[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 20 (Wednesday, February 3, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H549-H554]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      RESTORING ARTICLE I AUTHORITY OF THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bost). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 2015, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for the reminder of the hour as the designee of the majority 
leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to be recognized to 
address you here on the floor of the United States House of 
Representatives. I appreciate your attention to these matters that come 
before the House and the House Members that are in attendance, 
observing in their office, and all the staff people around.
  Mr. Speaker, it is important that we carry these messages out. I come 
to the floor tonight to raise a topic that is important to all 
Americans, especially the Americans who take our Constitution 
seriously, and even more importantly, those Americans who have taken an 
oath to support and defend the Constitution, and that would include all 
of our servicemen and -women along with many law enforcement officers 
and officers of the article III courts, the entire House of 
Representatives, the entire United States Senate, and, to my knowledge, 
the entire body of legislators across the country and the State 
legislators. I have many times--a number of times--taken an oath to 
support and defend our United States Constitution but, in the State 
senate, also the constitution of the State of Iowa.
  Our Founding Fathers structured our Constitution so that we would 
have three branches of government, and some say three equal branches of 
government. I do not completely agree with that assessment, Mr. 
Speaker. Instead, I contend that the three branches of government were 
separate, and they are separate. But the judicial branch of government 
was designed to be the weakest of the three. Our Founding Fathers 
understood that there would be competition between the branches of 
government.
  So as part of this discussion, I would like to announce into the 
Record here, Mr. Speaker, that our chairman of the Judiciary Committee, 
Chairman Goodlatte, has initiated a task force--a task force--that is 
designed to address the article I overreach of the President of the 
United States and the executive branch--not only this President, but 
previous administrations as well.
  I appreciate and compliment Chairman Goodlatte for his insight and 
foresight for taking this initiative. I thank him for suggesting and 
then ratifying today that I will be chairing the Task Force on 
Executive Overreach. It will be comprised of members of the Judiciary 
Committee, Republicans and Democrats. It will be bipartisan. I had 
hoped that it would be nonpartisan. Judging from some of the tone in 
the debate today, there could be a little flavor of partisanship in 
there, Mr. Speaker. That is fine, because that is how we bring about 
our disagreements.
  In any case, a task force has been set up, and it will function for 6 
months. Some time in August its authorization will either expire or it 
will be reauthorized and extended for another period of time.
  The theme is, again, restoring the article I authority of our 
Congress and to address the executive overreach.
  The circumstances that bring us to this point are myriad. The 
objectives of the task force, as I would design them, and the object of 
a chair of a committee is to bring out the will of the group.
  I would point out, Mr. Speaker, that the object, the plan, and the 
strategy is this: First, it is my intention to intake all of the input 
that we get from Democrats and Republicans from the bipartisan side in 
the committee and to build a rather expansive list of the executive 
overreach that we have seen from the article II branch of government.
  I say it that way so that we bring everything into our consideration. 
Then once that expansive list is made, then we will pare it down to 
those things that can be sustained as the authority of this Congress 
versus the authority of the executive branch of government.
  I would point out that the executive overreach isn't only about the 
unconstitutional overreaches that have taken place, especially recently 
within this administration, but it is also, Mr. Speaker, about the 
constitutional overreach when a President will act under authority that 
maybe has been granted to the executive branch of government by the 
legislative branch of government, or an authority that has been 
expanded off of an authority that was granted by the United States 
Congress.

                              {time}  1830

  A big piece of this will be the rules and the regulations that are 
the authority that we have granted to the executive branch of 
government over the Administrative Procedures Act.
  We know that when the executive branch publishes rules, we have been 
getting more and more rules that are published. Once they are published 
for the prescribed amount of time, and the comment periods for the 
prescribed amount of time are allowed and the American public is 
allowed to weigh in, at a certain point they have complied with the 
requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act and then the rules go 
into effect. Often the rules that are written by the executive branch 
of government are without the purview of Congress, but they have the 
full force and effect of law. That is troubling to me.
  Our Founding Fathers envisioned this. They gave us the republican 
form of government and a constitutional Republic. This constitutional 
Republic is

