Congressional Record, Volume 159 Issue 85 (Friday, June 14, 2013)

[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 85 (Friday, June 14, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H3642-H3649]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

IMMIGRATION REFORM

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege of
addressing you here on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives
and to have an opportunity to inject some dialogue into the ears and
minds of this body and across the country as people observe the
deliberations here in the House.
I came to the floor, Mr. Speaker, to address the issue of immigration
again. As we're watching the acceleration of an immigration proposal
that's coming through, moving in this direction at a minimum from the
United States Senate, it's important for us, Mr. Speaker, to recognize
that there are a series and set of beliefs over there that don't
necessarily conform with the majority here in the House of
Representatives.
If you look at the names and the reputations and the faces of the
people that are advocating for ``comprehensive immigration reform,''
and you recognize the history of some of them--regretfully, Senator
Teddy Kennedy is not here to advocate, but he's one of the original
proponents of what I call ``comprehensive amnesty.'' He was one of the
voices in 1986. In fact, he was one of the voices back in the sixties
on comprehensive immigration reform. Ronald Reagan signed the Amnesty
Act of 1986. We do have some people around here of significant
credibility that were part of that process back then, Mr. Speaker. One
of those is Attorney General Ed Meese.
Attorney General Meese was there as a counselor and adviser to the
President. He read the 1986 Amnesty Act, of course, and he had full
access to President Reagan. All of his Cabinet members--a good number
of them--weighed in with President Reagan. I remember where I was. I
was running my construction company back in 1986 during the middle of
the farm crisis.
I remember being in my office when I had been watching the debate and
reading the news and seeing what was moving through the United States
Congress and all the while believing that if you waive the application
of the law to people who have willfully broken the laws, it is a reward
for those lawbreakers to waive it; and if you reward them with the
objective of their crime, as the 1986 Amnesty Act did, then the result
of that is not what was promised.
What was promised was we will now enforce immigration law forever,
and there will never be another amnesty act. That was the promise. The
enforcement was that we had to file I-9 forms for every job applicant
which would put the pertinent data of the job applicant down on the I-9
form, and we dotted all the Is and we crossed all the Ts on the I-9
form, and we looked at the identification documents of the applicants
that were applying to come to work at my construction company and
thousands of companies across America.
We had, Mr. Speaker, the full expectation that the Immigration
Naturalization Services--then INS and now ICE--would be coming and
knocking on our door and going through our records to make sure that we
did everything exactly right because the force of enforcement was what
was going to justify the amnesty that was granted in the 1986 Amnesty
Act.
We were going to enforce and control our border and our ports of
entry and enforce the law against those who were unlawfully working in
the United States. In exchange for that, there was going to be the
legalization of some first 700,000 to 800,000 people in the United
States that were here illegally. It was adjusted up to be 1 million
people that turned out to be 3 million people. The lowest number on the
1986 Amnesty Act turned out to be 2.7 million to 2.8 million; the
highest number is someplace around 3.5 million or 6 million.
But in the neighborhood of 3 million people took advantage of the
1986 Amnesty Act. That's triple, by anybody's number, the original
estimate. The tradeoff again was in order to get an agreement with the
Senator Teddy Kennedy-types that were in the United States Senate and
House at the time, there had to be a concession made.
From where I come from, Mr. Speaker, it's really pretty easy. The
rule of law is the rule of law. The Constitution is the supreme law of
the land. Legislating is the exclusive province of article I within
this Constitution, the legislative branch of government, the United
States Congress, the House and the Senate on opposite sides of the
rotunda coming to a conclusion and we concur, pass a conference report
that goes to the President. When the President signs that, it becomes
law, and that's the law that we abide by. It's not complicated to
understand. That's what they teach in eighth grade civics class. But
the expectation that the law would be enforced and the real effort on
the part of President Reagan to do so was eroded by people that
undermined that effort.
Many of them never intended to follow through on the law enforcement
side of the bargain. Not only the border security, but also the
workplace jobs enforcement side, the legislation that some was formed
then, some came along in 1996, that required that the immigration
enforcement officers,

[[Page H3643]]

when they encountered someone that was unlawfully in the United States,
that they're required by law to place them into removable proceedings.
That's the law.
Ronald Reagan was an honorable man. I had great faith in the
principles that he so clearly articulated to the entire Nation and the
world with utter confidence. When I saw that amnesty legislation pass
out of the House and the Senate back in 1986, I had so much confidence
in the clarity of the vision and understanding of Ronald Reagan, that I
was confident that he would veto the misguided Amnesty Act of 1986
because you can't trade off amnesty for a promise that there would be
law enforcement or border security. The first thing you do is enforce
the law. You establish that the law is enforced.
What would happen if there had been 700,000 or 800,000 people in the
United States then who were living in the shadows, and what if we would
have enforced the border at the time, if we had enforced immigration
law at the time, and if we didn't force the shut-off-the-jobs magnet at
that time? Then that number that was viewed to be an intolerably high
number in 1986, that 700,000 to 800,000, would have become instead a
number that would have been less than that and not more than that.

