Congressional Record, Volume 162 Issue 137 (Monday, September 12, 2016)

[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 137 (Monday, September 12, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H5312-H5318]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

LAMEDUCK SESSION

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 2015, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to be recognized to
address you on the floor of the House of Representatives this evening,
as we move toward a September session that perhaps gets concluded in a
way that we go back to the November elections and, hopefully, we are
bridged over any great big decisions that might come in a lameduck
session.
Something that I wanted to address to you, Mr. Speaker, is the
circumstances of lameduck sessions. I look back on the history of them
and it is hard for me to find happy conclusions that are drawn during
lameduck sessions.
I recall that Thomas Jefferson once made the statement that ``large
initiatives should not be advanced on slender majorities.'' What he
meant by that was, if you have a large initiative and it is going to
move this country and it is going to stress a lot of people in this
country, then, if you move that large initiative and its margins are
essentially close to a jump ball, you are going to have almost half the
people unhappy--maybe more than half the people who are unhappy.
So that large initiative should not be advanced on a slender
majority, because you get so much pushback, you don't get public buy-
in. If you have a large initiative, you need to have a public that
embraces it; one that, hopefully, we can get to a supermajority on
large initiatives, because then we go forward in lockstep in defending
and promoting those decisions that were made by this country.
Worse than advancing a large decision on a slender majority is
pushing large decisions in lameduck sessions. The reality of it is,
however long and nobly Members of the House and Members of the Senate
have served and however long and nobly the President of the United
States may have served, when they are leaving town after the election,
for them to come back here after the November election and push large
initiatives in a lameduck session, they are not held accountable for it
any longer. You have the people that are retiring, those that we voted
out of office, and a President who is term-limited altogether packaging
things up and shoving them at us, the American people, sometime after
November 8 and before Christmas, where we have cliffhangers that go on
until Christmas Eve.
I remember Christmas Eve in about 2009. In fact, it was 2009. The
ObamaCare legislation was hanging in the balance in the United States
Senate. There, I recall my communications with the esteemed gentleman
who is now the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I said:
Procedurally, you are down to the last piece here. This is the eve of
Christmas Eve day, December 23.
I had sent an email over, which often and almost immediately is
responded to by my senior Senator, and I said: Procedurally, you are
going to hold ObamaCare until 9 o'clock tomorrow night on Christmas
Eve. But it looks like the question is: Will the ObamaCare legislation
be brought before the Senate before--earlier in the morning on the
24th--so that everybody can catch their plane and fly back home and get
home in time for Christmas?
The price for sacrificing God-given American liberty to move a
leftist agenda, Mr. Speaker, was what was going on over in the Senate.
They brought this leverage right up until Christmas Eve day. But the
deal was they had a couple of judicial appointments that they wanted to
get in a vote on, as I understood, that could come along in January, as
a promise that they allowed the ObamaCare legislation to be voted on
before 9 o'clock on December 24, Christmas Eve day.
That agreement was reached and the Senate conferenced in some
negotiated fashion or another and the last delay that was hanging onto
God-given American liberty in the face of ObamaCare's hook, crook, and
legislative shenanigans, which they used to pass that through the House
and Senate--in components, by the way--the last one was removed and
they allowed that vote earlier in the day so the Senators could get to
the airport, get on a plane, fly home, and be with their families on
Christmas Eve.
I said: If you are going to take away a God-given American liberty,
then make them pay that price. Hold that vote up until 9 o'clock on
Christmas Eve. Let them stay in Washington, D.C., on Christmas Eve. If
they love their socialized medicine that much, let them pay that price
of being away from their families to impose that on the American
people.
But that wasn't the agreement. So I sent the email back, which said:
What are we going to do now?
The answer I received was: We are going to pray. We are going to pray
for a legislative victory in the special election in the Senate race in
Massachusetts. Scott Brown.
I thought that was a bit of a reach, to have the audacity to ask for
that. We ended up with that. Scott Brown, for a time, did delay the
socialized medicine program that we call ObamaCare. George Washington
could not have called it the Affordable Care Act because George
Washington could not tell a lie. It is not the Affordable Care Act.
It came upon us in a lameduck session. Probably the worst example of
a lameduck session that we have seen. Well, at least it was a December
session rather than a lameduck session because it technically was not
an election year.
Now we are sitting in an election year. We will elect a new
President. By the time the sun comes on the morning of November 9, odds
are we will know clearly who the next President of the United States is
going to be. We will probably have a good idea that evening before we
go to bed. Maybe the polls will give us a strong indication going into
that day and the exit polls during the day will be released as the
polls close and give us a sense of how this thing breaks across the
country.
It is an exciting time. Whether the next President of the United
States is going to be Hillary Clinton or whether it is going to be
Donald Trump is a question that no one at this point knows. Now, this
Congress will take conclusive acts predicated upon a presumption of one
or the other, or, acting as if they don't have any consideration for
who will be the next President and asking that those decisions be made,
supported, ratified by people who are going home, retired by their own
choice, retired by the voters, or retired, in the case of Barack Obama,
by term limits.

