Congressional Record, Volume 163 Issue 162 (Tuesday, October 10, 2017)

[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 162 (Tuesday, October 10, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H7907-H7913]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

{time} 1945
THE RULE OF LAW

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2017, 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 here on the floor of the United States House of
Representatives and to discuss the topics that are on my mind.
Hopefully, you will consider these arguments as well, Mr. Speaker. I
know that people across this floor and across the country have a lot of
these same considerations in mind.
I want to come to the floor and address the DACA situation and take
you through a little bit of the history of the Deferred Action for
Childhood Arrivals which was implemented by Barack Obama in an
unconstitutional fashion. He knew it, and all of America knew it. We
know that Barack Obama, 22 times, said that he didn't have the
constitutional authority to implement a program that granted the
equivalent of amnesty--at least temporary amnesty--let alone a work
permit which he added to the program by executive edict, fiat, or
order. Instead, it requires legislation in order to enable such a
policy.
A President can't grant amnesty. A President can have prosecutorial
discretion. Prosecutorial discretion is a legal term for what the
Justice Department does when they are determining whether the resources
they have to prosecute crimes are adequate to enforce against the most
serious offenders. Barack Obama, President Obama, did implement some of
those relatively prudent policies with prosecutorial discretion. He
prioritized the most violent and evil criminals that he could identify,
at least by policy. He turned a lot of them loose too, by the way, onto
the streets of America in the course of all that. So it was a very
confusing policy that emerged without consistency under President
Obama. However, he exercised a legal prosecutorial discretion when they
looked at each case on an individual basis.
But I recall when his Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet
Napolitano, came before the Judiciary Committee to testify about this
program on DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals--or some
might say the deferred action for children of aliens. Her testimony and
the memos that came down, the Morton memos, set up four different
categories of people who would be granted a quasi-amnesty underneath
the President's policy.
There, Secretary Napolitano testified over and over again, and it
reflected the document itself which, seven times, referenced on an
individual basis only--on an individual basis only--seven times. I can
repeat it for the Record, Mr. Speaker, but that is what was going on,
which told me, as I listened to her testimony and had read the
documents prior to the testimony, that they knew what the law said.
They knew it required--that it required--an individual basis only and a
prioritization of applying the law to bring about the best effect of
the utilization of the resources of the Justice Department.
Yet Barack Obama, President Obama, around the country multiple times,
in the 1\1/2\ or 2 years building up to his implementation of the DACA
policy, multiple times he said that he didn't have the constitutional
authority to implement the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
Multiple times. It turned out to be at least 22 that we have a
videotape on.
The most recent that I recall was in a high school just outside of
the Capitol here in Washington, D.C., where he was speaking to a high
school group.
He said: You are smart students. You know that there is a separation
of powers. I don't have the authority to grant this legal status to
people who are here illegally even if their parents did bring them in
or even if they came in on their own under the age of 18. I don't have
the authority to do that. That is Congress that has the authority.
I should remind everyone, Mr. Speaker, that President Obama taught
constitutional law. He was an adjunct professor teaching constitutional
law at the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago has a good
reputation for understanding the Constitution, and Barack Obama
demonstrated that when he said: You are smart students, and you know
that we have three branches of government, a separation of powers.
Congress is Article I. They make the laws.
He said: I am Article II, the executive branch. My job is to enforce
the laws. And Article III is the judicial branch of government. They
interpret the laws.
So when the courts interpret the laws that Congress writes, the
executive's job is to carry them out. He knew he was violating the
separation of powers because he defined that to America multiple times.
But he did anyway.
I believe that President Obama made a calculation, a political
calculation. The political calculation, in my estimation, was that he
could get away with it. He wanted the policy, but Congress wouldn't
pass the policy because we have great respect for the rule of law, and
we don't want to reward lawbreakers. That happened in 1986, and we are
paying the price for that amnesty act of 1986. He couldn't get the
DREAMers legislation through Congress, so he calculated that he could
get away with implementing that as a policy even though he knew it was
unconstitutional.
So some of us went to work to initiate lawsuits to have the courts
strike down the executive edicts of Barack Obama that was the
foundation for DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
As it wandered through the courts. The lead in the primary case was
Chris Crane, the president of the ICE, Immigration Custom Enforcement,
union. His name was on the case first. It was Crane, et al. v.
Napolitano, et al. in the beginning. It went through the courts, and by
the time you follow it through a circuitous route, you find out that
Crane, et al. v. Napolitano, et al. got shifted off to the side. It was
declared to be a decision that had to do with the administrative rules
that if he had a grievance, he had to take that grievance through the
administrative rules process rather than through the courts to address
the policy itself. So it got parked off on a side rail, so to speak.