If you would have enforced the law in 1986, there would have been
fewer people unlawfully in the United States and not more. But,
instead, as time went on--by the way, neither Ronald Reagan nor his
successor, George H.W. Bush, saw a particular political bump for
signing the Amnesty Act or for supporting it. Regardless, as time went
on, there was less and less respect for the law because there was less
and less enforcement of the law.
As much as Ronald Reagan would have liked to enforce the law, he
didn't have everybody bought in on that, Mr. Speaker. So as the
undermining of the enforcement and the turning of the blind eye took
place, there was less and less respect for the rule of law and
employers themselves began to understand that INS is not going to be in
your work place; they're not going to go through your HR records; and
they're not going to apply sanctions against employers for hiring
people that are unlawfully present in the United States and can't
legally work in the United States.
Mr. Speaker, the respect for the law was diminished because there was
less enforcement of the law in the workplace on the border, and then we
began to see the advocates for open borders start to emerge.

{time} 1420

I want to compliment former chairman of the Judiciary Committee,
Lamar Smith, for the stellar work that he has done in the immigration
reform legislation that he was a central figure of when he was chairman
of the Immigration Subcommittee back in 1996. I look back at the
language that was put in place then and I'm continually thankful,
because this nation has been rewarded by the vision of now-Congressman
Lamar Smith, and it has made our jobs easier here.
But also the 1996 immigration reform, which was enforcement reform,
was triggered off of, to some degree, Barbara Jordan's study that took
place in around 1991, if I remember correctly, that if you grant
amnesty, you'll get more people coming in here illegally. And the
principles are this: you enforce the law. You have to place people in
removal proceedings if they violate the law. It is not a draconian
thing to do. If you put someone back in the condition they were in
before they broke the law, that's not a particularly draconian
punishment, and if that's hard to understand, Mr. Speaker--and I know
you understand all things--but think of it this way: If someone goes in
and robs a bank and they step out on the steps of the bank with the
sack of loot, and law enforcement appears and says, sorry, you can't
keep the loot, we're going to put that back in the bank, but you can
go. That's the equivalent of removal. You don't get to keep the
objective of the crime. We put you back in the condition that you were
in before you committed the crime. That's not draconian. That's the
minimum you can do and still have a rule of law apply. You can't be a
nation if you don't have borders. And if you don't determine as a
nation what crosses those borders, people, or goods, contraband or not,
if you don't make those decisions as a government, as a people, then
it's out of control. Then you're really not a nation. Then immigration
policy is set by the people that decide they're going to break your
laws and come across that border, and if we decide we're not going to
enforce those laws, we have, as is often advertised by people in both
bodies this year, not so much last year--this year--de facto amnesty.
De facto amnesty. That means the equivalent of amnesty in Latin. But
they also argue we have to do something to resolve the circumstances of
ending this de facto amnesty because it's an unjust condition to have
people in.
Now, I don't feel that same injustice, Mr. Speaker, because, first of
all, the people that are here living under the described de facto
amnesty made the decision to come here and live in the shadows. And
some will say, well, they didn't if they were a child when they were
brought by their parents, and that's true to a degree, and the group of
people that we are the most sympathetic to are those DREAMers, those
kids that were brought here when they were young, that have gone
through our educational system--paid for by U.S. taxpayers, by the
way--that may have a significant opportunity in this country but are
subject to removal just like their parents, who clearly knew they were
breaking the law.
Some of those people have been boldly lobbying across these Capitol
grounds, and there was a circumstance not that long ago where the
president of the ICE union, Chris Crane, who is the lead plaintiff in
the lawsuit of Crane v. Napolitano that seeks to correct the
unconstitutional actions of the executive branch, including the
President, but Chris Crane was testifying before a Senate Judiciary
Committee on immigration, and while that was going on, they had people
that were illegal aliens in the United States, unlawfully present in
the United States--by the way, that's a legal term, illegal alien--but
they were in the room, in the Senate Judiciary Committee, while the
president of the ICE union is testifying. They were also in the hallway
outside the Judiciary Committee as recently as yesterday, and they had
been invited into the Judiciary Committee, or at least recognized and
introduced inside the House Judiciary Committee by former chairman, now
ranking member, John Conyers of Michigan.
How far have we come, Mr. Speaker, when we have people who are
subject at the specific directive of the law that, when encountered by
the law enforcement officers, they are required by law to place them in
removal proceedings, and now they come into the United States Capitol
and insist that we change the law to accommodate law-breakers. If we do
that, whatever our hearts say about the DREAMers, whatever the short-
term piece is about that small segment of the larger group of people
that's defined as 11 million, and probably is two or more times greater
than that, whatever our heart says about that, we're eroding the rule
of law if we grant a component of amnesty.
Our rule of law is more sacred to us than the sympathy that we turn
towards people that maybe didn't make this decision themselves. But I
can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that the President has directed and it is in
the letter of the executive memos that have been produced by John
Morton, the head of ICE, and supported by Janet Napolitano, who is the
Secretary of Homeland Security, who is the subject of the lawsuit led
by Chris Crane, the president of ICE, naming Janet Napolitano and has
been before the court in the Northern District of Texas and received
roughly a 90 percent decision at this point from Judge Reed O'Connor
that when Congress says ``shall,'' it doesn't mean ``may.'' In other
words, if you're for open borders, Mr. President, the law says thou
shalt not read the law to mean you may enforce the law; it says you
shall enforce the law.
The President of the United States takes an oath of office, and it's
prescribed in the Constitution. And part of the language that he
adheres to is to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. That
means enforced. It doesn't mean kill the law, Mr. Speaker. It doesn't
mean tear the Constitution up and throw it out the window. It means
take care the laws be faithfully

[[Page H3644]]

executed. In other words, enforce the law.
The President has defied his own oath of office, and he has
prohibited the ICE and other law enforcement officers from enforcing
the clear letter of the law, and some of that was law that was put in
place in 1996 under the pen of Lamar Smith, who was the lead sponsor on
the immigration reform legislation of that time.

