Congressional Record, Volume 162 Issue 20 (Wednesday, February 3, 2016)

[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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