[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 57 (Tuesday, April 8, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H3051-H3054]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  THE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF CONSERVATISM

  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, it is my privilege to be recognized by 
you to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives, 
and I appreciate this privilege to do so. It is something that I would 
encourage a lot of the Members to participate in and express the wishes 
of their constituents and their opinions here on the floor so that not 
only you can turn an ear and listen to this presentation here tonight, 
but also so that it inspires dialogue all across America.
  We will remain a free country and we can remain a constitutional 
Republic if we have open debate and open dialogue and if the values of 
the American people remain consistent with our roots.
  I would first, Mr. Speaker, start out with listening to the dialogue 
of the gentleman who spoke ahead of me, and I would note that his 
statement that there are people that went ahead of him and his family 
that are blue collar, it seems to me to be maybe a generation removed 
from the real America that most of it is blue collar. And I think it is 
important to note that this country that we are is not going to 
continue to prosper unless we have people whom people respect and honor 
and who produce goods and services that have a marketable value here at 
home.
  For those that get paid to pontificate--I, among them, okay--that is 
an important function also. For those who get paid to sit on the couch, 
that is not so important a function. But those that produce goods and 
services that have a marketable value here and abroad are the ones that 
grow our economy. In the private sector, it allows us to be competitive 
with the countries around the world. I think of my neighbors, many of 
whom are engaged in agriculture and how we compete with the most 
competitive economy in the world and we compete in a favorable way and 
we set the pace. We set the pace in productivity. We set the pace in 
efficiency. We set the pace in quality and in food safety. That is the 
circle around my neighborhood that you can see in any direction looking 
out from my house.
  I am proud of those neighbors who produce those goods and services 
that have a marketable value here at home. A lot of that, most of it is 
the kind of thing we would call blue-collar work. I am impressed by the 
professionals that come here to Congress.
  I came from the construction world, hands-on, in the ditch, shovel in 
hand, grease gun, wrench, steering wheel, yes, pencil and calculator 
from the lowest guy on the totem pole to the guy who started a company 
to now a second-generation King Construction Company. We have been 
engaged in this economy for I believe this will be our 40th season that 
we are engaged in now.
  You see the flow of the economy, and you have respect for those who 
put their hands, their back, and their mind to work every day. I 
appreciate, also, a great deal these values of America, the roots of 
who we are as a people.
  I was observing this morning, as I was getting ready to leave my 
place, that there was an individual who was interviewed on FOX this 
morning in their morning show by Steve Doocy, and it was Mallory 
Factor, an author I happen to know, an individual I count as a friend. 
He laid out the four principles of conservatism, and I thought it was a 
useful thing. I took the notes down and put them in my pocket because I 
believe he is exactly and succinctly right that this country needs to 
be rooted in those principles of conservatism. Without them, we are 
cast adrift.
  Here are the four principles that he laid out:
  The first one is respect for the tradition and wisdom of our past 
generations. That is a fairly succinct way of saying our Founding 
Fathers got it right. They laid down a foundation, a foundation in 
faith, free enterprise, and fidelity that has been the foundation for 
America becoming the unchallenged greatest Nation in the world. And if 
we are to stay that way, we need to remain respectful to the traditions 
and wisdom of past generations.

[[Page H3052]]

  The second one is a rule of law. Mr. Speaker, you have heard me speak 
often and consistently about the rule of law. Lady Justice is often 
portrayed as blind. The statue of Lady Justice is of her holding the 
scales of justice, perfectly balanced scales of justice, weighed 
equally on either side. But Lady Justice is blindfolded because she 
doesn't see class or race or ethnicity or sex. She sees simply here is 
a human being before the court to be treated the same as any other 
human being, regardless of where they might sit in the social 
stratification by wealth, by race, by ethnicity, by sex, whatever the 
qualities might be. Whatever the qualifications might be, Lady Justice 
is blind, and the rule of law must apply to everyone equally. That is 
number two.
  The third one is the belief in an individual freedom and liberty. And 
I will go a little further than Mr. Factor in that these rights come 
from God. Our Founding Fathers understood, articulated, and wrote: We 
hold these truths to be self-evident, all men--and that means men and 
women in the vernacular--are created equal, and they are endowed by 
their Creator with certain inalienable rights.
  It is an individual belief, the belief in individual freedom and 
liberty--not a freedom that is granted to you by government, not one 
that is bestowed upon you by the sovereign or the king, but this God-
given individual liberty that comes from God that we then entrust from 
the people to the government. We loan our sovereign rights to the 
government to organize our society.
  Government doesn't have the power. It is we the people that have the 
power, and we loan that to government. And if it is the other way 
around, if government grants rights, then government can also take 
those rights away. If that is the case, we would be similar to many of 
the other governments, many of the other civilizations, and we are not. 
We are the United States of America, founded upon four of these 
conservative principles.
  All of these principles are conservative principles: the respect for 
tradition and wisdom of past generations, the rule of law, the belief 
in individual freedom and liberty, and the fourth thing is a belief in 
a law higher than man's law. That is God's law.