The President gave a speech to a high school just out here in
Washington, D.C., on March 28--I believe the date was March 28, 2011; I
know the actual date of the month, not necessarily the year--and he
said to them, I know you want me to establish the DREAM Act by
Executive order. In other words, legalize people who were brought here
by their parents under the age of 16 and essentially give them a work
permit and perhaps a path to citizenship. But he said, I can't do that.
It's not my constitutional authority to waive the law and grant, I'll
say, executive amnesty to the DREAMers. Instead, he said, you
understand--he said to the students--you understand the Constitution,
you've been taught and you learned this, that there are three branches
of government. The legislature has to pass the laws, that's Congress,
and the President's job is to enforce the laws. That's the President
who was speaking before that group on March 28, and the judicial branch
is to interpret the laws.
Well, that's a pretty nice, tight, composite summary of the structure
of our Constitution and our Federal Government. And it is worthy of a
former adjunct law professor who taught constitutional law at the
University of Chicago, President Barack Obama. He understood it
clearly. He articulated it clearly to the young people there at the
high school just outside here in D.C. And March 28, a little over a
year later, the President decided that he was no longer going to
respect his own word, his own oath of office or his own interpretation
of the Constitution and just, I'll say it wasn't necessarily an
executive whim--I suspect it was more like a political calculation. He
did a press conference 2 hours after Janet Napolitano released the memo
that created four classes of people who were exempted from the law and
gave them a work permit.
By the way, all lawful presence here in the United States either
comes from birth, natural born citizen, or the naturalization process
that's set up by Congress, or the visas, visitors visas, student visas,
H-1Bs, H-2Bs, ag workers, all of the lawful presence in the United
States aside from natural born citizens is a product of the United
States Congress.
Many believe, and I almost entirely agree, that the Constitution
defines immigration as the exclusive province of Congress. It clearly
defines the legislative activity as the exclusive province of the
United States Congress, article I in the Constitution.
And so when the President decides he's going to create immigration
law, waive the application of the law and create new law out of thin
air, and when Janet Napolitano releases the Morton memo and announces
that here are these four classes of people now exempt from the law and
manufactures a work permit out of thin air, that happened, and 2 hours
later the President was doing a press conference repeating the same
thing at the White House.

{time} 1430

And so it's not that the President happened to say those things in a
press conference. It's not that Janet Napolitano happened to pick the
timing of 2 hours before the President's press conference. Of course
this was coordinated, and I'd asked her that under oath before the
committee, if it was coordinated. The essential answer, after the
typical, long rambling that you get from those kind of witnesses was
yes.
And so one can only conclude that either it was by the order of the
President or the consent of the President that the Constitution itself,
I believe, was violated. I believe that the separation of powers was
violated. And it appears to me, from reading Judge Reed O'Connor's
decision in the case of Crane v. Napolitano, he agrees also, and wrote
repeatedly, ``shall'' means ``shall''; it doesn't mean ``may.'' When
the law says ``shall be enforced,'' ``shall be placed'' into removal
proceedings, it means exactly that.
And so I expect that we will see a final decision out of the Northern
District of Texas. Roughly 90 percent of the arguments that we made
before the Court were agreed to by Judge Reed O'Connor, and the other
one was one that the executive branch's argument was, let's see, less
intelligible than it needed to be before a definitive decision could be
rendered by a prudent Judge Reed O'Connor. And we'll see that decision
perhaps come down very soon.
And I expect that this administration will litigate this all the way
to the Supreme Court and insist that the President can legislate by
executive order or executive edict, that they can provide executive
amnesty.
If the President can suspend any law, if he has the authority to
suspend any law and he has the authority to manufacture any law out of
thin air--and out of thin air was the work permit, just as a reminder.
Made up a work permit so that the DREAMers that he had exempted from
the law could legally--and it's really questionable about the legally
part--work in the United States.
If the President can manufacture law out of thin air, and if the
President can order that the law be suspended, and if the president of
ICE can be sitting in a room with people that are unlawfully present in
the United States and compelled by law to place them in removal
proceedings but prohibited by order of the President or his executive
minions, we have come to a very bad place in America, Mr. Speaker.
Our Constitution itself is threatened. The function of the three
branches of the government has been so blurred by an Executive that has
contempt for his own oath and contempt for the Constitution itself and
the separation of powers. And each time that we go to the Court to get
an answer, we're asking the third branch of government to be the
referee between the two competing branches, the executive and the
legislative branch.
And the Founding Fathers, as they set up this magnificent and
brilliant and balanced Constitution between the three branches of
government, they envisioned this: each branch of government would have
its own constitutional power, and that power was something that wasn't
precisely defined between the three branches of government.
They expected the judicial branch would be the weakest of the three
branches of government. Some years it is; some years it's not. But they
also expected that the executive branch, the President, and the
legislative branch, Congress, would reach a level of tension between
the two where each branch would jealously guard the constitutional
authority that's vested within it and the supreme law of the land, the
Constitution. And instead, it seems as though these Members of
Congress, 435 here and 100 Senators over on the other side, even though
we all take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States,
seem to have a different understanding of what this Constitution really
is. And they seem to have a blurred and weak understanding of the
legislative authority that we have here.
Our Founding Fathers envisioned that. They put all of the power of
the purse right here in the House of Representatives. Spending bills
start here. There can't be a dollar spent by this government unless the
House of Representatives approves it, whether we start it here and the
Senate amends it and it comes back, or whether we start it here and the
Senate approves it and it goes to the President's desk. There can't be
money spent unless this House approves it.
And so we have the power of the purse. And they expected we would use
the power of the purse in order to restrain an out-of-control
Executive. They set some other structures in place, too, that none of
us want to contemplate having to use the more draconian approach to
this. But the President of the United States has defied the authority
here of Congress and his own oath of office, and this Congress has not
gotten its back up nearly enough to defend the constitutional authority
that we have, or the affront to it.
And so, in an appropriations bill last week, I offered an amendment,
an amendment that would prohibit any of the funds from being used to
carry out