So what good could possibly happen in a lameduck session on large
decisions that might bring forward--and I am not going down through the
list, Mr. Speaker, because if I do that, that will add to the level of
expectation on what might come.
It is wrong for this Congress to make large decisions, especially on
slender majorities, and it is wrong for this Congress to make decisions
that are predicated by a presumption of who will be the next President
of the United States. And it is really wrong to come into this Congress
and make big decisions in here while people are on the way out the
door; deciding votes while they are on the way out the door to go home
for their retirement, whether it is by choice, whether it is by the
voters, or by constitutional term limit, whatever the case may be. That
lameduck session should be used only to do that which couldn't be
accomplished before the election and that which must be done before the
new Congress is sworn in in the first week of January 2017.
We have that period of time. We can prepare for that. But it looks to
me like there are some people in this Congress who are salivating over
the idea of being able to exercise more leverage by moving an agenda
through in a lameduck session that will be at the disadvantage of the
will of the voters.
If you can't put that up here on the floor for a vote in the House of
Representatives between now and November 8; if you can't sell it to the
America people, Democrats and Republicans; if you can't get the support
of one of the likely next Presidents of the United States, then who are
we to impose it on the American people now?

[[Page H5313]]

By the way, who is the current President, Barack Obama, to be
negotiating and leveraging and reaching legislative agreements with the
House of Representatives and the Senate today on legislation that would
not be signed by the next President and legislation that can't be
subjected to the light of day prior to the election?
Lameduck sessions that move large initiatives are wrong. Lameduck
sessions that take care of emergency issues are okay. The public will
know the difference between the two.
This is just a component of the discussions that we will have the
rest of this month of September, Mr. Speaker, and, hopefully, the
American people will have all the way up until November 8 and beyond.
I want the American people to be well informed. We owe the American
people--every one of us, all 435 of here in the House of
Representatives--everyone around this Chamber here tonight and everyone
who is watching on C-SPAN, Mr. Speaker, our best efforts and our best
judgment, and that judgment should not be something that can't be
subjected to theirs. The American people need to agree with the
judgment of the United States Congress.
So I look at the issues that are unfolding here and that we will be
taking up perhaps in the month of September, but also issues that have
been seminal issues all along, throughout the Obama Presidency and
prior to that and all the time I have been in this Congress, and I am
seeing the pressure come forward to make a decision on a continuing
resolution. We have to make a decision on a continuing resolution--a
CR, as we refer to it here.
I would like to have seen this Congress go through regular order. I
would have been very happy to go back to the times that I remember when
we had 12 appropriations bill, perhaps a supplemental appropriations
bill--maybe 13, at the most--and we would see that our Appropriations
subcommittees would do their work and the Appropriations Committee
would do its work. And then the appropriations bill would come to the
floor. They would come to the floor within the Budget Committee's
resolution and the House's vote on a full resolution of the budget.
Once that budget comes down, the Appropriations Committee goes to
work and they look and see what their allocation is allowed in the
budget resolution and they move the appropriations bills within that.
Then the appropriations bills, Mr. Speaker, come to this floor under an
open rule. I don't care if it takes all night for us to debate
appropriations bills. If you don't care enough to stay up all night to
offer your amendment, then just don't offer your amendment. Let
somebody that cares more do that and have that floor. But Democrats and
Republicans should be allowed to and have the opportunity to weigh in
on every spending bill that we have.

