[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 120 (Tuesday, July 28, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H5583-H5587]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NATIONAL SECURITY, THE RULE OF LAW, AND PLANNED PARENTHOOD VIDEOS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa (Mr.
King) for 30 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to be able to
address you
[[Page H5584]]
here on the floor of the House of Representatives and to speak some
words here that hopefully will be picked up by the rest of the country
that causes us to think a little more, think a little deeper, and think
about the destiny of this country, Mr. Speaker.
I come to the floor to talk to you this evening about a couple of
topics. One is national security, and the other is the rule of law. I
will say the third thing that threads into that is the Planned
Parenthood videos. We have now seen three of them, as they penetrate
into our conscience.
Let me address first the Planned Parenthood videos. It has been now
several weeks since the first video came out that showed the supposed
doctor that worked for Planned Parenthood cavalierly discussing how to
harvest the organs of innocent little unborn--aborted, though--babies,
and the cavalier approach to that: sitting there over dinner, chatting
away as if they were talking about a soccer game or maybe talking about
spending the weekend with their family, having a glass of wine and
talking about taking organs out of innocent little creatures that are
created in God's image, as we all are, Mr. Speaker. That was video
number one.
It should have shocked us to our core to see the attitude, but it
didn't confirm decisively what was actually going on. It implied--and
it was fairly strong evidence--but it didn't confirm.
The second video was the older lady sitting in a different
restaurant, chatting along about how a transaction would be to harvest
kidneys and lungs and livers and hearts and brains and body parts from
innocent babies who just wanted a chance to live and love and laugh and
learn; to worship, to grow, to enjoy life--to enjoy that first right,
that right to life that comes before the right to liberty, which comes
before the right to the pursuit of happiness, as our Founding Fathers
prioritized those rights in the Declaration of Independence, Mr.
Speaker.
{time} 1915
That lady, in the second video, wanted enough out of that, that she--
I will use that word again--``cavalierly'' said: I want a Lamborghini.
I am sure she would say to us: I was just joking.
Well, to joke about that topic in a setting like that, that told me
it wasn't just a casual conversation. There was attention being paid to
the business deal that was being negotiated, and it didn't seem like it
was conclusive, but there was a direction and a course for that
conversation.
Now, today, we see a third video, a video interviewing a young woman
who has worked in a Planned Parenthood center whose task was to harvest
the organs of little babies. The video shows the separation of that,
shows the little feet, the little arms, the little hands.
It shows the kidneys; it shows the brain. It shows the pieces of that
little baby that was perfect in every way until it was torn apart by
the abortionist, using a technique, a methodology that is designed to
preserve the most valuable organs so that they can be sold on the
market to laboratories and for medical experiments, Mr. Speaker.
When I saw that video today and I saw each of the other two videos
when they came out, the first day that one was available, and then I
saw one, and I saw the second video as a preview before it came out to
the public.
Either one of those, when I was listening to the verbiage, certainly
told me that there is an evil, evil element within Planned Parenthood,
a cavalier attitude, a ``this is the business we do'' attitude; not a
human compassion was exposed in either one of those first two videos.
I have been in a lot of debates about abortion. I have read a lot of
material about it. I have listened to a lot of testimony about it.
Sitting on the Judiciary Committee, we moved legislation that put an
end to partial-birth abortion or at least attempted to, and so we have
had a lot of life-and-death debates in the Judiciary Committee here in
the House of Representatives.
When I saw the video of the young woman talking about the task that
she was given, pick up these forceps and begin to separate these organs
and sort them out, and these are good, and the lab will take that, and
essentially, These will bring good money, let's make sure we protect
them, it sickened me.
It caused my gut to knot up, Mr. Speaker, in a way that reminded me
of the first time I walked into a funeral home to see the dead body of
a loved one. That is an experience in anybody's lifetime that you
remember. Seeing this video is an experience that I will remember.
As I watch this Congress and I think how Congress is reacting, I am
glad that there are investigations going on. I am glad that the Speaker
has spoken up on this issue. I am glad that there is a pro-life
movement in this country.
I am glad that there are people that are protesting and there are
people that are making their positions known to the Supreme Court, to
the United States Congress, to the President of the United States.