[[Page H3645]]

the orders that came from John Morton and Janet Napolitano and approved
by President Obama that grant this executive amnesty to the four
classes of people. This is a whole series of six memos, known as the
Morton memos. And no money can be used to enforce or implement or
execute the special work permit created either by those memos. And that
amendment was debated here on the floor, vigorously, I might add, very
late at night, and I made a strong constitutional argument, I believe.
Members of Congress came down here to the floor of the House, and they
voted by a vote of 224-201 to support my amendment.
This Congress has spoken. We may disagree on what we do with people
that are unlawfully here, but the majority of the House of
Representatives, that 224 vote clearly said we are going to defend our
constitutional authority to legislate. We're not going to allow the
President to make it up as he goes along, and we're going to constrain
the purse strings of a President that would legislate by executive
edict, which, in this case, is executive amnesty.
So that's a move in the right direction, Mr. Speaker. But as I see
the things unfolding in the United States Senate and the language that
comes out of there and the argument that has been repeatedly made here
on the floor of the House and, to some extent, in the Senate, we have
de facto amnesty. De facto amnesty is a reality because the President,
as I said, broke his own oath of office.
We've gone to court to do all we can do there, and that's moving
through the system. But there's another way that this is happening, and
that is this. In the minds of too many Members of Congress, they
believe that we have to conform our legislation to the President's
will. Because the President has refused to enforce the law, they argue
that we should conform the law to something the President will enforce.
That's way outside my ability to reason within the confines of the
Constitution, Mr. Speaker. I can think of a time or two--and there have
been more, I'm sure--that the Supreme Court ruled and they came down
with a ruling that this Congress agreed was a constitutional
interpretation.
The partial birth abortion legislation was one of those. Congress
passed a ban on partial birth abortion. The ruling that came out of the
Supreme Court was that the language that banned partial birth abortion
was too vague and there wasn't a provision in it that made an exception
for the life or health of the mother.
So Congress went back to work. We rolled up our sleeves. I was there
in those discussions and in the debate and helped move it forward.
Steve Chabot of Ohio was the principal sponsor of that legislation. It
defined the act precisely from a medical perspective of partial birth
abortion. We brought in experts that testified over and over again, and
we brightened the definition, and a brighter, brighter line on what
that was. And the Congressional findings, after much medical
deliberation, was that a partial birth abortion is never necessary to
save the life of the mother, that it just doesn't occur from a medical
perspective.
Yes, there are those dissenters out there, Mr. Speaker. I don't bring
this up for that reason. Congress read the Supreme Court decision and
conformed our legislation to the decision that was a precedent decision
of the United States Supreme Court. That shows a decent respect for the
jurisprudence of the judicial branch of government, and it's
appropriate for this Congress to respect the judgment of the other
branches of government.
But we all take an oath to uphold the Constitution. We're not bound
by someone else's judgment of what that oath means or what the
Constitution means. We're bound by a clear understanding of the
Constitution itself, the text of the Constitution, the original text,
plus the amendments.
The Constitution has to mean what it says. It has to mean what it
says on its face. That's what words are there for. It has to also mean
what it was understood to mean at the time of ratification, or there's
no guarantee.