{time} 1930

And sometimes through the appropriations process is the only way that
we end up with an open rule that allows a Member to bring the will of
their constituents to the floor of the House of Representatives.
Otherwise, the Rules Committee constrains that on policy bill after
policy bill, standing bill after standing bill.
The appropriations process is our opportunity to reflect the voice
and the will of the American people. And when that is subverted, when
that is circumvented, when we get to a place where we don't have the
regular appropriations process that is going on, then we end up with
leadership negotiating a continuing resolution or an omnibus spending
bill or a minibus spending bill that is packaged up in a room
somewhere, not out in the open, but it doesn't have the opportunity to
be amended in the process by the will of the Membership.
The more that process is narrowed down, and when a Member of Congress
is required to go up to the Rules Committee and subject themselves to
what can be a less than complimentary scenario of pleading with the
Rules Committee for them to allow you to amend a spending bill up or
down, or strike a spending line in there, or eliminate some policy, all
within the rules that are there, why does a Member of the United States
Congress whose constituents deserve every bit as much representation as
the constituents of the leadership, or the constituents of the members
of the Rules Committee, Democrat and Republicans, why does that Member
of Congress have to go up and make that request to have an opportunity
to make their argument to ask this floor to vote on an issue that funds
or defunds policy? When we get to that point, the voice of the people,
Mr. Speaker, is muted, and the will of the people, then, when it is
muted, the will of the people is not carried out.
I am all for open debate here on the floor of the House of
Representatives. I am for open debate in committees. Let's have a
verbal donnybrook here. Over time, it sorts itself out, and the will of
the people is designed to bring itself forward here in the United
States Congress.
I would suggest also that, from a leadership perspective, anybody
that holds a gavel, and whether that is the Speaker's gavel, Mr.
Speaker, or whether it is a gavel of a committee or a subcommittee,
wherever that might be, the job of that leader--chairman, usually--is
to bring out the will of the group, not to impose their will on the
group, but to bring out the will of the group.
So when I see this discussion that comes forward here in this
Congress that contemplates a CR, a continuing resolution, of roughly 90
days or so that funds our Federal Government out till December 9, I
look at the calendar, December 9, and I think, okay, that is just about
how long it is going to take for them to bring pressure on people that
are reluctant to agree with the CR that will come then, because people
will want to go home for Christmas, just like they did when ObamaCare
was passed over in the United States Senate. That is what we are
looking at. December 9, tight little time there. Get done, compromise,
go home for Christmas. That is what that says to me.
I would say, instead, I am all right with a CR. I am all right with a
continuing resolution. No, I don't want to fund any of the President's
unconstitutional executive amnesty acts, and I don't want to fund
Planned Parenthood. There are a number of things I don't want to fund.
But as far as the decision to move the funding of this Federal
Government from midnight December 30 to a date in the future, I would
suggest that that date be January 31, probably not any later than
February 28, because we need to get that, bridge that funding over into
the next Congress for the next President, whomever that might be.
It is time to do this transition and move this government to the next
Congress, to the next--hopefully, it is the same majority. It may not
be in the House. Hopefully, it is the same majority in the United
States Senate. It may not be in the Senate.
The next President will be a different President, and the will of the
President does itself upon the will of this Congress. We have been very
much subjected to that over the last almost 8 years, Mr. Speaker.
It has been an object of clarity that when the House majority has
decided not to fund, let's just say, at least one of the President's
projects and the President has said, I will shut this government down
first before I will be denied the funding for my pet projects, in the
end, the majority in the House of Representatives capitulated to the
will of the President.
We have that to contemplate going forward into the next Presidency.
We have watched as the power of the House of Representatives has been
diminished. The power of the Senate has been diminished and, I will
say, significantly and dramatically. And it didn't just happen under
this Presidency. It began in a significant way clear back in the
thirties. I don't know the exact year that the Administrative Procedure
Act was signed, but that would be, probably, a pivotal moment that one
could point to on the calendar and conclude that the balance of the
three branches of government that we had--that was designed by our
Founding Fathers, and I would submit that the judiciary branch was
always designed to be the weakest of the three branches of government.
But our Founding Fathers envisioned that those three branches in
government--thinking of it in a triangle, Mr. Speaker: the legislative
branch, Article I; the executive branch, Article II; and then the
judicial branch, Article III of

[[Page H5314]]

your Constitution--they set them up to be a balance of powers, a
triangular balance of powers. And even though it is often taught that
it is three equal branches of government, I would argue that the
legislative branch comes first--that is Article I--because we are the
voice of the people.
The House of Representatives comes ahead of the Senate when it comes
to spending, by design, by Constitution, because our Founding Fathers
wanted to give the control of the power of the purse into the hands
of the people as closely as they could possibly get it. And that is why
we here in the House are up for election or reelection every 2 years
and why the Senate is up for election or reelection every 6 years,
because they wanted the Senate to be insulated from the highs and lows
of public opinion.