Then we saw a parallel case come forward, the DAPA case, the Deferred
Action on Parents of Americans was how the President described it. I
would have said parents of aliens myself. But that

[[Page H7908]]

case was found by Judge Andrew Hanen down in Texas to be
unconstitutional. It was a very similar and parallel case. The
President couldn't grant amnesty to parents of children who were here,
and the President couldn't grant amnesty to children who came here.
That same constitutional principle applies to both.
We know that Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, and others
with about 9, 10, or 11 other State attorneys general, had prepared to
file a suit to litigate the DACA case in parallel fashion that DAPA was
litigated successfully. They set a date of September 5 and said to the
President: If you don't end DACA by September 5, we are filing this
case.
So that is about the day and probably exactly the day that President
Trump came out with his decision on DACA.
I moved too fast forward, Mr. Speaker, and I need to back up to what
happened. Barack Obama, President Obama, finished out his term while
growing the DACA recipients by hundreds of thousands. By the time he
finished his term, that number was estimated to be over 700,000
recipients who get a little card that says: You get to stay in America
for 2 years, and there won't be any immigration law enforced against
you as long as you don't commit any of these serious crimes, felonies,
or a nasty combination of three different misdemeanors.
Then also he created out of thin air a work permit. Now, Congress
isn't going to grant work permits to illegal aliens, but Barack Obama
did. Congress isn't going to grant a ``come out of the shadows and stay
on the streets of America'' permit for DACA recipients, but President
Obama did. He went outside.
This Congress should have had its back up. I am frustrated. I am
frustrated with the lack of conviction on the part of the Members of
this Congress. Mr. Speaker, you stand in here once every 2 years, and
you take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United
States. That includes acknowledging that the Constitution is the
supreme law of the land. It includes the requirement that you
understand the difference between Article I, Article II, and Article
III.
Article I writes the laws--that is all of us here and over in the
Senate. We write all of the laws for the United States of America. That
is how the Constitution starts out: The legislative powers shall be
reserved for we here that are the Representatives in this Republic of
the American people.
We are as close to the people as anybody who is elected in the
Federal Government right here in this House of Representatives--435 of
us. That is what you take an oath to is that you are going to protect
the Constitution of the United States. You should at least be able to
defend Article I, the very authority that is the reason that you are
here serving in the first place, Mr. Speaker.
Then we have an obligation also to look over the shoulder of the
executive branch and have oversight over the function of the executive
branch and conduct hearings and bring witnesses and dig into the
methods and the effectiveness of the President of the United States,
our Chief Executive Officer, in carrying out the execution of our laws.
The President of the United States takes an oath to preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. But also it
requires that he takes care that the laws be faithfully executed. Now,
that means carry them out, not kill them off. It looks like he was
trying to kill off the Constitution rather than carry out the laws that
are described by this Article I, Congress.
By the way, some of the laws that President Obama defied and gave
orders to defy and to ignore were signed into law by Bill Clinton. So
the legitimacy of the United States Congress and our effectiveness has
been diminished by President Obama who went outside the bounds, the
lines that are drawn between legislative authority, executive
authority, and judicial authority.
Now, our Founding Fathers set that up to be a static relationship.
They expected and believed that the courts would be the weakest of the
three branches of government. They expected also that since you always
have ambitious people reaching for more power, they wanted to divide
that power, and they wanted to restrain the power.
That is why we have the system that we have today. That is why we
redistrict every decade. That is why they called for a census so we can
count all the people of America and set up congressional district so
that there is a proportional representation in each of the 435 seats
here offset by two Senators from every State so that we have a
geographical representation--a small population State with a big voice
or maybe a big population State with the same kind of voice--over in
the United States Senate.