[[Page H550]]

designed to be a limited government, Mr. Speaker. They didn't envision 
that the Federal Government would grow to the expansive lengths that it 
has. They thought that they would be able to keep it in a narrow 
limited form and that the States would be dealing with the more 
detailed issues that the Federal Government was not the benefit of.
  We have the enumerated powers. They intended for us to stay within 
the enumerated powers. The definitions that have come forward here by 
Congress, they reached out and stretched the limits of the enumerated 
powers.
  They didn't imagine that there would be speed limits on the dirt 
trails that had horses and buggies on them, and they didn't imagine 
that the Federal Government would be subsidizing roads in a way that 
would allow the Federal Government to set speed limits across this 
country. That is an example of events that have given the Federal 
Government--this Congress--some authority tied to the dollars that our 
Founding Fathers didn't envision, and it is one that I think simply we 
can understand.
  There is a proper role for the Federal Government. There is a proper 
role in requiring conditions that go along with Federal dollars. I 
illustrate that point, though, to illustrate how far we have diverged 
from the intent of our Founding Fathers.
  As our Founding Fathers framed the Constitution and established that 
all laws would be passed here in the United States Congress and not by 
the executive branch of government and not by the judicial branch of 
government, that separation of powers was envisioned to be this: 
Congress has the legislative authority. It is article I. It is article 
I for a reason, because the voice and the power of the people is vested 
in this Congress.
  Our Founding Fathers envisioned that the policy would come forth here 
from the various populations of the Thirteen Original Colonies and the 
States that later joined. Today, if we applied the vision of the 
Founding Fathers, we would look at 50 States and the territories, and 
we would imagine that there are--and this is simply close to a fact--
320 million people across those 50 States and the territories.
  Out of those 320 million people would be generated ideas. There would 
be grievances that would be brought forward and brought to the 
Representatives of Congress, and there would be ideas generated to 
solve the various problems that we have in our country. There might be 
a consensus that might be formed what the tax rates should be, what the 
debt burden should be allowed to be, what the size of government should 
be allowed to be, and what kind of policies might come out of this 
Congress. Our Founding Fathers envisioned that.
  They envisioned then that the voice of the people would be 
transferred and translated up through and out of the population into 
the mind and the heart, any activity of their elected representative.
  They envisioned also that, out of the corners of the country, the 
Thirteen Original Colonies--and now from as far away as Guam to 
Washington, D.C., the corners of the United States, Alaska to Hawaii, 
to Florida, to Maine, and down to California certainly--that all of the 
ideas within that would have to compete with other ideas, and that 
their elected representatives in this republican form of government 
that is guaranteed in our Constitution would bring the best of those 
ideas. Not all of them, not the clutter of bad ideas, but sort the 
clutter of the ideas so that just the cream of the crop, the best 
ideas, would come from the corners of the United States and be brought 
here into this Congress, that an individual Member of Congress, one of 
the 435, would bring those ideas into the competition of the ideas of 
the marketplace here.
  The ideas of the marketplace here would have to compete against each 
other. Of the now 435 Members, there would be various ideas that would 
compete with other ideas. The best ideas that could develop the 
consensus out of the voice of the people would be sorted here in this 
Congress, and we would advance those ideas that reflected the will of 
``we the people.'' That is the vision of this republican form of 
government. That is the vision that required that the Congress be 
established by article I.
  The vision for article II was that the executive branch would be 
headed by a President of the United States, who is the Commander in 
Chief of our Armed Forces. We wouldn't have any Armed Forces if it 
weren't for Congress having the enumerated power to establish a 
military--an Army, a Navy, and, subsequent to that, an Air Force.
  So the Founding Fathers envisioned the executive branch and the 
President of the United States--the President, specifically, the 
Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces--and that his oath is to 
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States--
that is the oath, so help him, God, today, as is in his oath, although 
it wasn't in the original oath--and that he take care that the laws be 
faithfully executed. That is the Take Care Clause.
  Some of us say somewhat facetiously that the President of the United 
States took that wrong and decided to execute the Constitution instead 
of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed. That is something 
that we will debate and discuss in the task force that addresses the 
executive overreach, Mr. Speaker.
  Our Founding Fathers also established article III, which is the 
courts. I will speak to that briefly in this segment, Mr. Speaker, 
because most of the focus of this task force is on the executive 
overreach. We do need to look into the judicial overreach as well. I 
believe that there is an effort to give that a review as well. But the 
Constitution requires that there be a Supreme Court, that they 
establish a Supreme Court, and then the various other courts are at the 
discretion of Congress.
  I have made this argument to Justice Scalia in somewhat a semiformal 
setting--I might say an informal setting--a few years ago. I would 
argue that under the Constitution, if you read article III, the only 
court that is required by the Constitution is the Supreme Court. It is 
required that it be led and headed by a Chief Justice.
  As you look at the language in the Constitution, I argued that the 
Supreme Court is not required to be--well, first of all, there are no 
other Federal courts that are required. The authority to establish them 
is granted in article III to Congress. Congress could develop all the 
Federal courts that they choose to, or they could decide to, 
essentially, abolish any of the Federal districts. In theory, at least, 
they could abolish all the Federal districts.