They wanted the House of Representatives to be reactive and
responsive to the highs and lows of public opinion, and they wanted
that power of the purse to be in the hands of the House, so that we
start the spending bills. By extension and by interpolation and by
precedent, the House starts the spending, and the House takes care of
initiating any taxes as well; and the Senate then can react to those
things that are advanced by the House.
But if there is a single spending bill over in the Senate right now,
they have expanded in authority, historically, to be able to simply add
anything spending to that spending bill they would like. And we are
poised here in the House wondering: Are they going to send us a bill
that is this continuing resolution that fits their wants, their wishes,
and their will, which could be a CR till December 9 that funds Planned
Parenthood and ObamaCare and the President's executive amnesty? All of
that could come at us, Mr. Speaker.
This balance of powers that is here, though, it was expected by our
Founding Fathers, they believed that the people elected to serve in the
Congress, the House and the Senate, and they believed that the
President of the United States would all jealously protect the
constitutional authority that is granted to them within the
Constitution.
They knew that no matter how good wordsmiths they were, it was
impossible to define the distinctions, the bright lines between the
three branches of government in such a way that there would never be an
argument because, after all, words themselves get into a debate on what
the definitions of those words mean.
So our Founding Fathers precisely drew the difference as much as they
could within the language that they had. And the data at the time, and
the Federalist papers at the time, and the decisions that were made and
the Congressional Record that was debated along the way, and of all of
the debates that had to do with the Constitutional Convention helped
flesh out the meaning and understanding of this great and wonderful
Constitution that we have. But they also knew that, no matter how
precisely they fleshed it out, that there would be disagreements, and
they expected that each branch of government would jealously protect
the power and authority granted to it within the Constitution.
Well, this House of Representatives, and the Senate included, has not
done a very good job of protecting and defending the authority and the
power granted to it in the Constitution. Article I authority says all
legislation shall be conducted in the United States Congress--all
legislation, Mr. Speaker. And yet we have a President who has
legislated from the Oval Office. He has legislated by speaking words
into law. He has legislated by a third-tier Web site in the U.S.
Treasury that essentially amended the effectiveness of ObamaCare.
This Congress didn't step up in the way of that and take on that
fight and challenge the President and ball up this government to the
point where the President had to give in to the words in the
Constitution, the meaning of the Constitution, the intent of the
Constitution, and concede that the power and the authority in the House
of Representatives, in particular, but in the legislative branch, would
assert itself over the executive branch. It didn't happen because of a
lack of will at the House of Representatives to better define the
legislative authority that we have.
It began, as I mentioned, with the Administrative Procedure Act,
which granted rulemaking authority to the executive branch of
government. And so rules, rules that once they meet the criteria that
are defined within the Administrative Procedure Act--publish it, open
it up for public comment, go through those conditions--if that rule as
proposed reaches those conditions, then that rule is then enacted,
implemented, and it has the force and effect of law as if it were law.
Today, it is a lot easier to publish a rule and have that rule take
effect and be and provide the force and effect of law than it is for
Congress to actually pass a law.
So if the President decides that he wants to see, let's say,
environmental regulations, let's say, the WRRDA piece, the waters of
the United States regulations that give the EPA and the Corps of
Engineers the equivalent of legislative authority to regulate all of
the waters of the United States through some ambiguous language that
they had written into a rule, and it is so bad that it says these
waters--the old language back from the nineties was these protected
streams, as geographically defined, and waters hydrologically connected
to them shall be protected streams.
When I go to them and I ask them: What does ``hydrologically
connected'' mean?
Their answer is: Well, we don't know.
And I said: Well, then take it out of the language.
Well, we can't do that.
How can you know you can't take it out of the language if you don't
know what it means?
Well, we know that we can't change or amend the language. That is
what we are publishing here, and that is what is open for public
comment. So you are either going to have to live with it or oppose it
successfully. Which is it going to be?
Well, try opposing a rule successfully. Try convincing the EPA that
there is enough public comment and criticism that they ought to change
that language when they are not accountable to the people.
The EPA, the Corps of Engineers, any one of the dozens of agencies
that are out there, their bureaucrats aren't up for election or
reelection like Members of Congress are--only their President. Their
President has given them orders, or at least a philosophical guideline
that they are following, and so we end up with waters of the United
States, now, language that says the navigable waters of the United
States and any waters that are a significant nexus to the navigable
waters of the United States.

Well, think of that. The ambiguous language of waters hydrologically
connected to was litigated down to the point where the courts finally
ruled that it doesn't have an effectiveness because it is too
ambiguous. And so they cooked up some other ambiguous language to
litigate for another couple of decades, this ambiguous language of
significant nexus to the navigable waters of the United States--
significant nexus.
All right. What is nexus? Well, that is anything that intersects.
Well, is it 1 intersection? is it 2? is it 3? is it 10? is it 50? is it
100?
If you could go down to New Orleans and track the Mississippi River
up to the headwaters, how many significant nexus do you have that are
tributaries that run into the Mississippi? How many of those
tributaries can be traced up to creeks and streams and tile lines and
wells and water lines that go up to the kitchen sink?
They have defined ambiguous language that allows them to regulate the
entire United States of America all of the way to the kitchen sink
under requiring a significant nexus with the navigable waters of the
United States. And we sit here and take this. And they can write rules
like this that have the force and effect of law and put a chilling pall
on the economy of the United States of America.
That is what we are faced with, Mr. Speaker. And the legislative
power that has been asserted--and to a large degree, successfully
asserted--by the executive branch of government reaches into the
Article I authority of the United States Congress. What are we to do
about it here? We are to jealously protect this power. Our Founding
Fathers charged us with that.
And how do we jealously protect that power? We have only two things
we can

[[Page H5315]]

do: impeachment, which nobody wants to do, including me; the second
component of that is the power of the purse--the power of the purse
that James Madison spoke about and wrote about eloquently, and it is a
powerful, powerful tool.
But this Congress has declined to use the tool of the power of the
purse, with the exception of what turned into the shutdown of our
Federal Government in the first day of October of 2013, because they
don't want to face the criticism that might come from the public of the
American people.