But here in this Congress, in this House, everyone has roughly the
proportional same number of constituents, and your vote means the same
amount here that it does for each one of us, whatever your particular
role is.
So this was set up to have this balance of power. What our Founding
Fathers envisioned was each branch of government would jealously
protect the power vested in it through the Constitution. They didn't
imagine that there would be a Congress that would be in opposite--they
actually didn't imagine the two-party system, as I understand some of
the history that I read, but they didn't envision that there would be a
Republican majority in the House, a Republican majority in the Senate,
and a Democrat President who clearly, openly, and blatantly defined it
in advance and then violated the Constitution.
Our Founding Fathers never expected that this House of
Representatives would sit on its hands and simply let that Constitution
be violated for 2 years or longer just on DACA alone. But that
happened. I brought amendments to the floor time after time after time
that cut off the Federal funding that supported the unconstitutional
acts of the President of the United States. Those amendments passed off
the floor of the House of Representatives, and they were killed off
over in the Senate.

{time} 2000

Our Founding Fathers did not imagine that the Constitution could be
openly, defiantly, and blatantly violated and not have this Congress
hold together and shut off the funding. The power of the purse is the
power of bringing that President back in line and making him keep his
constitutional oath.
The will wasn't there.
As I went before a committee to present an amendment to get Rules
Committee consent to an amendment, I reminded everybody on that panel:
You all took an oath to support and defend the Constitution. If you
meant it, if you take your word seriously, if your oath to the
Constitution means anything, then not only do you have to open the door
so that my amendment comes to the floor and we have an opportunity to
debate it and force a vote on the floor of the House of
Representatives, not only is that the case, if you don't support this,
then your own oath to the Constitution is called into question.
By the way, Mr. Speaker, I just remind people that I chair the
Constitution and Civil Justice Subcommittee. There are a couple of
reasons for that--more than a couple--and I have defended this
Constitution every day that I have been here in this United States
Congress, and I take it seriously.
My father used to lecture the Constitution to me at the supper table.
He would bring out the Constitution, set it down at the table. He would
bring the Code of Iowa and set it down at the table. The Bible would be
on the end table. The Constitution and the Code of Iowa would be on the
kitchen table, and he would open it up and say: Now, we are going to
trace back for you how ``pick your law out of this book'' gets back to
the Constitution. Where is the authority for ``pick your law out of
this book?''
He would debate that and discuss it with me. That is where I learned
that I shouldn't ever utter an opinion that hasn't been thoroughly
thought out. He was the most effective critical thinker I ever met in
my life. But he steeped me in the great respect for the rule of law and
a great respect for the supreme law of the land, our Constitution, and
the structure that is guaranteed in the Constitution: a republican form
of government.
That, Mr. Speaker, means a representative form of government, where
the people select their Representatives and send them off to be their
voice here in this Congress.

[[Page H7909]]