  The only Federal Court that is required under the Constitution is the 
Supreme Court. Under constitutional authority, Congress could eliminate 
and reduce the Federal Court system all the way down to the Supreme 
Court. There is no requirement that there be nine Justices or seven or 
five or three. There is a requirement that there be a Chief Justice.
  In the end, if Congress wanted to control the judicial branch, they 
could reduce their judicial branch down to the Chief Justice, and he is 
not required to have a Supreme Court building or a budget. They could 
reduce the Chief Justice down to himself or herself, as the case may 
be, with his own card table, with his own candle, and no staff. That is 
how narrow and small the judicial branch of government could be if 
Congress decided to utilize its constitutional authority.
  Of course, we don't do that. But there is a history of two judicial 
Federal districts being abolished by this Congress back in about 1802. 
It was debated in the House and the Senate and successfully eliminated 
a couple of Federal districts--I don't suggest that we do that at all, 
Mr. Speaker, for those who would get on their Twitter account--
illustrating the function of the Constitution itself. But the judicial 
branch of government has now defined it down to that. It explains that 
the third branch, article III, the third branch of government, was not 
designed to be a coequal branch of government. It was designed to be 
the weakest of the three branches of government.
  Then Marbury v. Madison came along that established judicial review, 
and off we are to the races and the growth of the judicial branch of 
government. That can be shrunk or it can be allowed to grow, and its 
influence can be allowed to grow or it could be shrunk.
  But I would make the point, Mr. Speaker, that it isn't only the 
Supreme Court that weighs in on what the Constitution says. It is each 
one of us here

[[Page H551]]

