[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.
____________________