{time} 1945

There is a tremendous amount of authority that needs to be clawed
back to this Congress, Mr. Speaker, a tremendous amount of
constitutional authority that needs to be clawed back. When I see a CR
being prepared that looks like it is going to reflect some of the
continuing resolution from last year, I see a continuing resolution
that may be coming to expand, for example, immigration standards within
the United States of America under the guise of, well, we are just
going the kick the can down the road and do some spending that is going
to get us into December 9 or on into, hopefully, February 28 or maybe a
little later, and some want to go out to September 30.
I think that is too far. I don't think we ought to give a blank check
to the next President of the United States if we don't know who that is
going to be--even if we know who that is going to be. We ought to be,
instead, establishing a scenario by which the new Congress--House and
Senate--can pass appropriations bills to get to the end of this fiscal
year and get a signature of the next President of the United States,
not this one.
By the way, I don't want to give this President of the United States
a blank check on anything anymore, but Barack Obama said 22 times--not
just 22 times in the interviews, 22 times overheard, or 22 times
reported--he said 22 times on videotape that he did not have the
legislative authority to grant executive amnesty to illegal aliens in
the United States of America--22 times.
The most recent time that he did that was just about 10 days before
he changed his mind. He was here in Washington, D.C., giving a speech
to a high school here in Washington, D.C. He said to them: You are
smart students, and I know that you have been studying your
Constitution. You will know this, that I don't have the authority to
grant executive--he didn't use the words--but executive amnesty. I am
the President of the United States. Congress writes the laws. My job as
President is to enforce the laws, and the job of the judiciary is to
interpret the laws.
I don't think that you could put it more concisely than that in a
matter of two or three sentences. I think the President did a good job
of describing that to the students there. But within about 10 days, he
decided that he would reverse all of that, and all of a sudden he had
the power to grant an executive amnesty--an unconstitutional executive
amnesty, Mr. Speaker.
President Obama unconstitutionally granted an executive amnesty to
people who at least assert that they have come into the United States
under the age of 18. Apparently, if you are under 18, you are not
responsible for your actions, even though that is not true among the
States, even in the case of homicide. So the excuse that it was
somebody else's fault, it was their parents' fault or somebody else's
fault, never held up. It didn't hold up in law.
We write the law here in Congress, but the President granted an
executive amnesty. He called it DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals. You are a child, apparently, up until the moment that you
turn 18, and we will take your word for it even if you are 35 today or
older, by the way. That was DACA.
Then there was DAPA, the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, he
called it. That was another unconstitutional reach. Now, these things
have--at least the one has been effectively enjoined by Judge Hanen in
the Texas District. Now the President has been blocked, I think,
effectively until the end of his term on continuing this amnesty
process of executive amnesty. Meanwhile, the DACA executive amnesty
continues. We have seen evidence that there has been circumvention of
the court's order with regard to the DAPA amnesty piece.
While we are watching this unfold, we are a Congress that has allowed
for funding to continue with unconstitutional acts of executive amnesty
on the part of the President of the United States. I recall a
discussion before the Rules Committee before a previous appropriations
bill when I made the assertion, Mr. Speaker, that we all take an oath
to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Every one
of us in here, all 435 of us, and every Senator of the 100 Senators on
the other end of the Capitol here through the rotunda all take that
same oath that we will support and defend the Constitution of the
United States, so help us God. We should take that oath seriously.
Our Founding Fathers imagined that we would always be electing
serious representatives who when they took their oath that they would
take that oath with their hand on the Bible, and they would know that
they had to answer to their contemporaries, their colleagues, their
constituents, the American public, and ultimately to God for that oath.
Now, the Constitution means what it says. It has to be interpreted to
mean what it was understood to mean at the time of the ratification of
the Constitution or the subsequent amendments. Our oath needs to be an
oath of fidelity to the text and the understanding of that
Constitution. If it doesn't mean that then our oath means nothing at
all. Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, taking an oath that is: I pledge to
support and defend the Constitution of the United States whatsoever I
might interpret it to mean at any convenient point in the future? No.
The oath is not to support and defend the Constitution in any way it
might be subverted or perverted by any other authority. No. We are
taking an oath to support and defend the Constitution according to the
text of its clear meaning and understanding as understood at the time
of ratification.
If we don't like what that Constitution means, Mr. Speaker, then we
have an opportunity to amend the Constitution. It is simply defined and
difficult to do for good reason. Simply defined, it just takes a two-
thirds majority in the House and Senate to pass a constitutional
amendment out of here. The President has no formal say in the process.
Although, he will have an opinion, and then that constitutional
amendment goes out to the several States as it was referred to in the
Constitution, and there, if three-quarters of the States ratify that
constitutional amendment, it becomes a component of the Constitution.

Our Founding Fathers gave us a tool to amend the Constitution because
they knew they couldn't see into the crystal ball by the centuries.
They wanted it to be difficult because they wanted to protect the
rights of minorities against the tyranny of the majority, and they
wanted to protect God-given liberty. They had a vision, they were well
educated, and they had a sound and faithful foundation within them.
They laid out a brilliant document that would only maybe be second to
the Declaration itself when it comes to the brilliance of documents
that are written, at least by Americans and perhaps by mortals
altogether.
We are an exceptional nation. God has given us this liberty. We have
an obligation to protect it, an obligation to restore the separation of
powers, and an obligation to assert the constitutional authority here
and say to a President that overreaches: I'm sorry, we are not going to
fund your unconstitutional activities. We are going to stand on the
principle itself of the Constitution.
Whether or not we agree with policy, we need to have fidelity to the
Constitution. We don't get a pass because the Supreme Court errs in its
interpretation of the Constitution. We don't get a pass because the
President says that he has a different opinion. We don't get a pass no
matter which side of this aisle we are on, on the right or on the left.
We have an obligation to God and country and to have fidelity to this
Constitution.
So now this expansive immigration policy that has been delivered by
the President has set a goal of 10,000 refugees coming out of Syria. At
this point, I will concede that he has the executive