in this Chamber and each Senator down at the other end of the United 
States Capitol Building. We all have our obligation to interpret the 
Constitution because we all take an oath to uphold it.
  We are not taking an oath to uphold it the way the Supreme Court 
would amend it. In fact, the nine Justices of the Supreme Court--or 
five, as the case may be--are the last people on the planet who should 
be amending the Constitution of the United States. Whether it is a 
literal amendment or whether it is a de facto amendment is what has 
taken place with regard to the Obergefell case, for example, Mr. 
Speaker.
  The judicial branch of government, article III, is designed to be the 
weakest of the three branches of government. If it stayed that way or 
if it becomes that again, we still have the conflict, the struggle for 
power that is going on between article I, the Congress; article II, the 
President and the executive branch; article III, the courts; and that 
static balance that is there between the three branches of government. 
There is a little tug-of-war going on for the balance between each of 
those branches of government.
  Our Founding Fathers envisioned that it would be impossible to 
precisely define the differences, the power structure, among the three 
branches of government. They did, I think, a really good job given the 
limits of language and imagination, and also the limits of not having a 
complete crystal ball on what would happen here in this country. But 
they understood that even though they defined it as precisely as I 
think was humanly possible in that period of time, or even now today, 
they understood that each branch of government would jealously protect 
the authority granted to it within its particular article within the 
Constitution.
  For a long time that is what happened. Even now we have debates about 
what authority the Congress has versus what authority the President 
has. That is the heart of the executive overreach task force that was 
established today in the Judiciary Committee, I would say the 
brainchild of Chairman Goodlatte.
  I don't believe that the Congress has done a very good job of 
defending and jealously protecting its constitutional authority. It 
started a long time ago--someone today said 100 years ago--as Congress 
began delegating authority to the executive branch of government. It 
was accelerated with the passage of the Administrative Procedures Act, 
which sets out the parameters for the executive branch of government to 
write the rules and regulations that have the full force and effect of 
law.
  That came about, I think, Mr. Speaker, because this Congress was 
overwhelmed with all of the functions of a growing Federal Government. 
The various committees and the various task forces that are established 
here in this Congress grew and emerged out of the duties that this 
Congress recognized.
  But at a certain point, Congress was bogged down with the details of 
governing. Willingly, to take some of that workload off of their back, 
they delegated it to the executive branch of government. In doing so, 
they had to delegate authority to the executive branch of government, 
too.
  Not only was it the workload, in my opinion, Mr. Speaker, but it also 
was sometimes the political heat that is required to do the right 
thing. I have seen this in the State legislature, and I have seen this 
in Congress multiple times. Issues come up. You can't reach agreement. 
One side or the other is scoring political points, sometimes it is both 
sides scoring political points, and the heat of that gets so great 
sometimes it brings about a decision here. But also, the heat of that 
might cause the legislative branch of government to pass that 
responsibility over to the executive branch, take the heat off, and let 
them make the decision.
  The result of executive decisions taking authority might be--let me 
pick an example--the waters of the United States rule, where this 
executive branch, during the terms of this President, President Obama, 
decided that they wanted to regulate a lot more of the real estate in 
the United States of America. I looked back at a time in about 1992 
when I saw another effort to do the same thing as there was a 
designation in my State that was driven by the EPA to designate 115 
streams in Iowa as protected streams.
  Looking at that list of protected streams, I began wondering why 
would they call some drainage ditches protected streams. I read down 
through the rule. In there, it said, in order to preserve the natural 
riparian beauty, these streams, according to their geographically 
defined boundaries in the rule--which I never actually saw the 
geographically defined boundaries. They just said they were there. I 
don't know that they were. But according to their geographically 
defined boundaries, these streams shall be protected streams, and these 
streams and waters hydrologically connected to them. I will put that in 
quotes, Mr. Speaker, ``and waters hydrologically connected to them.''

                              {time}  1845

  When I read the language and I saw that that was the rule that was 
published, I began to go and deliver the public comment.
  I asked the representatives of the rule writers: What does 
``hydrologically connected to'' mean?
  Their answer was: We don't know.
  And I said: Then take it out of the rule.
  No. We can't.
  Do you mean you are representing something, and you do not know what 
it means, but you just know you can't take it out?
  That's right. We can't take it out. This is the published rule, and 
now we have to get this rule passed.
  In any case, that brought about a battle within the State of Iowa. 
Eventually, they got the rule in that said these streams and waters 
hydrologically connected to them will be regulated by the regulators 
and that they will decide what practices the rightful property owner 
can implement on that real estate that they have now defined to be 
within the regulation of the government. The phrase ``waters 
hydrologically connected to'' thereby became the target of years and 
years of litigation--of, perhaps, nearly 20 years of litigation or of 
maybe even more than 20 years of litigation. I guess we would be at 25 
or so years of litigation.
  Finally, the courts concluded that the phrase ``hydrologically 
connected to'' was too vague to be able to enforce it, and the 
collection--the menagerie--of the article III Court's ruling on an 
initiative that was brought forward by the executive branch of 
government that was not the intention of the legislative branch of 
government tied all three branches of government together in confusion 
that eroded the property rights of people who were guaranteed those 
property rights under the Fifth Amendment.
  All of that was being litigated through that period of time when we 
saw the Kelo decision when the Court decided they could amend the 
Constitution, and the minority opinion was written by Justice Sandra 
Day O'Connor. I stood on this floor and almost unknowingly quoted her 
minority opinion because we had come to the same conclusion 
independently that the Court had taken three words out of the Fifth 
Amendment, and those three words were ``for public use.'' So now, 
effectively, the Fifth Amendment reads: nor shall private property be 
taken without just compensation.
  We know a little about that debate taking place in the Presidential 
race because we have a candidate who believes that that is the right 
thing--to take people's private property for private use if you can 
convince the government that would be confiscating it, that it is of 
better use if it pays more taxes. I disagree with that, Mr. Speaker, 
and I believe that the Kelo decision will be reversed one day when we 
appoint constitutionalists to the judicial branch of government. I 
believe also in the result of that, over a period of time, if we get 
the right President who will make the right appointments to the Supreme 
Court.
  What I have illustrated here is how the three branches of government 
can get involved in a convoluted conflict, and in that convoluted 
conflict, the tension between the three branches of government was 
designed to get sorted out so that we would be back to the 
Constitution, itself, and that the Constitution would rule. But when 
the Supreme Court effectively strikes three words out of the Fifth 
Amendment to our Constitution, then we have the Court's ruling without 
the will of the people, and the will of the people is