However intransigent the President will be on this, this is a subject
that should have the immediate attention of the Department of Justice.
This would be something that Loretta Lynch should be on now, should be
conducting an investigation now, should be bringing about the evidence
and preparing a prosecution against the people that have, essentially,
admitted in the videos that they have committed a crime, perhaps
multiple crimes.
This isn't about there is a piece or there is an argument on one side
versus an argument on the other side.
Planned Parenthood says: Well, we don't do it for a profit. We just
do this to get our money back out of the costs we have to preserve
these organs and pass them along. After all, this poor mother is just
making a contribution to science, and so we should appreciate that.
That is not what the Congress thought when they passed the laws
against trading in little, unborn baby body parts, Mr. Speaker. It is
about the law, and the law says thou shall not do such a thing.
No amount of excusing away; no amount of trying to explain that it
was with a positive motive, instead of a profit motive; no amount of
saying that, Well, that is just our costs, and we are recovering our
cost; no amount of saying that the money that comes from the taxpayer
into the pockets of Planned Parenthood doesn't ever go to abortion
because it will be said now, hundreds of times, Mr. Speaker, in fact,
thousands of times, it will be said: Money is fungible. Money is
fungible. Money is fungible.
If you dump a half a billion dollars into Planned Parenthood's
coffers--that is out of the pockets of the taxpayers. We hand them the
debt, borrow the money from the Chinese, hand it over to Planned
Parenthood, and Planned Parenthood then uses that to run their
operation to free up some of their other operations that end up being
what they call an operation, which is an abortion, that is snuffing out
the lives--we are closing in on 60 million little babies since Roe v.
Wade in 1973, closing in on 60 million.
At the same time, we have people that are arguing that we need to
open up our borders and let an unlimited number of people come into
America because our birthrate is not high enough to replace the people
that are dying off as they reach the end of their life.
Rather than to say let's bring every one of these babies to birth,
give them an opportunity to fill their lungs full of free air, give
them an opportunity to live, to love, to learn, to laugh, give them an
opportunity to contribute to this country, to this society, rather than
do that, we abort the babies and bring in people from another culture
and think we are making America a better place, when we have the sin of
up to 60 million abortions on our country, on our heads, on our
conscience, on our Supreme Court, Mr. Speaker, and on this Congress, to
a degree, the House and Senate, and certainly on the President of the
United States, who said he--and I will leave his family out of it, Mr.
Speaker, but I think some know the thought that crossed my mind.
It is time for this Congress to step up to defund Planned Parenthood.
I won't be satisfied with just a moratorium of waiting around for a
year while we study this situation and put together maybe a select
committee that can look at it for a while longer and hold some hearings
in Congress. They are going to look at the videos and listen to the
testimony on both sides.
[[Page H5585]]
All that does, Mr. Speaker, is give Planned Parenthood an opportunity
to spend some of those millions of dollars, some percentage of the half
a billion dollars that we send to them out of the taxpayers' pocket,
borrowed from the Chinese, and indebted onto the children that are
born, to lobby this Congress to tell us: Well, there is really some
good there at Planned Parenthood after all, and so we should continue
to fund them.
That is what we are faced with, Mr. Speaker.
The object is this: Shut off all funding to Planned Parenthood; they
should not receive one dime of taxpayer dollars further.
There has been a strong movement on this over the years since the
time I have been here, and the States want to move, too, Mr. Speaker.
The States want to shut off funding to Planned Parenthood.
They are afraid that Congress, or the President of the United States,
through one of his executive edicts, will order that the funding going
to a State that would cut off the funding to Planned Parenthood would
be cut off itself, that their Medicaid money might be stopped by this
administration if a State would deign to cut off funding and no longer
subsidize Planned Parenthood.
Mr. Speaker, this Congress needs to deal with this. We need to give
the States all authority to cut off any funds, in the discretion of
their own legislature and Governors, any funds that go to any
organization that provides abortion. They will call it services or
counseling.
If we do that, then we can restore a component of the culture of life
in this country. If we do that, we begin to respect and appreciate
innocent, unborn human life, we will see families that will grow. We
will see children that are cherished. We will see more and more
foundation of education and faith and wholesomeness in our country.