[[Page H5316]]

authority, as granted by Congress, to bring in refugees in numbers and
under consultation with the House and the Senate. I have sat in on some
of those consultations in previous years, and, in fact, with Hillary
Clinton for that matter, and we have arrived at, I will say, a
reasonable approach to the numbers of refugees.
But this President had set a goal that he was going to bring in at
least 10,000 refugees out of the Syria and Iraq region. When I look at
the numbers that are there and the costs that we have, if we want to
provide relief to people, we can provide refugee relief to a dozen
people in their home country, and that would be Iraq or Syria in these
circumstances, for every one that we bring into America.
When you clean that area out, when you bring people out of that area,
you are handing it over to ISIS. That is part of what the President has
been doing. He has been bringing people out of there and handing that
region, the real estate, over to ISIS. They are glad to get rid of
them. They killed thousands of people who didn't agree with them, and
there are those that are on the run from ISIS. ISIS has been committing
a genocide against Christians and against Yazidis in the Middle East,
especially in the Nineveh plains region. I have seen the devastation
that is taking place there.
Mr. Speaker, I have gone into those regions and gotten as close to
the ISIS front lines as possible, and that is just outside their
artillery range. I went looking for Christian refugee camps, Mr.
Speaker. I couldn't find Christian refugee camps in that part of the
world, into the edges of Syria, into northern Iraq, into the Kurdish
region, and into Turkey for that matter. The place to find Christians
in that part of the world is go to church, and there you will find
Christians. I have met with the Chaldean bishop twice in Erbil in the
northern part of Iraq.
In my last trip in, I went into the Catholic Church, the Roman
Catholic Church in Istanbul, and I met with a good number of Christians
there. Then I went down into Erbil the following morning. It was a
Saturday night mass and then a Sunday morning mass in Erbil, and there
I met a good number of other Christians. I sat down with a family that
was a refugee family out of the Syrian region and met with the Chaldean
bishop there.
Here are some things that I learned from them and others: The
Assyrian Christians are under attack. There is a heavy assault of
genocide against them. Chaldean Christians, same way, they are
subjected to genocidal attack from ISIS. The Yazidis, who are
technically not Christians, are under genocidal attack from ISIS, and
their home region is the Nineveh plains region. The Nineveh plains
region runs along, I will say parallel or next to, Mosul in Iraq in
that area.
In my discussions with the Barzanis, who are essentially in charge of
the semiautonomous region of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq and
the Erbil area and all across, I pressed them that we need to establish
an international safe zone for Christians and for the Yazidis, the
native minority, so that they can live there in peace and be protected.
I made that case rather extensively to him. He repeated it back to me
probably two or three times greater in detail and in conviction than I
had delivered it to him. I said to him: Mr. Barzani, you sound like you
have said this before. His answer to me was: I have said it before.
That is my public opinion. We will support an international safe zone
in the Nineveh plains region. We will support it, we will help defend
it, and we are committed to it. That is my public position.
I was awfully glad to hear that. It is a lot better solution for
refugees to give them protection in their home region and protect them
from the genocidal ISIS people than it is to try to bring them out of
the Middle East and bring them into the United States, or other places
in the world for that matter. But we do have refugees that are looking
for a place to call home around this world.
So I stopped in Geneva a couple of months ago, Mr. Speaker, by the
way, with Chairman Goodlatte of the Judiciary Committee, and met with
the number two on the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. In that
meeting and in that discussion, I learned a few things. I thought that
it was a good meeting. It was a very constructive meeting with a lot of
information that poured back and forth.

{time} 2000

I have this report that I probably will not put into the Record.
``Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2015,'' which flows, of course,
into 2016, Mr. Speaker.
I noted a report that we had that showed some--and I am close, but
maybe not exactly precise on this top number--1,562 refugees out of the
Syrian-Iraq region that had come in in a group into the United States.
Of that 1,562, roughly, number, I can give you the exact number of
Christians that were included in that: one. Only one.
We have seen other larger groups--several thousand--where there was
only a little more than 1 percent Christians that come out of there.
Christians in that part of the world, as far as refugees are concerned,
grow into a number of 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 percent.
So why is it that this administration can bring in more than 10,000
refugees out of that part of the world--now approaching 12,000, looks
like will be the number even greater than that by the end of this
fiscal year on the last day of this month, Mr. Speaker--and not have
any statistical representation of Christians that are emerging from
that part of the world?
I asked our director of USCIS, under oath before the Judiciary
Committee: Do you ask these refugees that you claim that you are
vetting, and I don't believe can be effectively vetted, do you ask them
what their religion is?
He said: No, we don't ask. How would we have any way of knowing? Even
if we asked them, we don't know. So that is not a statistic that we
collect or keep.
Well, it seems to me to be foolish and imprudent not to be taking a
look at the religion of people. We would want to be accelerating
bringing Christians into America if we are going to bring refugees at
all into America. They are the ones that are targeted. They are the
ones that are subjected to genocide.
I would like to carve out that international safe zone and let them
live in peace in the area that is their home of antiquity. If that is
not going to be the case, why would we be then seeing a
misrepresentative sample coming into America, unless there is a
preference of, let's say, a bias against Christians coming into
America, one out of 1,562, roughly 1 percent out of 3,600 or so?
Then on top of that, when I began to ask the representative of UNHCR,
the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees, in Geneva--who gave a very
impressive presentation, I would add, Mr. Speaker--when I began to ask
those questions: How many refugees do you have cleared to come out of
the Middle East that could be going to any of the designated countries
that are accepting them? And we know that Germany, Austria, Sweden, and
France, to a degree, are picking up refugees. We watched them pour in.
I walked with them pouring in that epic migration. Many of them are not
cleared, but of those that have been cleared by the U.N. High
Commissioner on Refugees, how many do you have?
Her answer was: Well, we have 115,000 who have been cleared under a
refugee status that have, roughly, a background check--she didn't use
the word ``roughly''--but a background check done on them that we say
are ready to be transported to host countries--115,000.
I said: Do you keep track of what religion they are?
Well, absolutely, yes, we do.
How many Christians?
Fifteen thousand Christians out of 115,000 refugees.
I didn't do the math, but I am going to say that is 12 or 13 percent.
Now, if 12 or 13 percent of the refugees that are approved by the
United Nations are Christians and 1 percent, or maybe even one out of
1,562, are Christians coming into America, does that mean that this
administration set up a filter to filter them out and only made
mistakes?
I would support, instead, an effort that if we are going to accept
refugees from that part of the world, let's make sure it is the
refugees that are subjected to a religious genocide. By the way, I
think they are more likely to be assimilated into America judging by