It was a fantastic piece of wisdom and historical knowledge that put
this together in the fashion that it did. Now we have not just the
oldest constitution on record, but we have the most successful
constitution on record.
You can put this altogether. I believe that our Founding Fathers, as
they put this together, were inspired by God to write the Declaration,
to fight the war, to shape the Constitution. I think that our Founding
Fathers were moved around like men on a chessboard to bring about this
fantastic country that we have.
A big part of this fantastic country is the rule of law. When I write
``rule of law,'' for years, I capitalized the word ``rule.'' I
capitalized ``rule'' with an ``R'' and ``law'' with an ``L'' so that it
stands out on the page, so that it looks as important as it is when you
read the phrase: rule of law.
Rule of law is an essential component of American exceptionalism. It
is a pillar of American exceptionalism. If you think about what went
together to make this great country that we have, I would add up a
whole series of things.
I would trace our American exceptionalism back all the way to Mosaic
Law. The Mosaic Law was borrowed by the Greeks. The Greeks kind of
teased each other: Well, that isn't your original law. You borrowed
that from Moses.
Well, they had great philosophers and they added to the culture, but
the law came out of Moses from the Greeks to the Romans. The Romans set
up republican forms of government. They also had a very good and
healthy rule of law so that, at least in theory, they applied that to
everybody.
That rule of law spread across Western Europe by the Romans all the
way to Ireland. When the Dark Ages came--the Visigoths sacked Rome in
410 A.D. When that happened, historians, more or less, called that the
signal of the world falling into the Dark Ages.
For several hundred years, not much happened that was reported to us.
People lost the ability to think and reason in the fashion that they
had from among the Greeks and among the Romans.
Christianity had to get itself spread into all of that and then
emerge. It did emerge. It emerged sometime shortly before the end of
the first millennium. It became the Age of Enlightenment and the
industrial revolution.
We know, Mr. Speaker, these courses of history that have followed,
but I would just point out what happened in America.
In America, we are about ready to celebrate--we did it on Monday,
because it was a Federal holiday--Columbus Day on October 12, the day
after tomorrow. It happens to also be my wife's birthday, Mr. Speaker.
There are a couple of reasons we should celebrate Columbus Day.
He discovered the Western Hemisphere. He did so because he had a
vision that the Earth was round and not flat. He was able to convince
Ferdinand and Isabella that they should invest their capital in three
ships to send him across the seas in the hopes that they would circle
all the way around to India and maybe find a passage to come back. They
could trade and be an even richer nation than Spain was.
By the way, that was the same year that the Spanish threw the Moors
out. That is when the kingdom of Ferdinand and Queen Isabella was
established in a more stable fashion than it had been prior to that.
They found the money for Christopher Columbus. He discovered the
hemisphere. After that, we saw a lot of Spaniards emerge. They focused
down in the south, in the Central American region, in the Caribbean,
and settled in that area going south and north from the isthmus. They
brought with them Christianity. They were driven by the idea of
spreading Christianity around the world.

That went on through the 1500s, where they were settling and
developing in that part of the world, and conducting some atrocities as
well, Mr. Speaker--just to address what otherwise somebody would ask me
to yield and listen to. Yes, they had some atrocities. They began to
develop and bring Western civilization, though, to the New World.
The other end of this thing, in 1607, the first people who settled
and built a permanent settlement in the North American continent were
there at Jamestown, just down the road from us a little ways. It was
1607.
The Christians who landed there came for religious freedom. They sat
across there on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and they knelt at that
cross and prayed. The prayer was: Lord, thank You for sending us to
this new land. We hear Your call and we call out to You to guide us and
bless us. We will listen to the mission that You delivered to us, which
is to evangelize all people here and around the world and to settle
this continent to please You.
That is the summary of the prayer. If you read that prayer, you can
see and hear manifest destiny in that prayer. You can see religious
emancipation in that prayer as well. They knew why they were here.
A country that is formed by people who have powerful faith, as they
did, and then you have the pilgrims of Plymouth Rock in 1620, and the
rest of America was built out. As the colonists began to throw off the
yoke of King George, they still retained essential principles. The
essential principles would include those of the Magna Carta: the idea
that a man's home is his castle and that the law has to be applied
equally to everyone.
King John wasn't happy to sign that, by the way, but I think it came
down to: It is your head or your signature. Why don't you decide, King
John?
He decided his signature.
It has been a long time ago since the Magna Carta was signed, but it
laid a foundation for the pilgrims and the settlers who came to
America. They came here for religious freedom and to get away from the
yoke of the old country, Great Britain.
We should remember that the pilgrims who came in on the Mayflower
didn't sail out of jolly, old England. They sailed out of Leiden in the
Netherlands. Several years before, they sailed the Atlantic Ocean. They
pulled out and went to Leiden in the Netherlands. There, several
hundred of them lived around in the area, in a community, in various
different houses and apartment complexes that were there.
A lot of them went to church in Pieterskerk, which is the church in
the center. They staged themselves until they were ready to go across
the Atlantic Ocean to settle and land at Plymouth Rock in 1620.
These early settlers were driven by religious freedom. As they began
to build their farms, their shops, and trade and build ships along the
coast and our harbors, we reach the year of 1776. Then, of course, we
know the Declaration was on July 4 of that year. But there is another
seminal event, Mr. Speaker, and that is Adam Smith published his
treatise on free enterprise capitalism. The name of it is ``The Wealth
of Nations.''
No one has surpassed that document at this point. If you allow people
to keep their own goods, earn their own profits, invest that, he
explained with utter clarity how it will improve the productivity--they
will invest it in efficiency--and how the invisible hand, that is the
person who is buying the loaf of bread off the shelf, if that shelf is
empty, you put more bread on there and sell more. If you are selling
more than you can make, you raise the price a little. If somebody
thinks you are making too much money, they start up their bakery. They
get their bread on the shelf, and then it competes with each other. The
shelf is always full of bread and the consumers get a product that they
demand. That is the concept of free enterprise capitalism. I don't hear
anybody talking about that today.
We also developed here a meritocracy. If you have freedom, you can be
rewarded for merit. We don't talk about meritocracies anymore. We give
out participation trophies for kids. They don't really want them to be
winners or losers, just participants.
That is not the American way. The American way is: we get in, we
compete. There is bound to be a lot of losers because there is only one
winner at the end, but the losers all learn something and so does the
winner. If the winner gets complacent, if the winner gets lazy, then
the others who are competing are going to pass up that former winner,
and he is going to have to get a little sharper in his game. That makes
us all better.
When I look at my neighborhood, Mr. Speaker, I see that we have got
some counties in particular that have excellent competition between the
public