                              {time}  2015

  Mr. Speaker, those are the four principles of conservatism. A little 
tidbit of wisdom that came out this morning--and I made a little note 
and slipped it in my pocket--I think it is important that we here in 
this Congress reflect upon those values that made America great and 
what it is going to take to strengthen those values, restore those 
values, and carry America to the next level of our destiny.
  When this Congress deviates from those principles, when this Congress 
deviates from the Constitution, when the Congress deviates from 
individual rights, and when the Congress decides they can tax some 
people and transfer that wealth to other people and somehow be a 
leveler or some kind of a wealth transfer that resolves this class envy 
issue, then America is diminished because what it does is it diminishes 
the vitality of our people.
  If you get out of bed and go to work every day and you know that 
Uncle Sam is going to get his share, the minute you punch that 
timeclock, Uncle Sam's hand comes out; and when he gets what he wants 
for the day, it goes in his pocket. Then the Governor's hand comes out, 
and he puts it in his pocket.
  Then you have some other taxes to pay along the way, and when that is 
all done, some time in the afternoon, you get to actually work for 
yourself and your family.
  Well, that is a little bit depressing to think you don't get to work 
even in the morning. If you go to work at 8 in the morning, you are 
taking your lunch break before you are getting anything for you and 
your family.
  Now, what if the government is sitting there taking it all? What if 
it was we are going to confiscate all of the money you earn? Then we 
will deal it out to these other people, and you will get your 
government welfare check just like everybody else; and we will all have 
the same resources to work with.
  We are all going to have the same amount of food, clothing and 
shelter, and recreation. We are all going to have the same health 
insurance policy. We are all going to drive an equal-value car, but 
some have to work, and those who don't want to don't.
  Think about that. I have heard that. I have heard that debate on this 
floor. People will say--from over here on the leftist side of the 
aisle, they will say those that want a job should have a job, which 
implies that those who don't want to work shouldn't have to.
  So if they are able-bodied and able-minded, then they should be 
contributing to this economy or have earned and stored up the wealth to 
sustain themselves, not tax the other person that is punching that 
timeclock or going to work for that salary because what happens is, 
pretty soon, the one who is being taxed to fund the one who is not 
working figures out that it doesn't pay so much to work.
  It happens in the margins, so people start moving across from one 
side to the other; and over time, you will have good, smart, productive 
people who are smart enough to figure out that it doesn't pay for me to 
do this any longer, so they will drift over into maybe a part-time job, 
maybe work under the table, maybe some black market stuff, or they will 
tap into some of the 80 different means-tested Federal welfare programs 
we have in this country and take their standard of living up above that 
they might have if all they did was work.
  That is where this country has gone. The welfare program has grown so 
great that it has discouraged some of our most productive people. It is 
a disincentive. It discourages me that, if we are maybe a generation 
removed, as I listened to the gentleman from the Hudson Valley, he is a 
generation removed from blue collar, I would like to think that we are 
always going to need blue-collar people.
  We are always going to need for this country to have a middle class, 
a middle class that is growing in numbers and increasing in prosperity 
in relation to the productivity that they are putting out, and this 
country is always going to need to compete with the other countries in 
the world.
  We can't just collapse down into the idea that we are going to be an 
economy that has professionals that live in gated communities that hire 
servants at a cheap rate, and then they will have the people that are a 
diminishing middle class and the unskilled and the low skilled that 
will make a meager wage, always keeping that meager wage down by a 
refueling of legal and illegal unskilled immigrants coming into this 
country that can only compete in the unskilled jobs.
  The highest level of unemployment that we have--the double digit 
unemployment in this country are the people in the lowest skilled jobs. 
So how is it that almost every Democrat and a pretty respectable number 
of Republicans can leap to this conclusion, which is we need more 
unskilled workers, we need more of these workers to come in because it 
will grow the economy?
  Well, just because you have somebody, if you bring in 1,000 people--
and we know that we are going to have to educate the children 
especially and the youth, we will have to provide health care and 
housing and nutrition, the food, clothing, and shelter--as I said, 
1,000 people could come in, and if one of them does a day's work, that 
contributes to the GDP, the gross domestic product.
  So if the day's work of one in 1,000 contributes to the GDP, they, by 
their definition, say the economy is growing. The economy will grow if 
you have more and more immigration, and they don't say unskilled.
  Well, we have an opening here for some skilled people to come into 
this country. We have an oversupply of unskilled. We have 101.4 million 
Americans of working age who are simply not in the workforce--101.4 
million, that is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
  The numbers total this: those 16 and up who are of working age, plus 
those who are on unemployment today--officially signed up on 
unemployment--add those two numbers together, 101.4 million.
  A third of our population is of working age and not in the workforce. 
Yes, some are retired, and some are handicapped, and some are 
homemakers, and some of them are in school; but a whole lot of them 
could actually be recruited to come into the workforce and