[[Page H552]]

going to be reflected through, especially and first, the House of 
Representatives--the quick reaction strike force. There is a reason we 
all take the oath to uphold the Constitution. It is so we understand 
it, and we define it. We take our oath seriously, and we defend it.
  In the other two parts of that, when you had an executive branch that 
initiated a policy--protected streams--that wasn't the initiative of 
the legislature, then you have a superlegislature outside the purview 
of the legislative body. My detractors will turn around and say: But 
any rule that is passed can be nullified by the United States Congress. 
So why do you worry about that? Why don't you just do your job in 
Congress and nullify the rules if you don't like them? Mr. Speaker, it 
works a little bit differently than that, of course, especially when 
you have a President of the United States who will veto that 
legislation that would be nullifying the rule; so we are back into the 
circle again.
  If the President initiates a rule without regard to whether there is 
a court ruling on that rule, the legislature then would be obligated to 
nullify the rule. The difficulty of that is it takes a supermajority 
here then to undo something that appointed--but not elected--executive 
branch officials have initiated often without the knowledge of the 
President of the United States, himself. That is an upside-down way to 
get things done.
  It is supposed to be and is designed to be the will of the people--
the voice of the people--of the United States. They initiate the 
policy. They send that policy up through Congress. Congress is to bring 
it before our committees. It evaluates the various ideas, competes, and 
debates those ideas. It votes them through the various subcommittees 
and committees after having hearings so that the public can see what is 
going on--all out in the open, all out in the sunlight. We bring it 
here to the floor of the Congress and vote on it; and if the Senate 
agrees, it becomes law. There was not designed to be a superlegislature 
within the executive branch; but, Mr. Speaker, that is what we have 
today. We have thousands and thousands of pages of regulations that are 
initiated by a robust executive branch of government.
  I expect that, in the duration of this administration, as we have 
heard from the President of the United States, he intends to make his 
days count as we count down to the end of his Presidency. I take him at 
his word. He has had a robust approach to stretching the limits of the 
executive branch of government throughout all of his time in office. 
Now he is sitting in a place where he has the appropriations he needs 
for the functioning of the Federal Government all the way up until 
September 30. By September 30, this Congress is going to be in a place 
where they are seeing the last weeks of a Presidential campaign play 
themselves out in October and then in early November. So we are 
probably right at 5 weeks. Let's see. Five weeks from the end of the 
fiscal year will be the vote for the Presidency, and absentee balloting 
will be taking place at the same time.
  The President of the United States has all of the levers that he 
needs, he has got all of the tools that he needs, and he has got the 
funding that he needs. He also has the robust idea that the executive 
branch of government should be stronger, not weaker, and that it should 
do more, not less. If we wonder about that, Mr. Speaker, we can look 
around at some of the President's actions and those of the executive 
branch of government that I take great issue with. Many of them are 
tied up in the development, in the implementation, of ObamaCare.
  ObamaCare, itself, Mr. Speaker, was legislation that was passed by 
hook, by crook, by legislative shenanigan. March 22, 2010, was the 
final passage, and it was a sad day for America because the will of the 
people was not reflected in this Congress that day. It was a dramatic 
time to be here. Those who will argue will say: Oh, the House passed 
this legislation, and the Senate passed this legislation, and it 
actually was a function of the legislative body. I repeat again--hook, 
crook, legislative shenanigan. It is not only I who says that, Mr. 
Speaker. There have been Democrats who have voiced the same thing, but 
there are far fewer of them these days as a result of force-feeding 
ObamaCare to the United States Congress.