[[Page H7910]]

schools and parochial schools. They have a number of different churches
to choose from. They have a lot of banks that will loan money and
compete with each other to invest back in the communities so
entrepreneurs with ideas or families that need a bridge to the next
month or two can have something to bridge them through that.
This is the kind of competition that I see. It is not just sports
competition, but it is academic competition, it is competing for
students, it is competing for tuition dollars, it is competing for the
business investment dollars among the banks, it is churches competing
for the faith and competition to save the maximum number of souls, and
it is a very healthy environment.
If you take competition out, this goes flat and the vitality that
exists today and just the vibrant humming of the lives that I am
thinking of would be gone. It becomes complacent. I fear that is where
America is going: if we are afraid to compete, we are afraid to defend
our values.
Free enterprise capitalism. I think every college campus in the
country has some professor who will speak against it. Some of them have
many professors who speak against it. They are teaching against free
enterprise capitalism. They are teaching socialism. They are teaching
Marxism. They are rejecting conservatism.

By the way, I can't find a school in the country today that has an
effective course on Western civilization itself. That doesn't mean they
aren't out there. This is just me asking questions of people who should
know the answer to that. They are saying: I can't name one, unless it
would be Hillsdale College or maybe Liberty University.
I grew up in an era where every school had multiple courses on
Western civilization. Because we understand our culture, we respect it.
We know that, without Western civilization, the world would be so void
of the contributions that came from Western civilization.
Sometime a year ago last summer, I found myself on a panel at MSNBC,
Mr. Speaker. One of the panelists said: One could be an optimist and
hope that this is the last Republican convention where old White people
have anything to say about it.
There is no way to let a comment like that pass. So I pointed out:
Charlie, that is getting a little tired, this criticism of old White
people. I would challenge you to name another subgroup of people who
have contributed more.
Then the lady on the panel started fanning herself. She was getting
the vapors because I defended Western civilization. The host leaned
over, almost with a leer, hoping that I would take the bait, and she
said: More than White people.
And I said: More than Western civilization itself.
Western civilization is everywhere that Christianity has laid the
foundation for civilization itself; where Christianity has been the
footprint that has laid down the foundation of Western civilization
itself.