[[Page H3053]]

produce that good or service with marketable value and increase our 
GDP.
  What is the cost to our society for putting more of the people--the 
101.4 million that are not in the workforce, what is the cost to our 
society? What if we called 10 million in? What if we called 20 million 
in? What if we brought 30 or 40 million of the 101.4 million in and put 
them in the workforce? What does that do?
  Well, a significant percentage of them are on welfare and 
unemployment, so they are off the welfare and unemployment rolls. That 
reduces the burden for the taxpayers. When they go to the workforce, 
they are in the productive sector of the economy. They take their wage. 
They pay their own payroll tax. That means they are paying their Social 
Security and their Medicare and their Medicaid, so we get a twofer.
  We reduce the welfare rolls. We get more and more taxpayers. We bring 
Social Security into balance just simply by virtue of more people going 
to work, and we have less of a deficit in our entitlements--Medicare 
and Medicaid--because they need less of it.
  That is what happens if you get this country going at the right 
direction. There are a number of ways to do that. You can't do it with 
a President who doesn't believe in work, for one thing; and when they 
learned, according to the CBO score, that ObamaCare would cost this 
economy the equivalent of 2.5 million jobs, in other words, 40 hours a 
week times--and that is 40 hours, not the 30 hours that are in 
ObamaCare--40 hours a week times 2.5 million workers, that is the 
reduced amount of productivity that comes because of the disincentives 
to work that are associated with ObamaCare.