  As the President began implementing ObamaCare, he began changing the 
law. He made some changes along the way. For example, the employer 
mandate was delayed. The individual mandate was delayed. Some of it was 
litigated over to the Supreme Court. Some of these changes were not. He 
decided which components of the law he wanted to ignore and which ones 
he wanted to enforce. He took an oath, though, to take care that the 
laws be faithfully executed. That is all of them. That is not part of 
them. Yet, as we went through ObamaCare time after time after time, 
there were changes made along the way in the implementation and 
enforcement of ObamaCare, and that brought about a great deal of 
confusion in this country, and it upset a lot of people. It 
disadvantaged a lot of people, and it advantaged some people.
  He granted waiver after waiver for his favorite groups and entities 
that were, I will say, people who were typically considered to be his 
supporters. I didn't see much relief for the people who were typically 
not considered to be his supporters, such as the Little Sisters of the 
Poor, for example. They are in the business of having to litigate their 
religious freedom versus an imposition of the Federal Government's 
that, under all of their health insurance policies, they are now 
commanded to fund contraceptives, which violates their religious 
freedom. By the way, it violates my religious convictions as well. So 
we have a very robust President who has laid out a whole series of 
demands not only through ObamaCare legislation, but also we have seen 
this happen with immigration.
  The President has said publicly 22 times ``I don't have the 
constitutional authority to do what you want me to do'' when he has 
been talking to illegal immigrants who are in America and are pressing 
this government to change the policy to accommodate them in the form of 
amnesty, which I have described on this floor many times, Mr. Speaker. 
The President said 22 times: ``I don't have the constitutional 
authority to do this.''
  After he was well vented in his position of explaining the 
Constitution right out here at a high school in Washington, D.C., the 
President answered a question from one of the students at the high 
school. He said, ``I used to teach the Constitution,'' which he did for 
10 years as an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago. He 
taught constitutional law. He said that the job of Congress is to write 
the laws, that the job of the President and of the executive branch is 
to enforce the laws, and that the job of the judicial branch of 
government is to interpret the laws.
  I would bring this back to Chief Justice Roberts, who said clearly in 
his confirmation hearing some years ago that his job as a Justice is to 
call the balls and strikes. I agreed with that, and it was very 
encouraging to hear that, and I certainly supported his confirmation. 
Yet I see that on June 24 of last year--that would be a Thursday--in 
the opinion on ObamaCare that was written by Chief Justice Roberts, in 
a narrow majority opinion where Chief Justice Roberts joined with four 
other Justices, they decided they could write words into ObamaCare, 
itself. ``Or Federal Government'' would be the three words. Maybe the 
three words they took out of the Fifth Amendment, ``for public use,'' 
they get to put in a bank somewhere, and when they need to add some 
words into law, they can just borrow them from that little word bank. 
If they strike them out of the Constitution, maybe the three words 
would be left in the word bank, and the Supreme Court could then pull 
three words out by choice and say, ``or Federal Government.''
  Now ObamaCare reads, ``an exchange established by the State''--insert 
``or Federal Government.'' Now, that is what happened as to that 
decision on ObamaCare on June 24, Thursday, the following day. The 
Supreme Court announced that they had created a new command in the 
Constitution. It is not just a new right. Remember, I said the Justices 
of the Supreme Court should be the last people on the planet to amend 
the Constitution or to discover any new language in it. They are to 
call the balls and strikes. That is what I agree with, and that is part 
of my oath, to defend the Constitution in