{time} 1440

This Constitution, Mr. Speaker, is a contractual guarantee that we
received, starting in 1789, amended 27 times since then. Every single
amendment in there, all the language in there, has to mean what it was
understood to mean at the moment of ratification. It can't be changed
in its definition because it's inconvenient for today or our Founding
Fathers would have not given us a means to amend this Constitution. It
has to mean what it was understood to mean, and you can't change its
definition. Because if you do so, you're breaking an intergenerational
contract that was handed to us in 1789 to be preserved, protected and
defended, this Constitution.
So each Member of Congress needs to understand that, take an oath to
uphold this Constitution--we do that--defend it. But when the
reasonable jurisprudence of a constitutional analysis comes from the
Supreme Court, we conform to that. In the case of partial-birth
abortion, we've conformed in a number of other times, and that's a
respectful thing to do from one branch of government to the other.
But when the President of the United States defies the literal
language in the law and orders that there be no application of the law
because he disagrees with the law and manufactures a work permit out of
thin air, and when a Congress accepts the President's idea on that and
decides that we are going to pass legislation--as has been offered by
the Gang of Eight in the Senate and the Gang of Eight, minus one, now
seven in the House--that we're going to conform this Congress to the
whim of the President--not that we agree with his policy, but they say,
well, you'll never get enforcement of the law unless you conform the
law to what the President's willing to do. My gosh.
What would the Founding Fathers say if the Chief Executive Officer of
the United States and our Commander in Chief defies his own oath of
office by his own definition--at the school, March 28, as I said;
refuses to enforce the law, pledges to punish even the president of the
Immigration and Customs Enforcement union for doing what he's commanded
by law to do. The President does that, and there's any kind of mindset
here in Congress that we should conform the law to the President's
whim. No, Mr. Speaker.
The President has this alternative: if he disagrees with the law of
the land and he wants to see it changed, then he can ask people in this
Congress, the House and Senate--House or the Senate, for that matter--
would you kindly draft some legislation that would please me and I'll
be supportive of it as you try to work it through the legislative
process--through regular order, as our Speaker often says. That's the
President's alternative.
He doesn't write law. He does have the opportunity to veto laws that
he disagrees with that reach his desk. But, technically, the President
can't even introduce a piece of legislation here in the House or the
Senate. But we know that there are friends of the President that are
willing to do that, and it should be so, so that the President can
advocate for legislation and ask people to move it through the system.
But instead, as I said, he's defied his oath. He has challenged this
Congress. And some Republicans and most Democrats appear to have this
spell cast upon them that suspends their otherwise good judgment and
they're working down the path of a comprehensive amnesty plan in the
Senate--and the stage is set here in the House where I can surely see
something similar emerging here.
We need to stand up and argue. There's a future for this country.
There's a destiny for this country. It is a precious thing that we hold
in our hands here, the destiny of the United States of America. The
pillars of American exceptionalism built this.
You can open this Constitution up and go to article I, II and III,
the legislative, the executive and the judicial branches of
government--in priority order, I would say, because article I reflects
more directly the voice of the people, the legislature, the Congress.
If there is a conflict between the three branches of government, how
is it resolved, Mr. Speaker? If you dig deeply into this and you look
at our history and you watch how things have reacted, sometimes the
judicial branch comes out on top, sometimes the executive branch comes
out on top, sometimes the legislative branch comes out on top. But if
push comes to shove, it's the people, we the people, that come out on
top.

[[Page H3646]]

That's why the House of Representatives has elections every 2 years,
so we can be the quick reaction force. When people get their back up
and they don't like the direction their government is going, they
recruit people, they step up, they run for office. And 2 years later--2
years, or less, later--there's an election, and often new people come
into the House of Representatives that more acutely reflect the values
and the wishes of those who elected them.
We saw that happen in 2010. The year 2009-2010 brought us ObamaCare.
We saw tens of thousands of people all around this Capitol. We saw not
just a human chain, not just a human ring, but a human doughnut formed
around the United States Capitol; people six and eight deep, human
contact all the way around the United States Capitol. I went up to look
at it, and I walked around to look at it. If we could have--of course
for air space, helicopters can't go up and take pictures. There's no
way to get that shot. I wish I had gone up with a camera up on top and
done a panoramic, interconnectable picture so that people could see the
magnificent unity of the American people, hand to hand, six to eight
deep, that thick, a human doughnut all the way around the Capitol
saying: keep your hands off our health care. Keep your hands off our
health insurance.
That protest was defied when the then-Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, walked
through the throng with her huge magnum gavel--you'll remember that,
Mr. Speaker, about that long--in a show and display of--what shall I
call it--regality. The regal Speaker was coming through with her big
gavel to rule over the American people who said: keep your hands off
our health care.
To this day, I don't know of a single legitimate poll that says that
they want ObamaCare over repeal of ObamaCare. The last number I saw was
56 percent of the American people want to see ObamaCare repealed. They
came here to this city and they said: keep your hands off our health
care--tens of thousands. They came on three different occasions that I
recall: on November 5, and then later in March, about March 22 or so, a
Thursday, and then again on a Saturday. Some of them flew up here to be
here on a Thursday, flew back home and got the call to come back again.
They didn't leave the airport; they just went to the ticket counter and
came back. They care that much about our freedom. And still, ObamaCare
is being imposed upon them.

They went to the polls in the fall of 2010. They elected 87 new
freshman Republicans to come serve here in the House of
Representatives. And they every single one of them ran on the ticket of
repealing ObamaCare, every single one--87 new freshmen. A magnificent
turnover. A class that I call God's gift to America.
Now, that class of 87 is here--most of them still here--and a new
class has been elected. All of the freshmen that came in on my side of
the aisle, Mr. Speaker, and all of those that came in in 2010 and every
Republican in the House of Representatives has voted to repeal
ObamaCare. I believe up until, I'll say, last fall's election--I'm not
certain what's happened in the Senate, but up until that time every
Republican Senator has voted to repeal ObamaCare. They all took that
pledge. That's an example of the quick reaction force of the people.
Now, it didn't work out so well with the Presidential election. But I
can tell you that if that election result had been different for the
Presidency, the ObamaCare repeal bill and getting past, I'll say, a new
majority in the United States Senate, it would have gone to a new
President's desk.
But it was passed out of this House of Representatives. I drafted the
40-word repeal language in the middle of the night after the ObamaCare
legislation was passed. I wasn't alone doing that; I had company doing
that. But the response of the American people overcomes the division
between the lines of the three branches of government.
It's the people who will speak. When people rise up, when they elect
new people to the United States Congress, when their voice is heard in
the ballot box electing a President, then even a Supreme Court decision
can be reversed by the voice of the people. It may take a
constitutional amendment; but in the end, power is something that you
can assume.
Anyone can assume power. We do that in our own families when we
direct our children to stay out of the cookie jar, for example. As long
as they respect that power, you have that power, Mr. Speaker. But if
it's challenged and defied, then the power disappears, and it goes to
whatever entity can claim that power, whatever entity can successfully
assert that power.
So we're in the struggle right now. The President's hand is in the
article I legislative cookie jar. He's reached in and said: I'm taking
these cookies of immigration because I don't like the law that exists;
I refuse to enforce the law; and I'm going to make up a new law while
we're at it.