{time} 2015

And you don't have western civilization without Christianity; you
don't have a successful history without Christianity; and you don't
have people that abide by the moral laws so we don't have to have a lot
of legal laws. You can't not manage a people of 300 million people and
think you are going to get that done effectively if they fail to be a
moral people, a people that reach over and pay forward and take care of
their families and their friends and their neighbors.
I see it all over this country, Mr. Speaker. I have been to all 50
States in this country, met people in all 50 States. I have gotten
behind the steering wheel in 48 of the 50, and I see good people, great
people day after day after day that get out of bed, and all they want
to do is help somebody. And they don't care about credit; they don't
care if anybody ever notices it or sees it; they just want to help
somebody. That is what makes this country turn and work the way it
does.
If we wonder, we should take a look at the hurricanes that we have
suffered in the South and all across, from Texas, Louisiana, and now
Mississippi the other day, and Florida--Irma. American people, some
people fled out of the hurricane and some people come to help, and I
imagine there is a traffic jam there from time to time. But I am so
grateful that we have the American character that it is.
American character is a can-do spirit, people that--I know that I had
a banker visit me one day, and he showed me a picture. Actually, I met
him at the airport. He showed me a picture of their bank, and the water
was ready to run in the door of their bank. They had a flood that
flooded the whole downtown. He said: Don't send us anything. We can
handle this. It is only a flood.
I have been back to that community, and he was right. I am glad we
have people like that, these spirited Americans who are part of a
culture that is a can-do culture. And I don't want to lose it, Mr.
Speaker. I don't want to lose it by devaluing any of the pillars of
American exceptionalism.
Now, I will just list a few others.
Aside from the rule of law, there is freedom of speech, religion,
assembly, the press. There are all of those together in the First
Amendment, and they are put up there in the First Amendment because,
without them, without an open dialogue, without ideas having to compete
in the public square, then we don't test those ideas, and our Founding
Fathers understood that. They wanted debate to take place here on the
floor of the House of Representatives. They wanted debate to take place
in the Senate. They wanted these ideas to be tested.
For me, I have long believed that I should engage in debate; and if I
can't sustain my position in debate, I only have two choices: I can
either adopt the other guy's position, or I can go back and do my
homework and get that research done, up my game, so to speak, and be
prepared to defend myself for the next round. That is usually what
happens if I am not able to defend myself. But over the years, I pay a
little more attention to preparation than I used to when I was younger,
and so that is how it is, and the best ideas can be sorted forward.
Sitting in a meeting here, we can be discussing these ideas; somebody
brings up an idea, might get knocked down like that. I don't think the
public gets to see how many ideas are not successful in competing with
other ideas, but sometimes there is a power structure, too, that is
involved. What troubles me is when good ideas can't have a fair hearing
because others want their idea to come through to have their name on
it. That is a bit of a side issue, but I point that out.
So freedom of speech, religion, press, the right to peaceably
assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances, First
Amendment, all pillars of American exceptionalism.
Second, the right to keep and bear arms. We have had a lot of
discussion about the right to keep and bear arms, but our Founding
Fathers put that provision in the Bill of Rights, not so that we could
hunt or collect or target shoot or even defend ourselves. The Second
Amendment is in our Constitution so that we can defend ourselves from
tyranny, from a future tyrant who would come in; and if they
confiscated our weapons, then they can force anything upon the people
of this country.
History has proven that over and over again. The first thing a tyrant
does is go after your guns. The second thing they do is they go after
all the other rights, and pretty soon you are a subservient people.
Imagine North Korea or Cuba to get a model or an example of that. And
you can go on up the line: the protection against unreasonable search
and seizure, constitutional right.
I am naming pillars of American exceptionalism. Without them, we
would not be an exceptional nation. There is no pillar that we can pull
out that the edifice wouldn't tumble if we lost our First Amendment or
Second Amendment or Fourth Amendment.
Our Fifth Amendment, we have lost a part of it already with the Kelo
decision, Mr. Speaker. The Fifth Amendment says, ``nor shall private
property be taken for public use without just compensation.'' In the
Kelo decision, the Supreme Court ruled--I believe it was a 5-4
decision. And I know that Justice Scalia dissented, as did Justice
O'Connor in one of her last major dissents that she had written, but
the Supreme Court essentially struck out--I will say, de facto struck
out--the terms ``for public use'' from the Fifth Amendment.

[[Page H7911]]

They ruled that a locality could condemn private property and hand it
over to another private interest, provided they had a government
interest and the private interest being successful. And so they could
take, let's say, a senior lady's home, a whole tract of land, and force
that into the--and confiscate that and put it into the hands of a
private investor.
That decision is a horrible decision that weakens American
exceptionalism, weakens our property rights in America.
I had a private conversation with Justice Scalia, and he told me that
he expected the Kelo decision to be reversed one day. But to amend the
Fifth Amendment, effectively, by a decision in the Supreme Court, ``nor
shall private property be taken for public use without just
compensation,'' this private property was taken not even for public
use, but for private use.