[[Page H553]]

that fashion. The Supreme Court, instead, inserted those words into 
ObamaCare, ``or Federal Government.''
  The following day, they created a command that says not just that 
there is a new right to same-sex marriage, Mr. Speaker, but that there 
is a command that, if the States are to conduct or to honor civil 
marriage, they shall conduct and honor also same-sex marriages without 
regard to the convictions of their people, who no longer enjoy the 10th 
Amendment authority to establish that policy on marriage within the 
States. The Federal Government took that onto themselves, and they 
issued not just a right to same-sex marriage but a command that 
everyone, especially the States and the political subdivisions thereof, 
shall honor same-sex marriage. That is a breathtaking overreach of the 
Supreme Court. It would be worse than the worst nightmare that any of 
our Founding Fathers ever would have had with regard to the limitations 
of this government.
  So we are sitting here today with a Federal Government that has been 
distorted beyond what would be the belief of our Founding Fathers, and 
they had their share of fears. This Congress needs to reassert itself. 
It needs to reestablish its constitutional authority. It needs to take 
a good, hard look at the article I authority that is vested to it in 
the Constitution, itself, and recognize that all legislative powers 
exist here in the House and in the Senate. The overreach of the 
executive branch takes place sometimes because Congress wanted to take 
the heat off of us, and we gave that responsibility over to the 
executive branch of government. Sometimes the President decides he 
wants to do things outside the bounds of his constitutional authority. 
Sometimes it is a mix of the two, and sometimes it is the President who 
enjoys the majority support of his party in the House and/or in the 
Senate. It is more likely that in this Congress that the Members of his 
party will accept an overreach of a President of their own party than 
they will an overreach of a President of the opposite party.

                              {time}  1900

  It is also true, Mr. Speaker, that we have different views on what is 
executive overreach and what the Constitution says.
  In fact, in some of the debate today, I said that the Constitution 
has to mean what it says. The very literal words that are in the 
Constitution have to mean what they say and they have to mean to all of 
us what they were understood to mean at the time of ratification of the 
base document of the Constitution and, also, of the various amendments 
as we move along through the amendments in the Constitution.
  We need to have enough history to understand what those amendments 
and what the Constitution meant to the people that ratified it, and 
then we need to recognize that the Constitution itself is an 
intergenerational guarantee, an intergenerational document signed off 
on by our Founding Fathers with their hand and agreed to in an oath to 
that Constitution by millions of Americans over time.
  Many of them pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred 
honor to preserve, support, and defend the Constitution of the United 
States.
  It is a document that is fixed into the letter of the words that are 
there in the Constitution and the understanding of those words, not 
living and breathing, but an intergenerational contractual guarantee 
from our Founding Fathers down to our descendants, as far as they shall 
go to the end of the Republic, should it ever end. I pray it does never 
end as long as this Earth exists.
  So the multiple generational great-, great-, great- --many times 
great-grandfathers all the way to the Founding Fathers said: Here is a 
contract, and I am going to pass this contract on to the next 
generation. The next generation has to preserve, protect, and defend it 
and then pass it to the next generation and the next generation and the 
next generation.
  As Ronald Reagan said, freedom is not something that you inherited. 
It is something that has to be preserved and fought for each generation 
and defended each generation. So if we lose the understanding of what 
the Constitution means, we also have lost our Constitution itself, Mr. 
Speaker.
  This task that we have is to preserve this language: ``All 
legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the 
United States.'' It is simple, pure, beautiful, worth preserving, 
protecting, fighting for, bleeding for and, if need be, dying for.
  That is why our honorable and noble military men and women take an 
oath to support this Constitution, because it is worth defending. They 
are not defending the President of the United States specifically. They 
are defending this Constitution when they go into battle.
  We need to defend it here in the House of Representatives. We have a 
task force now to address the executive overreach and will be defining 
the unconstitutional overreach. I am willing to accept the President's 
definition on the constitutional limitations with regard to 
immigration.
  When the President said he doesn't have the authority to establish 
and pass amnesty legislation, I agree with him. It is an enumerated 
power here in this Constitution that is preserved for the Congress to 
establish a uniform naturalization, and that has been defined by the 
courts to mean the immigration policies of the United States.
  If we get this right, we will have a Congress that is empowered more, 
but also an empowered Congress that is more accountable to we, the 
people.
  As Congress steps up and says let's claw that executive overreach 
power back into the House of Representatives and back into the United 
States Senate, what we are really saying, Mr. Speaker, is let's claw 
that executive overreach power and authority back here and hand it back 
to we, the people.
  Now, let's go back and turn our ear to we, the people, so that this 
republican form of government that is guaranteed to us in this 
Constitution can gather the best ideas from all across this land and 
bring those ideas here to Washington, D.C., where the ideas compete 
with each other. The best ideas float to the top like the cream rises 
to the top, and the public can look in and they can weigh in.
  Additionally, Mr. Speaker, we need more oversight into the executive 
branch of government. I have drafted and introduced legislation that 
addresses some of this in a way, I will put out here, to perhaps be a 
little provocative to start some ideas. Then the competition of ideas, 
the best ones, as I said, need to float to the top.
  That would be legislation that does this: It requires of this 
mountain and myriad of regulations that we have that go on in 
perpetuity, that can't be practically reduced or shrunk down or 
nullified by this Congress--as long as the President is willing to veto 
a nullification bill and push it back at us, the legislation that I am 
proposing that sunsets all of the regulations over a period of 10 years 
sunsets any new regulation at the end of 10 years and it requires 
Congress to have an affirmative vote before any regulation can have a 
force and effect of law.
  We have passed out of the floor of the House here once, perhaps more 
than that, what we call the REINS Act. This comes from a retired Member 
of Congress, a friend, a former ranger, Jeff Davis of Kentucky, who 
initiated the legislation that there would be a requirement of an 
affirmative vote of Congress before a regulation that had more than 
$100 million of impact on our economy could take effect.
  That addresses this. It addresses this going forward with new 
regulation. It doesn't go backward to other regulations. All of the old 
regulations are essentially de facto grandfathered by the REINS Act.
  The legislation that I had put together before he introduced the 
REINS Act was more detailed. This legislation is called the Sunset Act. 
It sunsets all regulations, but it sunsets them in increments of 10 
percent of the regulations from each department each year for 10 years.
  The departments have to offer up their regulations. They can sort 
which ones they want to expose to Congress for a vote over a period of 
10 years. But over 10 years, they have to offer up their regulations 
here to Congress.