If we turn our backs on those innocent, unborn, little babies that
are being systematically aborted, while we are subsidizing Planned
Parenthood with borrowed tax dollars, under the guise of somehow they
do some good, this is evil, Mr. Speaker. What is happening to these
innocent babies and what is happening to the mothers is evil, and it is
evil for profit. It is on video, and we have seen three of these
videos, Mr. Speaker. We are not done yet.
This Congress should not just pledge to study this for a year. This
Congress--and we go forward with funding for the fiscal year, next
fiscal year, we have got the witching hour, September 30, at midnight.
It is likely to come as a continuing resolution. That continuing
resolution has to have in it the language that will cut off the funding
to Planned Parenthood. I will cut it off to any organization that
provides abortion, as they say, services or counseling.
That subject is on the front of my mind, Mr. Speaker, and I wanted to
get that off of my chest.
National Security
Mr. KING of Iowa. The next piece that I want to talk about is our
national security. As we are watching presidential debates unfold--and
our 16 or so candidates that are announced for President of the United
States, I am grateful for every one of them.
I have never seen such a field of candidates that step up and want to
serve this country from the Oval Office, the high quality of the
character and the integrity that they have, the varied experience, and
the success that they have demonstrated in their lives. There have been
a lot of easier times to win the Republican nomination than there is
now, Mr. Speaker.
As I look at the candidates that are out there--and I have been
tuning my ear, encouraging them--I have yet to hear any of the
candidates deliver a compact, inclusive approach to how to defeat
Islamic jihad.
I listen to them speak, and I like the components that I hear from
them. One of them says: We win; they lose.
I like that; but how are we going to do that? We need a strategy.
One of them says: If you attack us, we will kill you.
Okay. Well, let's kill them first. That is fine with me. They have
declared war on us.
ISIS, for example, has established a caliphate. They declare it to be
a caliphate. It is a caliphate. In northern Syria and in north and
western Iraq, that real estate that they control is a caliphate, and
they threaten all of the rest of the region, and they threaten us. They
say that their black flag is going to fly over the White House. Well,
some would say that will be a cold day, Mr. Speaker.
We have seen some dramatic changes in history over the last few
years. I would say to the United States: We need to step up to this. We
need to recognize our enemy. We need to defeat our enemies.
Our enemies are Islamic jihad, and Islamic jihad is comprised of the
element within Islam that believes that their path to salvation is in
killing us and that they can bring out some kind of worldwide
revolution where, in the end, it will just be the purest of the pure of
Islamists that are left on the planet. They will have killed everybody
else; and all, whoever is left, must knuckle down to sharia law.
We need to defeat the ideology, Mr. Speaker, and when I say defeat
the ideology, and I am speaking to a group of people, I will often see
that look on their face, such as: Why do you think you can defeat an
ideology? You can't defeat an ideology. You can't change a culture. You
can't defeat ideology.
I recall one of those rebuttals that came to me, and I said, tell
that to the Japanese. In fact, in World War II, in a 3\1/2\ year period
of time, this country, with our allies, very powerfully, this country
defeated three ideologies: the ideology of Japanese imperialism, the
ideology of Italian fascism, and the ideology of German nazism.
All three of those ideologies went down in flames in a 3\1/2\ year
period of time, in the face of--I will say this, Mr. Speaker--the
superior culture.
The Western civilization, a superior culture that has a robust free
enterprise, that has people that volunteer to engage in the economy,
into the military, that reach out and pull each other up the ladder.
This robust United States of America, coupled with our allies,
reaching across the map of Western civilization, rose up, rose up and
defeated three ideologies in a 3\1/2\ year period of time in the Second
World War; and then it took on a fourth ideology, which was the Russian
version of communism. That took about 45 years. They were a little more
tenacious.
It was not then just a kinetic operation. It wasn't just going up in
flames. I am grateful that it wasn't. Instead, it was the economic and
then political collapse of the Soviet Union brought about this way.
{time} 2030
Ronald Reagan saw this. Margaret Thatcher saw it. Margaret Thatcher
went to Ronald Reagan and said: With Mikhail Gorbachev, I have found a
man with whom we can do business.
I don't quite understand the motive of Gorbachev, and he seems to
have a little bit of revisionist history that comes out of him from
time to time.