Now, they didn't write in there ``nor shall private property be taken
for private use'' because that was a given that that would not be the
case. It is absolutely implied in the Fifth Amendment itself, but the
Supreme Court ruled the way they wanted to rule, and they have weakened
a pillar of American exceptionalism.
Trial by jury, no double jeopardy, you can go up the line. The powers
that are not enumerated in the Constitution are reserved, respectively,
for the States or the people. All of these are pillars of American
exceptionalism.
Free enterprise capitalism, another pillar of American
exceptionalism.
And, by the way, if you take the naturalization test, there is a
series of flashcards, laminated flashcards, and these flashcards, you
can hold them up and you can ask these aspiring citizens some
questions. And part of some of the questions are this: ``Who is the
father of our country?'' And then you flip that card over and it says:
``George Washington.''
``Who emancipated the slaves?''
``Abraham Lincoln.''
``What is the economic system of the United States of America?'' It
is on a flashcard: ``Free enterprise capitalism.''
That is under assault. Our religious values are under assault. Our
family values are under assault. The very definition of the
Constitution itself is under assault, and Barack Obama landed some
heavy blows to it while he was President of the United States.
So as we began bringing forward a nominee who could compete
effectively and hopefully be elected to the Oval Office as President of
the United States, 17 Presidential candidates came through my State.
Many of them I knew before they announced, and I think I can say that
all of them I knew by the time they got through with their campaigns.
Out of that all, hard fought, there was a platform that was hammered
out, and Donald Trump earned the nomination. His platform is awfully
close to the platform of Ted Cruz, who was the second to the last man
standing, and that platform is a platform that I appreciate, I respect,
and I worked for, Mr. Speaker.
I have watched as Presidential candidates can see themselves as
President of the United States. They may not have all of their
positions hammered out when they present themselves as candidates--in
fact, I don't know if any of them ever actually did have all their
positions hammered out when they presented themselves as candidates--
but they give their speeches. There is a crowd reaction. There is some
polling information that is there. They have a team, a team of
advisers. We all talk to them and we try to convince them of the
priorities that they should be bringing forward.
In the end, throughout all of this, by the time you get through the
national convention and confer the nomination on your Presidential
candidate, there is a platform to run on from June or July on through,
all the way to November 8 it turned out to be last year. Donald Trump's
platform was clear.
He said to me, one day, about the events that he has done for me--and
I am very much appreciative of President Trump and the times that he
has come in to help me politically, Mr. Speaker. He made that reference
in a discussion among several of my colleagues, and I said: Yes, you
helped me, and I appreciate it, Mr. President, but I market-tested your
immigration policy for 14 years, and you knew how Iowans were going to
respond and how most people across the country were going to respond
because I market-tested it.
And he did a great job with it, and he gave it more clarity than I
have given. But throughout all of that, it was: build the wall and
secure our borders and enforce domestic immigration law and reinforce
ICE and reinforce Border Patrol and CBP, put that all together, and the
birthright citizenship. Support English as the official language. These
are just some of the pieces along the way, and we have refined some of
this since then.
And also, it was the New IDEA Act, the act that denies deductibility
for wages and benefits paid to illegals, and let's see IRS come in and
do the enforcement through the normal audit process. So if the IRS came
in under the New IDEA Act and did a normal audit, they would run the
Social Security numbers and other pertinent information of employees
through E-Verify. If E-Verify confirmed that these employees could
legally work in the United States, the employer will get safe harbor
for having hired them; if they couldn't verify it, the employer gets 72
hours to cure, we see, 72 hours to correct the record.
But, if he is hiring illegals, then the IRS would say: All right. But
you can't deduct this $10,000, $20,000, $100,000 that you paid this
illegal, and so we are going to have to charge taxes on that because
that deduction is not a business expense; it is actually income
instead.
So the tax that would be applied to that $100,000, so to speak, plus
interest, plus penalty, and it would turn your $10-an-hour illegal into
about a $16-an-hour illegal. That is the essence of it.
And we require, also, that the IRS and the Social Security
Administration that is collecting Social Security deposits from workers
all across this country, sometimes multiple sources on the same Social
Security number--I mean, scores and scores of people on the same Social
Security number.
Social Security stopped sending out no-match letters some years ago
under the Obama administration. We put that all back together, and we
require the IRS communicate with and trade information with the Social
Security Administration to target and flag those false Social Security
numbers. And then also bring the Department of Homeland Security to the
table so that the IRS, Social Security Administration, and the
Department of Homeland Security are all working together to cooperate
to enforce immigration law and denying, then, the deductibility of the
employer.

