed and 
educated and pays attention.
  I urge all to take a look at the Heritage Foundation report by Robert 
Rector released yesterday. It is titled, Mr. Speaker, as I close, ``The 
Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer,'' 
dated yesterday, and that is May 6, 2013. I would urge that you and all 
pay attention to that, and I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________