But I also know that Pope John Paul II traveled throughout areas of
Europe and went into Poland and told them do not despair because they
could be a free people.
The forces of the ideology of western civilization, western
Christendom, as Churchill described it in his speech in Fulton,
Missouri, are the forces that stood up against Russian communism.
In about 1984, when Jeane Kirkpatrick stepped down as Ambassador to
the United Nations under Reagan, she made a statement upon her
departure which was this.
She said: What is going on in this cold war--and that was near the
height of the cold war--what is going on is Monopoly and chess on the
same board. The United States and the Soviet Union are playing chess
and Monopoly on the same board. It is just that the only question is:
Will the United States of America bankrupt the Soviet Union
economically before the Soviet Union checkmates the United States
militarily?
That was the question. It was succinctly put. And I believe that will
also show up on her Wikipedia page, but I happened to find it in the
Des Moines Register back in that year, 1984.
Jeane Kirkpatrick was right. Five years later the Soviet Union
imploded. On November 9 the wall went down in Berlin, and that was a
symbol. Actually, I will say literally the Iron Curtain came crashing
down throughout
[[Page H5586]]
Berlin and the Iron Curtain all across Europe went crashing down.
People flowed freely back and forth. The free world had defeated the
ideology of communism that was the Soviet version of it. For a time,
freedom echoed all the way across Eastern Europe all the way to the
Pacific Ocean. And it can be restored again, Mr. Speaker.
That is the foundation that we have that we work with. We are the
people that--because of free enterprise, because we have idea people
with good educations and a solid moral foundation and a good work
ethic, this country has generated more patents than anybody else,
created more inventions than anyone else, but cooperated with
especially the western world and with the creativity that we have.
We have been able to rise up against ideology after ideology, defeat
three of them during World War II and defeat Soviet communism in a 45-
year period of the cold war.
Now we are faced with another ideology that rises up to challenges:
Islamic jihad. If you go back to the time of Mohammed, about the last
20 years of his life and for 100 years after his death, there was a
conquest going on of--shall I call them religious conversions by the
sword? And, as the conquest was going on, Islam was invading and
occupying most of the known world at the time.
By 732 AD, Mr. Speaker, the Islamists were outside the city of Tours
in France when Charles Martel brought his infantry into the trees to
face the cavalry charge of the Islamists.
And cavalries don't operate very well in the forest, Mr. Speaker, and
that is how the Charles Martel, Charles The Hammer's infantry defeated
them there and chased them out of Tours and across the plains and left
their bones scattered a long ways back towards Spain. That was 732 AD.
And you can fast-forward again and again to catch some of the
milestones: In 1571, the battle of Lepanto where an Islamist navy was
sunk by the Holy League navy that went to meet them in the Aegean Sea.
You can go to 1683, when Vienna was surrounded by Islamists of the
time. On July 14, they surrounded Vienna, and for more than 2 months--
they besieged Vienna for roughly 2 months.
And then, on September 11, the three German infantries under three
German kings and Jan Sobieski, the Polish king, brought his cavalry,
they held a service at Kahlenberg Church, which was razed. It was in
ruins at the hands of the Islamists.
But they held a service there in the evening of September 11 and
prayed for God's deliverance of their battle the next day that it
already enjoined on September 11 and the deliverance of Vienna, which
happened, as in the famous battle of Vienna, September 11 and 12, 1683.
It goes on. Then September 11 became the date that lived in infamy
for the people who attacked us on September 11, 2001--New York,
Pentagon, and Pennsylvania--and then again on September 11, 2012,
Benghazi.
That date means something to them. It ought to mean something to us.
They have been fighting western civilization for 1,400 years, and they
have been adapting themselves to the technology that is created in the
western world, creating very little themselves, but borrowing our
technology, Mr. Speaker.
And some of that technology that is now being borrowed is the
Internet, the Internet that is being used to inspire and to recruit and
to direct the Islamists that are attacking Americans and attacking
people that are not in alignment with ISIS and with Islamic jihad.
That is the effort that is coming and the ability that they have to
use the Internet to coordinate and communicate. They will say as high
as 100,000 tweets and emails and communications a day are coming out of
ISIS and Islamic jihad in the broader definition of it. As high as
100,000 a day.