{time} 1450

It's almost like having a child with his hand in the cookie jar with
that defiant look in his eye thinking, ``And you can't do anything
about it. You can go to the judicial branch and you can litigate.''
We've done that. The Court is one day going to come down with a
decision. Will the President honor the decision of the Court? If it
gets all the way to the Supreme Court, will he honor it or will he defy
it?
I sat here on this floor, Mr. Speaker, as the President spoke from
the rostrum right behind me lecturing the Supreme Court that sat over
here and told them that their decision was wrong. That's not a decent
respect for the opinions of mankind that are seated in the United
States Supreme Court. That blurs the lines between the judicial and the
executive branch of government. It also tells me that we have a
President who doesn't understand his restraint.
But I'm troubled by a Congress that will allow that to happen and
will allow that Presidential hand into the legislative cookie jar,
because we take an oath to uphold the Constitution. It's our obligation
to do that. That means we defend the constitutional authority that
we've taken an oath to uphold. That's where we sit.
Now, we'll get to the policy side of this from an immigration
perspective, Mr. Speaker. If you reward people who break the law, you
get more lawbreakers. It's that simple of an equation. I knew that in
1986. I knew that as a businessman who was working through the farm
crisis years of the 1980s to keep my company up and going and trying to
get it and keep it profitable and raise my young children at the time.
I remember when Ronald Reagan signed the Amnesty Act. That was a big
mistake. That was one of only two times that the great man whom I have
great respect for, Ronald Reagan, let me down. It was only twice in 8
years, but it comes back to haunt us yet to this day.
Why did I know in 1986, not being a Member of Congress, being a guy
that had only been in business 9 years at the time, that had three
young sons that were roughly 10 and under and a wife at home that was
also working, how did I know that that was a mistake? What was it
within me? I didn't have the background that matched up with Attorney
General Meese, for example, or the President of the United States. I'm
outside of little Kiron, Iowa, 300 people at the time. I can't see a
neighbor from my porch. But I knew that that was a mistake. I had no
idea that this many years later I'd be standing on the floor of the
United States Congress making this case.
It wasn't a matter of clairvoyance. It was a matter of what was
justice. It was a matter of growing up in a law enforcement family and
being steeped in reverence for the supreme law of the land, this
Constitution, and understanding that if you don't like the law, you
abide by it. But there's a means to change it whether you're the
President of the United States or whether you're this young fellow
that's trying to run a business and raise his family but have respect
for the rule of law.
When you cross those lines, and especially when you do so from the
Office of the White House, the President of the United States, it's the
equivalent of taking a jackhammer to one of the beautiful marble
pillars of American exceptionalism.
Now, to define what those pillars are, they're here. They're here in
the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment is real easy:
Freedom of speech. That's a pillar of exceptionalism. Without it, we
can't be

[[Page H3647]]

the great country we are. Freedom of religion, same answer. Without it,
we can't be the same great country that we are. Freedom of speech,
religion, the press, assembly, the right to keep and bear arms, and the
property rights that used to exist in the Fifth Amendment before the
Kelo decision that we sought to restore in the Judiciary Committee just
a couple of days ago. No double jeopardy, trial by a jury of your
peers, a speedy trial, no cruel unusual punishment. The rights that are
not in the Constitution devolve to the States, respectively, or to the
people.
Those are all pillars of exceptionalism.
Free enterprise capitalism is another one. Without free enterprise
capitalism, we don't have this vigorous and robust economy that we
have.
That's on the citizenship test, by the way. What is the economic
system of the United States? Free enterprise capitalism.
How about the property rights that exist within intellectual property
up until we amended some of the patent and trademark laws? The property
rights to intellectual property is one of the big, big reasons why the
United States has been so successful.
So I put this all together and add to that the fact that this country
was settled by the values of Western civilization, with Judeo-
Christianity included in a prominent form. All of that arrived here on
this continent at the dawn of the industrial revolution and the concept
of manifest destiny that settled this country from sea to shining sea.
I can look back and try to reverse-engineer America and think where
did we make a turn that I could even on Monday morning quarterbacking
rules make a recommendation we should have turned another direction. I
can't reverse-engineer America and come up with a greater country than
we are, except maybe I'd go back to 1986 and say, Ronald Reagan, if
you'd just vetoed the Amnesty Act in 1986, I wouldn't be standing here
right now. We wouldn't have a Senate that's seeking to stampede an
Amnesty Act across the rotunda over to us. I wouldn't have this spell
that seems to be cast over too many Republicans that somehow if we'd
just pass an Amnesty Act everything is going to be all right in
political viability, Republicans will be okay going into the future,
end this spell that has suspended good judgment and reason and
suspended their ability to listen to empirical data and weigh the
policy.
The immigration issue cuts across all the components of
constitutional conservatism. Anything that has to do with family, for
example, with the rule of law, with the economy, with national defense
and national security, almost every issue that we deal with in this
Congress is touched somehow by immigration.