  Congress then evaluates those regulations. Any Member of Congress can 
come in and offer an amendment to those regulations, maybe an amendment 
to strike, maybe an amendment to add.

[[Page H554]]

  Maybe there are people in this Congress that want more regulations, 
not less, and they would like to write them into law and affirmatively 
vote them in.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, that idea of sunsetting all regulations--10 
percent a year for 10 years incrementally--is coupled with the idea of 
sunsetting any new regulation, also, at the end of 10 years and 
requiring an affirmative vote on any regulation before all new 
regulations of any kind.
  Doing so then restrains the executive branch of government and makes 
the legislative branch of government responsible to the people.
  Our regulators that are writing these rules will know that, if they 
write a rule that is egregious to the people, the people that have not 
been heard from the executive branch of government, when they go into 
the office of, say, the EPA and they press their case to Gina McCarthy, 
for example, and her people, they don't have a motive to listen because 
they are insulated from the accountability to the people.
  If they knew that those same individuals that are aggrieved by the 
proposed regulation can come to visit their Member of Congress and 
press their demand on their Member of Congress, they have to know that 
that Member of Congress will come forward, come down here to the floor 
of the House of Representatives and offer an amendment to strike those 
regulations or amend those regulations so that it is acceptable to we, 
the people. That is a vision to restrain an overgrowth of the executive 
branch of government, Mr. Speaker.
  I advocate that as one of the things to consider, but neither do I 
think that I have all the good ideas. There are 435 Members of the 
House of Representatives and 100 Members of the Senate. There are good 
ideas that come into every one of our offices from the 750,000 or so 
people that each of us represent.
  With the ideas that come from the public, if we sort them in the 
fashion envisioned by our Founding Fathers, if we limit the overgrowth 
of the executive branch of government, we take the responsibility back 
to us, it will press on us, Mr. Speaker, the kind of changes that are 
good for the people in this Republic, that are good for the 
responsibilities of the Members of the House and of the Senate. We can 
take America, and we can take America onwards and upwards to the next 
level of our ascending destiny.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your indulgence and your attention.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

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