[[Page H5317]]

the responses that I have heard from them.
I looked at some of the results in this report that I have
referenced, Mr. Speaker, and I was surprised, not quite shocked, to see
the number of refugees per 1,000 inhabitants in these countries who
have been flooded with refugees. I want to tip my hat to the countries
that have taken on a high number of refugees that is also a high
percentage of their overall population.
Lebanon is at the top. Out of every 1,000 inhabitants of Lebanon, 183
are refugees. They have been stretched to the seams in Lebanon. Jordan,
87 out of 1,000. And then you go to Turkey, 32; Chad, 26; Djibouti, 22;
on down the line getting down to the end, Malta, 17 per thousand. That
is a high number, especially for a small island, but it is still a per
capita basis. Out of all of the countries in Europe, or the United
States for that matter, Sweden, 17 per thousand. That is the highest
rate out of Europe in its entirety, or the Western Hemisphere for that
matter, or Oceania for that matter. The Swedes continue to take a lot
of refugees in.
We have a national destiny, a national security, to be concerned
about. We know that it is a very difficult task to vet refugees. I am
supportive of an effort to suspend refugees coming out of that part of
the world that produces terrorists until such time as we can get a
handle on the vetting of them, on the background checks. Many times
when they leave their home country and when they enter a foreign
country, they will destroy any identifying documents that they might
have so that they can't be sent back to their home country.
This is a big problem for Europe. We have watched as the attacks have
emerged in country after country. And it is a big problem for the
United States. We are challenged with this vetting process that cannot
possibly uncover those who will turn to violence. We can look at
polling that shows what percentage of people from terrorist-producing
countries that settle in the United States are supportive of Sharia
law, are supportive of violence to promote Sharia law, that are, at
least philosophically, supportive of organizations including and like
ISIS.

Those numbers are shocking. They are far too high, which caused our
Director of the FBI, James Comey, to make the remark when asked to be
responsible for the vetting of the refugees: You are asking us to
identify the needles in the haystack. That is a very difficult task to
identify the needles in the haystack. But if we could get that done,
the far more difficult task is to identify the hay that will become
needles.
We have seen that pop up second generation, I will say, immigrants
from that part of the world that adhere to the philosophy that believes
that they can impose Sharia law on America through violence. And even
James Comey has said: You are asking us to sort out the hay that would
become needles later on. That is the second generation terrorists that
have attacked us.
So it is a difficult task in a war, Mr. Speaker, that has gone on for
1,400 years. We don't recognize it as a war that has gone on for 1,400
years, but they do.
Then I see legislation that is coming at us in the form of, first, H-
2B legislation in a continuing resolution, Mr. Speaker--H-2B
legislation. That is low-skilled workers. The highest unemployment
rates we have in America are the lowest skilled workers that we have.
Double-digit unemployment in the lowest skilled workers that we have in
this country. The last thing we need in America are more people that
have less skills, but that is what is pouring across our borders in
legal and illegal immigration.
We are essentially a welfare state. We have 94.6 million Americans of
working age who are simply not in the workforce, and there are
another--not quite 9 million--that are on unemployment. So we are 103
million or 104 million Americans of working age who are not in the
workforce. Yet, we are watching the entitlements grow and grow and grow
and swallow up our budget. So Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security--
all of them--are on autopilot for spending.
What do we do when we are trying to keep up with the spending from
those three?
We go borrow the money from the Chinese or borrow the money from the
Saudis. By the way, half the money that we are borrowing that is this
$19.4 trillion in national debt, half of that is borrowed from the
American people who have bought the bonds and decided they are going to
invest in America's future as if somehow this was an all-out effort
like World War II was. Well, it may be because we are under
historically low interest rates. If interest rates should double or
triple--and they could easily do that, and they would not be in
historic places if they did that--we would watch a collapse on our cash
flow and a collapse in our budget.
Yet, this Nation has got its borders open and this Nation is bringing
in more and more legal immigrants and this Nation is not protecting its
borders from illegal immigration. They have turned the border patrol
into the welcome wagon. And now we are poised here wondering: Is our
leadership going to want to serve up an expansion of
H-2Bs as they did a year ago in the C.R. that came down?
I oppose that, Mr. Speaker. We can't be expanding legal immigration.
We don't know who the next President is going to be, but if it is
Donald Trump, he is not going to be for this.
So is this an effort to try to hustle something through that Barack
Obama will sign that the next President may not?
That is H-2Bs.
H-1Bs, for example, are being abused and they are being abused
grossly. We are seeing examples of sometimes hundreds of employees who
are being laid off that are charged with the responsibility of training
their foreign immigrant replacement that is coming in on an H-1B
because the employer can hire cheap labor out of places like India and
bring them into the United States and lay off more Americans after
those Americans train their incoming workers that will work for a
cheaper rate. This is the kind of country that we are building. So we
end up with more and more people in that 103 million to 104 million
people who are of working age who are simply not in the workforce while
all of that is going on. We are requiring companies like maybe Disney,
for example, to those employees on their way out of the door: We are
laying you off, but, first, do you want to train your employee, your
replacement that is coming in on an H-1B?
The H-1B program is abused. The H-2B is bringing in more of a surplus
of what we already have, a surplus of unskilled workers. The H-1B
program is being used and it is laying off American workers and green
card holders that are sitting there now doing jobs that Americans will
do. By the way, there isn't any job Americans won't do. They are doing
jobs by definition that Americans will do, being required to train
their replacements. I think that is wrong. I think it is a crime for a
company to require an employee to train their replacement worker while
their worker is being replaced by a visa program that is designed to
bring in high school people to establish a need that presumably exists
within our economy.