We need to bring about warfare against them. And it means not just
defensive warfare to protect ourselves, but offensive warfare to attack
them through the same medium that they are using to attack us.
So here is the list. It is not just a kinetic war against them, which
they have declared against us, the kinetic war.
We need to do cyber warfare, financial warfare, educational warfare
against them. We need to build a strong alliance with especially the
moderate Muslim countries in the Middle East, those who should be our
allies but for being a--let's say given the short end of the stick from
our State Department during this administration.
And I am speaking of countries like Egypt; the United Arab Emirates,
for example; Jordan, to a lesser degree. But they are natural allies to
the United States. They are natural allies. In fact, they are allies to
Israel today. They have been attacking our Islamist enemies in that
part of the world.
The Egyptians allowed for planes to fly out of there, to fly into
Yemen. And the Emirates sent some of their Air Force there. You have
seen the Saudis do the same thing.
We can build an alliance in the Middle East with Saudi Arabia, whom I
have got slightly less confidence in than I do in Egypt, and in the
United Arab Emirates, with Jordan, and, also, working in cooperation
with Israel.
When President el-Sisi of Egypt says to me that his relationship with
Prime Minister Netanyahu is stronger with Egypt and Israel and
President el-Sisi and Prime Minister Netanyahu stronger than it is with
the United States, we should be troubled by that, Mr. Speaker.
We should be troubled by a foreign policy that has alienated the
Egyptians, that has caused the UAE to wonder: What is America doing?
Why are we paving the road to Damascus for our enemies? Why would we
consider doing such a thing?
So this strategy, a strategy that I have put into an op-ed in the
National Review, which was just published here in the last couple of
days, Mr. Speaker, lays out a strategy to conduct cyber warfare, both
offensive and defensive, and economic warfare to shut off the funds
that are flowing to Islamic jihad wherever they might be flowing from,
wherever they might be flowing through, whoever might be doing business
with them and thinking they are going to profit.
We have got to turn that the other way. And then we need to shut down
and shut off, if we can--and this is the most difficult component of
the task--the educational system out there that is teaching this kind
of hatred into the next generation. Build alliances with the moderate
Muslim countries, as I have said, encourage them.
We need to be arming the Kurds with everything that we can get to the
Kurds, everything the Kurds can use. And that doesn't mean send it
through Baghdad to get the Baghdad stamp of approval. It means directly
to the Kurds along with special operation forces that could be on the
ground with the Kurds and call in airstrikes and support the Kurds as
one jaw of the vice that will squeeze ISIS in Iraq and in Syria.
The other jaw of the vice is a natural. It is already there. It is
Assad. And when those two jaws of the vice to come together and crush
ISIS, by that point, we can take a look at Assad and decide how to
approach the power that may be left in Syria at that point in time.
This is just a quick list, Mr. Speaker, of a strategy to defeat the
ideology of Islamic jihad. The time has come for us to do that.
I want to see a Presidential candidate--or 16 of them, I hope--who
can articulate a vision to bring about the defeat of this enemy that
has been bringing battle against western civilization for 1,400 years,
that targets the United States of America as the great Satan and the
center of their efforts. They would like to destroy all of the United
States of America.
And while this is going on, we have got a treaty proposal from the
President of the United States with Iran. In the spring or summer of
2008, as a candidate, he said to Iran: Mr. Ahmadinejad, if you will
unclench your fist, we will extend our hand. I would remind the public
of that, Mr. Speaker.
Because that fist is still clenched in Iran. And the President is
poised to hand over $150 billion to the Iranian economy that will juice
that economy up.
It will allow them to bring conventional weaponry to bear. It will
allow them to fund more Hezbollah. It will allow them to continue to
develop the most recent version of centrifuges.
[[Page H5587]]
And even if they comply, in 10 years, the situation is set up where,
rather than one weapon, it is 100 weapons, ICBMs sticking out of the
sand in the Middle East, Mr. Speaker.
There is much to be done for this western civilization. We need to
strengthen our culture. We need to believe in who we are. We need to
sort the best things out of what we are and strengthen them. We need to
cull out the weaknesses that we have. And we need a leader whom God
will use to restore the soul of America.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________