It is not a simple topic. It's not something where you just say,
Well, I feel sorry for the DREAMers; therefore, I'm going to grant
amnesty. I support amnesty, I get that off the table, and maybe the
next Congress can deal with it.
It does not work like that, Mr. Speaker. This is an irrevocable and
irreversible advocacy for amnesty. It's something that cannot be
undone. ObamaCare, as bad as it is--and I've spent more than 3 years of
my life fighting ObamaCare and working to defeat it before it became
law and repeal it after it became law. That's a matter of clear public
record. But, Mr. Speaker, if I have to accept this perpetual and
retroactive amnesty that is offered by the Gang of 8, or what I expect
to come from the Gang of 8 minus one here in the House, if I have to
choose between perpetual and retroactive amnesty and ObamaCare, I'm
going to accept the ObamaCare and defeat the perpetual and retroactive
amnesty, because later on we can repeal ObamaCare. We can undo it. We
can take it apart. We can roll it back, and we can put together a
doctor-patient relationship and a real healthy health care system in
the United States. We know what it looks like. We know what to do. We
couldn't get it done because we didn't have the votes.
But you can undo ObamaCare, Mr. Speaker, but you cannot undo
comprehensive amnesty, because once that genie is out of the bottle,
there's no putting the genie back in the bottle. It becomes as
amorphous as a puff of smoke. And if they don't have the political will
to enforce the law now, why would they have the political will to
enforce the law after amnesty would be granted?
They argue that they have all these tight provisions put into the
bill, that there's border security in the bill and that we'll get tight
borders from this point on. Now, when you read the legislation, there's
no prospect of that. I would have to hide my face to say something like
that and wink and cross my fingers behind my back with the other hand.
They don't mean it. They don't believe it. They write it because it is
just a vague, open, comprehensive placebo for those who want border
security to give people something to hide behind.
If you say that Janet Napolitano has got this time to come up with a
plan to secure the border, it doesn't mean secure the border and it
doesn't mean implement the plan. It just says come up with a plan. And
if we're not satisfied with that, then they appoint a border security
commission whose job is to come up with a plan. And if that fails, then
they go back to Janet Napolitano again.
This isn't that hard, Mr. Speaker. If you're serious about enforcing
the border, you can do that. If you would give me Janet Napolitano's
job and a President who doesn't tie my hands, I would take the
resources that are committed now within the 50 miles of the southern
border, the southwest border, and I would get you upwards of the 99th
percentile of border security within 3 years--maybe sooner, but I think
it would take a half a year to get all the administrative things jump-
started.
I'm in the construction business. I know how to build a fence, a wall
and a fence. I know what it costs to do that. I'm not proposing we go
down. I wouldn't bid such a thing, but I could surely provide some
advice. I have designed it already, a fence, a wall, and a fence with
access roads going between so you have a road between the first fence
number one, wall would be the second and fence above that yet. You
could patrol both of those areas in between a fence, a wall, and a
fence. Doing so, you could secure it.
It's good to have border patrol personnel. Boots on the ground are
good. They do a noble job down there under nearly impossible
conditions. I'm a big fan of the Border Patrol, and I'd like to think
they know it when I go down there to visit.

{time} 1500

But when you start expanding boots on the ground because you don't
want to put infrastructure in place, it isn't very logical to me. I
live out in the country in rural Iowa. I live on the corner of gravel
roads that go a mile in each of four directions where I live. If Janet
Napolitano came to me and said: ``I want you to secure that mile of
road that goes from your house west, and I'm going to pay you $6
million this year to secure that road,'' if I thought I might lose the
contract next year, maybe I would think, well, I'll hire myself some
border patrol agents, and we'll do our best to catch some of those
folks--we know we're not going to get more than about 25 percent
enforcement, but it's a job, and take it on.
But if I had a 10-year contract, it's not any longer $6 million a
mile, it's $60 million a mile in a 10-year contract. If that contract
was tied to efficiency, in other words if they would dock my pay if I
didn't enforce the law, if I couldn't secure the border, I can tell you
what I would do, Mr. Speaker. I would invest about $2 million a mile to
build a fence, a wall, and a fence.
Now, $2 million is more than I think it takes. And to put this into
perspective for people that might be overhearing our conversation, Mr.
Speaker, we can build a four-lane interstate highway across expensive
Iowa cornfields for right at $4 million a mile--buy the land, do the
engineering, the archeological and environmental surveys, do the
grading, pave it, shoulder it, paint the lines, put the fencing in,
seed it, have it done and finished, and signs, for $4 million a mile.
Well, it's easy to see now that if we can do a four-lane interstate
highway for $4 million, we can build a pretty tremendous fence for a
couple of million dollars--a fence, a wall, and a fence--with just
simply patrol roads that allow a person good-weather access through
that desert part of the country.

[[Page H3648]]