How could there be any need for employees in our economy when you
have over 100 million people that are of working age and simply not in
the workforce?
And then we get to the EB-5 program, Mr. Speaker, the EB-5 program,
the investors visa, that was set up a quarter of century or so ago and
said that if you have $1 million and you can create 10 jobs investing
and establishing an enterprise in America, we will give you a pass
coming into the United States. A quarter of a century ago, $1 million
was real money. Today it is still real money to a lot of people in
America, but not so much as it was then. If you are going into a
stressed area, an economically disadvantaged area, you can get by with
half a million dollars.
I am seeing programs like here comes--let me see--here comes 30--no,
say 29--29 Chinese each with half a million dollars that bundle that
money all together and maybe team up with one American. Now they have a
business enterprise. Now we have 29 new Americans--Chinese--it will be
the rich Chinese that are buying a path to citizenship here. Once they
do that, then they can begin that family reunification plan and begin
bringing their family back into the United States, too.
I am seeing enterprises where an investment in, let's say, a
commercial

[[Page H5318]]

building takes a pool of--it is a $30 million investment and it takes a
pool of 60 Chinese with half a million dollars each to build this
commercial building, they then become conceivably partners in that, and
they have a path into the United States. We are selling citizenship.
There is a price on it.
And on top of that, we have birth tourism, Mr. Speaker, birth tourism
that these numbers will be a little old, 3, 4, or 5 years old where--
and I am focusing on the Chinese at this point--a turnkey operation. If
you have $30,000 and you are a pregnant Chinese woman, you can fly to,
conceivably, California, most likely, and be put up there in housing
and have your baby. Your baby gets a birth certificate. You can fly
back to China. And when that baby becomes 18, then can begin the family
reunification program and the extended family and all can be hauled
into America--a $30,000 turnkey. But you have to wait for 18 years
before that baby is old enough.

{time} 2015

If you can't wait, don't want to wait, and you have got the money,
you can lay $500,000 down on the barrelhead, cash on the barrelhead,
and get a path into America, a green card and citizenship.
These programs are just wrong. The EB-5 program should be ended; it
should be sunset.
If we have to make concessions on H-2B, we don't need to make them.
We should not make immigration decisions in a CR. We ought not make
them in a treaty. We ought not make them in a CR, and we ought not make
them in a lameduck. Immigration decisions should be made subject to the
pen, the signature of the next President of the United States. They
need to have the considered judgment of the House of Representatives
and of the Senate, Mr. Speaker. I will push that we do only the minimum
in a lameduck, if we have to do anything at all.
I would promote that a continuing resolution could kick us into the
early part of next year, when we have a new Congress seated, when we
have a new President that is inaugurated and sworn into office, and
that the will of the American people can be reflected in the large
initiatives that would be advanced by the House of Representatives, by
the United States Senate, and by the next President that should reflect
the will of the people.
All of this, Mr. Speaker, is our charge and our responsibility
because we have taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution of
the United States of America. It is our duty, and we owe the people in
this country our best effort and our best judgment. Our best effort and
our best judgment includes: we listen to them; we gather all the
information that we can; we look into the crystal ball of the future as
far as we can; and, with good and clear conscience and good judgment,
we make those decisions that reflect their will that is within the
confines of the Constitution, that fit within free enterprise, then lay
down a foundation for America's destiny so that we can be ever-stronger
in the future and so that we can have an ascending destiny rather than
a descending destiny.
With all of that, Mr. Speaker, I thank you for your attention. I
yield back the balance of my time.

____________________