  That is the equivalent of 2.5 million jobs. What does the 
administration say? They say: well, that is going to be a good thing 
because, if you are a homemaker, now you get to make more home. If you 
are an artist, you get to paint more paintings. If you have hobbies, 
you get to pursue your hobbies; and if you are a parent, you get to 
spend more time with your children.
  This is the first time, I believe, in the history of this country, 
that a President of the United States and his administration have taken 
the position that less work was good for America, which just goes to 
show you that human beings have an almost indefinite capacity to self-
rationalize, Mr. Speaker.
  That is what happened with the Obama administration. They have 
exercised their almost infinite capacity to self-rationalize on piece 
after piece of this. They moved their socialist agenda, and then they 
self-rationalize along the way, and now, we are watching as ObamaCare 
has been a mess. It has been a debacle, and we are watching these 
numbers.
  The administration says we got 7.1 million people to sign up. That 
was their goal of 7 million. Miraculously, they overshot it by a little 
bit. What we don't know is how many of those 7.1 million were insured 
before ObamaCare; how many decided that they would opt out of their 
existing policy and into an exchange policy; how many of them lost 
their insurance because of ObamaCare and had no choice, if they wanted 
to remain insured, but to opt into an exchange under ObamaCare; and 
what percentage of the 7.1 million were actually uninsured without 
affordable options and found their way onto an ObamaCare exchange and 
purchased insurance.
  Once you go through all that, how many of them were not subsidized 
out of the 7.1 million?
  What would be the point, Mr. Speaker, and if we look at a society 
that supposedly had 48 million people without their own health 
insurance policy, I really wasn't alarmed by that because I don't know 
where the right comes from to own your own health insurance policy, but 
we provided health services to everybody in this country, at a minimum, 
to those who show up at an emergency room.
  So somehow, they twisted this around to everybody has a right, 
everybody needs to own their own health insurance policy.
  I stood on this floor 4 years ago or so and made the argument that, 
of the 48 million--when you subtract from that those who qualify for 
Medicaid and, from that, those who make over $75,000 a year and 
presumably could buy their own health insurance, those who qualify, 
those who are unlawfully present in the United States, and you subtract 
from the 48 million, down to the number of those who are uninsured, 
your 48 million became 12.1 million, which is 4 percent of our 
population in the entire health care system of the United States, the 
insurance system and the delivery system, is entirely redirected, 
transformed under ObamaCare, to try to get at that 4 percent number.
  Meanwhile, it looks to me that we will have more people uninsured, 
not less. By the way, if you want to sign up in the rest of this year, 
sorry, you are out of luck; you missed the signup deadline. Now, except 
for some narrow conditions, you will not be able to get insurance in 
this country. It is a calamity. It is one of the calamities.
  Another one of the calamities, in the time that I have remaining, is 
a reflection upon the hearing today where Attorney General Holder came 
before the House Judiciary Committee.
  His testimony comes about once a year before the Judiciary Committee. 
It is our job to have oversight over the Justice Department. We have 
done that for a long, long time.
  As each of the members of the panel questioned Attorney General 
Holder under oath, here is how I reflect upon this: I asked Eric Holder 
if he still held the position he did when I last questioned him, in 
that the Department of Justice is an independent department that 
doesn't take directive from the President, and his job is to provide 
equal justice under the law.
  He agreed with that statement. I think it is a proper way to frame 
the job of Attorney General, but to argue that the Attorney General is 
not politically influenced by the President of the United States is a 
pretty tough argument to make when you think of this, Mr. Speaker.
  I take you back to 2008. This was in the last weeks--or, actually, 
the last months of the Bush administration. Senator Ted Stevens, for 40 
years, represented Alaska in the United States Senate. There were 
charges brought against him that were evaluated and investigated by 
Federal officers of the FBI.
  On October 27, 2008, Senator Ted Stevens was found guilty of charges 
of corruption brought against him. Eight days later, he lost his 
election to now-Senator Begich in Alaska.
  In October of the following year, former-Senator Stevens was killed 
in a tragic plane crash, but here is the modern news, Mr. Speaker: on 
March 27 of this year, it is announced, in a little news story that 
hardly got any play, that at least one of the FBI agents, Mary Beth 
Kepner, has been severely disciplined, and that discipline has been 
imposed for--let me say violations during the investigation and the 
prosecution of Senator Ted Stevens.
  Now, he is dead. He can't speak for himself. He was convicted in a 
trial that took place and was concluded 8 days before his election. He 
narrowly lost the election in Alaska. This prosecution, if it was 
investigated and operated in the fashion that would be reflected when 
you see the language that Mary Beth Kepner, one of the FBI agents, was 
severely disciplined, and that discipline has been imposed, what is the 
discipline? What did they do?
  Do we think Eric Holder is prosecuting, now, Mary Beth Kepner for her 
involvement in the prosecution of Ted Stevens, which may or may not 
have, but likely did bring about a change in the election of the United 
States Senate, so that it gave the Senate a 60-vote Democrat majority, 
and they were able to cram through components of ObamaCare that they 
would not have been able to cram through otherwise?
  This, you would think, would be worthy of at least a comment on the 
part of Attorney General Eric Holder to look into and see: Is it worthy 
of, now, investigation and prosecution? Or could you at least release a 
statement as to the acts that she committed and the investigation that 
you did? If the case is closed, tell us.
  When you have FBI agents improperly conducting themselves to the 
extent that the Holder Justice Department severely disciplined them, 
you have to wonder if it didn't change the course of history.

[[Page H3054]]