It isn't hard to figure that out. If you give me $60 million for a
mile, I would put a couple million dollars in a fence, a wall, and a
fence, I would have myself the necessary border patrol agents to watch
that, I would put some cameras up to surveil it, I would put some
vibration sensors in, I would put some kind of technology on there to
add to that--that they don't like me to talk about here on the floor of
the House--and we would have ourselves a 99-plus percent secure border.
Had we done that back when the Secure Fence Act was passed here in
the House--supported by Duncan Hunter from California as the lead
author and an excellent leader on this issue--had we done that, we
wouldn't be having this discussion today, Mr. Speaker, because the
southwest border would have been secure, and then that argument would
be taken away.
Then when they promise that there will be border security, we would
already have it. If we already had border security, then some of the
harder hearts here in Congress could take a look at the 11 million that
are here and think: Okay, we've demonstrated that we are going to
enforce the law from this place forward; is there an accommodation that
we can make?
We can't get to that decision because the President refuses to
enforce the law, they won't allow that kind of security on the southern
border--for political reasons, I believe--the ports of entry are not as
tight as they need be, we don't have an entry-exit system; piece after
piece of this that is necessary for security.
By the way, I have a bill called the New Idea Act. What it does is it
clarifies that wages and benefits paid to illegals by employers are not
tax deductible. It subjects that employer to an IRS audit. It gives the
employer safe harbor if they use E-Verify, so that an employer could
put the employees' numbers into the E-Verify database.
If it came back and said it confirms that these folks can work
legally in the United States, put them to work without any kind of
sanction or punishment for the employment--safe harbor.
But if the IRS comes in during a normal audit--doesn't accelerate the
audits, but a normal audit--they would normally then--in the audit
under my bill--they would put the Social Security numbers and the
identifying information into E-Verify, run those employees through, and
if it came back that they could not lawfully work in the United States,
they would give the employer an opportunity--and the employee--to cure
that in case there is misinformation in the data, which gets better
every time we use it, and it's very good.
Aside from that, the IRS would then rule: Sorry, the wages that you
knowingly and willfully paid to someone who is unlawfully present in
the United States are not a business expense. So wages come out of the
schedule C, they go into the gross receipts column again, and show up
as net income at the bottom. The IRS would apply a penalty and an
interest against the unpaid taxes, plus the taxes, to that income, that
net income.
The effect of this is it would turn your $10-an-hour illegal into
about a $16-an-hour illegal. That makes it a business decision. It
means as an employer you're going to wonder: What year will I be
audited--this year or next year or the year after?
Well, it wouldn't be the end of the world if they audited you for a
year, but it might be pretty expensive as those years accumulate up to
6 under the statute of limitations. So employers would look at that
accumulating statute of limitations of 6 years and decide, I'm going to
get to legal. I'm going to work my way through and clean up my
workforce. That's a logical business decision.
The bill also requires the IRS to work in cooperation with the Social
Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security so that
they exchange information for the purpose of enforcing U.S. law. Now,
this isn't that hard, and it's not complicated. It just takes the will.
It takes a decent respect for the opinions of our Founding Fathers, the
opinions of those who have written law before us and some who serve in
this Congress today, a decent respect for the Constitution.
Let's reconstruct this respect for the rule of law in this country,
Mr. Speaker. Let's reestablish its enforcement. Let's do so while we
respect the dignity of every human person. Understand that they don't
always get the clearest message in the country that they live in. They
know they want to leave there. They know they want to come to America.
They want to leave for some reason, such as perhaps it's too violent--
58,000 people, some say more, killed in the drug wars in Mexico in the
last few years.

The rule of law doesn't apply down there the way it does here. People
aren't always equally treated under the law. Sometimes they are shaken
down by police officers. That hardly ever happens in this country in a
significant way.
We have equal protection under the law in America. If you look at the
statue of Lady Justice, who is standing there with the scales of
justice in her hands, they are balanced--equal protection, balanced
protection under the law. Most times, you will see Lady Justice
blindfolded, because justice is blind. It needs to treat every human
person equally under the law. People come here because they want that
kind of protection. It is a component of American exceptionalism--the
rule of law.
The Senate is poised to destroy the rule of law, and the House seems
to be moving in that direction. I am very troubled, Mr. Speaker, as I
watch one of the essential pillars--the rule of law--of American
exceptionalism be attacked and start to crumble before my very eyes in
this country.
The job the Founding Fathers had, the vision came from God that our
rights come from God. They all wrote that, they all agreed with that.
It's in the Declaration.
They put this concept together--inspired, I believe--the concept of a
free people, a sovereign people--``We the People.'' They sold that to a
large enough percentage of the population in the Thirteen Original
Colonies that they supported the Declaration. They had to sell it.
It wasn't just, Thomas Jefferson went into a room, got out the quill,
and wrote the Declaration--they were so impressed by the language in it
they decided to embrace it and start a revolution. This was a cultural
thing, it was an intellectual thing, it was a faith component. They put
that together and they sold it to the people in the Thirteen Original
Colonies, who fought a war to establish this country and then to ratify
a Constitution.
Their job was a lot harder than ours, Mr. Speaker. Our job is to
preserve, protect, and defend it. They had to conceive of it, argue for
it, sell it to the people, put it down in words and parchment--the
Declaration, fight the war and some give their lives to shape America
to the great, great country that we are today.
Our job is to preserve and protect and defend this glorious destiny
that is out ahead of us. We cannot shrink from it, we cannot trail in
the dust our Constitution or the rule of law, no matter what our hearts
say about having sympathy for groups of people that may or may not have
had the say about whether they came here legally or not. That is what's
here to be defended.
Next week, we are going to be very vigorously defending the rule of
law. I'm going to seek to have Lincoln-Douglas style debates outside of
these Chambers, outside of the Capitol building, on Wednesday at 9:00
in the morning. It will extend. We will take a 2-hour break over lunch
and begin again at 2:00 in the afternoon, Mr. Speaker.

{time} 1510

This is going to be designed so that reasonable people can have an
open discussion just like Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln did.
Let's air this out before the public, and let's hear what the public
has to say. In fact, if we can work it out, I want to hear from the
public as well, Mr. Speaker. It will be a big week next week, and I'm
looking forward to it.
We are called to this task. Let's not trail in the dust the golden
hopes of humanity. We are the redoubt of Western civilization. If we
can't protect the fortress of the rule of law and all of these pillars
of American exceptionalism here, we can't look to Western Europe to
save us or Australia to save us. We can look to them as allies. If our
civilization is going to be

[[Page H3649]]

preserved, it's going to be here in the United States of America.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

____________________