                              {time}  2030

  You have to wonder, if the FBI had not conducted themselves in that 
fashion that brought about the severe discipline, would Ted Stevens 
have been reelected? Would that have changed the results in the United 
States Senate? Would we, maybe, perhaps, not be living under ObamaCare 
today if those actions had not taken place inside this Justice 
Department? You would think the Attorney General would look into that 
or at least have a comment. That is number one.
  The second one would be the very aggressive overreach of the 
investigation of Aaron Swartz, and that topic is something that brought 
about his suicide, and there has been much dialogue in this country 
about that.
  Another one that I brought up to General Holder is this: the 
investigation and prosecution of Conrad Barrett. Now, we have all, Mr. 
Speaker, heard about the knockout game in this country. It is when 
youth, generally speaking, will go pick someone and decide, I am going 
to punch them and knock them out in the street, and see if I can do it 
with one punch, and my buddies are going to see me do this. Sometimes 
it is videotaped, and we see this on television. In the cases that I 
have seen and in the cases that have been reported, it is almost always 
black on white crime. The knockout game appears to be black on white 
crime.
  I fought against, as well as did Louie Gohmert of Texas, the hate 
crimes legislation because that just turns into a tool, and when you 
punish someone for what you think they think rather than for the overt 
act that they commit, you are getting into an area of law that allows 
for a lot of discretion on the part of the prosecution, and it may or 
may not result in more justice. I believe we ought to severely punish 
the people who are committing the overt acts, but we should not have 
gone down the road of the hate crimes legislation because that becomes 
a tool that can be used now to divide people against each other based 
upon whatever particular minority group we might be in.
  You would think, with a country full of black on white crime and with 
a knockout game--something that has been all over the news for months 
now--that Eric Holder could find a way, if he wanted to prosecute a 
hate crime, to pick one of those African American youths who has gone 
in there and slugged and punched out someone on the streets who was 
targeted because of their difference in race. Instead, the Justice 
Department picked Conrad Barrett, a white guy who punched an African 
American, in order to play his side of the knockout game. If he is 
guilty of this, of course that is wrong, and he should be punished to 
the fullest extent of the law. We have States that can prosecute those 
kinds of assaults and violent acts, but it strikes me that the others 
didn't fit the profile of the Holder administration, so they went after 
the one example of the white guy and the African American victim 
instead of all of the white victims and the African American alleged 
perpetrators. That stands out to me.
  The next one is the prosecution of Dinesh D'Souza, who did the movie 
``Obama 2016.'' Yes, that hurt the administration. It brought some 
things out about where this administration is going, the Obama 
administration. He is no friend of the administration's, but it is 
alleged that he directed $20,000 through friends to be given to a U.S. 
Senate campaign in New York. That is alleged. I don't know if it is 
true, but that is the allegation. Yet it must be true that there are 
thousands of Americans who have done a similar thing for a lot more 
money. The Holder Justice Department couldn't find them, but they found 
Dinesh D'Souza to target for prosecution.
  They also targeted for Federal prosecution Governor Bob McDonnell, in 
Virginia, who has five former Virginia attorneys general who have 
vouched for the language of the law and who have said they believe the 
Holder Justice Department has stretched the limits of that. We shall 
see how that comes out.
  Governor Chris Christie had a problem with the traffic being closed 
on a bridge, and it created a national furor, but within a week, the 
Holder Justice Department was investigating Governor Chris Christie for 
his use of the funds for the Sandy relief fund.
  Now, how is it that the Holder Justice Department isn't going to look 
into the FBI's transgressions in the Senator Ted Stevens investigation, 
which brought about, I believe, a change in the result of that Senate 
election and a change in ObamaCare? How is it that they are not going 
to look into the overzealous prosecution of Carmen Ortiz and Aaron 
Swartz?
  They are going to prosecute Conrad Barrett for a hate crime, and they 
are going to continue to prosecute Dinesh D'Souza, but it is just a 
coincidence that he produced ``Obama 2016.'' They are going to continue 
to prosecute Republican Governor Bob McDonnell and Republican Governor 
Chris Christie while they let people off the hook, like the New Black 
Panthers in Philadelphia; James Clapper, who contradicted himself under 
oath, which would be, if proven, a perjury charge; Governor Jon 
Corzine, a Democrat from New Jersey, while there is $1 billion missing 
in Global Crossing, and we can't find a way to investigate him; Lois 
Lerner, who is manipulating the IRS to persecute the President's 
political enemies, and the investigation has to take place by subpoena, 
in contempt of Congress, because the Holder Justice Department has 
turned a blind eye because the President has said there is not a 
smidgeon of corruption in the IRS; and exempting entire classes of 
people from prosecution, like illegal immigrants who haven't committed 
serious crimes. They are exempt from prosecution and removal, and with 
marijuana, huge companies are exempted even though it is Federal law. 
With DOMA, Attorney General Holder has refused to defend DOMA before 
the Court.
  Voter fraud instead, by the way, they prosecute. They bring action 
against States like Texas, which simply want voter ID, and they allege 
that Texas is imposing a poll tax and that it is a racist plot.
  That is what we have, Mr. Speaker, in the Justice Department today. 
It is hard to call it justice. It is going to be hard to take this 
country to the next level of our destiny. These values that I have 
brought out in the beginning--these values of respect for tradition and 
wisdom of past generations, the rule of law, individual freedom and 
liberty, and a belief in a law higher than man's law--we must restore 
in this country if we are to restore the pillars of American 
exceptionalism.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________