The employer will have all kinds of incentives to clean up his
workforce. In fact, we have a 6-year statute of limitations that
compiles or accrues over the years. And so if you are sitting there
with a 6-year potential liability, you are going to want to be with a
clean workforce.
That is another piece that is a policy that the President has been
for, at least in the past. Now, things move on, but we are--we have an
immigration policy that became part of the platform for the President
of the United States, and in that policy and throughout, there are
multiple times in speeches he announced that he is going to end DACA.
He is going to end DACA, and we all expected that that would happen at
noon January 20 of this year when the President was inaugurated out
here on the west portico of the Capitol not very far from where I stand
right now. That would have been consistent with his campaign promise:
build the wall, and the unconstitutional DACA.
And so while he was signing executive orders--and I give him credit.
He went to the Oval Office, and at least he had a formal signing of
multiple executive orders that day, launched his Presidency with work
right on the spot instead of--he shortened up the parade for himself
and went to work for America. Hats off to President Trump for that, and
I support his entire agenda, and I am going to do my best to help him
keep his word on that entire agenda.
But we found out weeks later that DACA permits were still being
issued, and they were still being extended, and those permits also
included work permits.

[[Page H7912]]

{time} 2030

So President Obama's unconstitutional DACA--deferred action for
children of aliens--program was continued, and it continues actually to
this day under the Trump administration, completely in contradiction
with the campaign promises he made. I would say many more times than
Barack Obama made the statement that he didn't have the constitutional
authority.
Barack Obama violated the Constitution. President Trump has continued
that violation. And I am calling upon him to keep his campaign promise,
restore the respect for the rule of law; and DACA, by the executive
action, just sign it off and end it.
If we fail to do that--and I have worked for 31 years to restore the
respect for the rule of law with regard to immigration. In 1986, Ronald
Reagan signed the Amnesty Act. At least he was honest about it. He
called it the Amnesty Act.
I listened to what I could on the debate from the House and the
Senate. And I didn't believe it would pass either Chamber, but it
passed both Chambers, and it was messaged to President Reagan's desk. I
read the material and I thought that through. I thought: I don't have
to worry about this. Ronald Reagan will know that, if he signs the
Amnesty Act, it does great damage to the rule of law and it will take
years to restore it.
Now, the deal was to be that if you sign the Amnesty Act, we will
give you the reinforcement and will enforce the law from this point
forward, and illegal immigration will no longer be a problem in
America. That is what the deal was. They promised us that this Amnesty
Act in 1986 would be the last one ever, that they were going to then
set about establishing respect for the law.
Well, it seems to me that most everybody in this Congress has lost
any memory they may have had about what was going on in 1986. Things
haven't changed. There is nothing really new under the Sun. Human
nature is human nature. It is what it has been for 2,000 or more years.
But when there is a promise made that is ``first you give us this,
and then we will see to it that you get that,'' let me see, we had
Ronald Reagan's successor, Bush 41--George Herbert Walker Bush, a great
American as well--who took the promise and said: ``Read my lips: No new
taxes.'' He said that more than 22 times, too.
But when it got to the point where he was wanting to get some
spending cuts, the Democrats went to him and said: Do you know what? We
have to raise taxes if you are going to get spending cuts. We will
follow through on our part of the deal if you just sign the tax
increases that they pass.
So Bush 41, dealing honestly and straight up in believing that the
people he was dealing with had the level of integrity that he had,
signed the tax increase in exchange for the promise of the spending
cuts. And we all know the answer to that, Mr. Speaker. We know the
story. When you make a deal like that and you don't have the things on
the table that you are supposed to get for that deal, never comes
first. You don't see them.
So George H. W. Bush 41 signed the tax increase. He violated his
pledge of: ``Read my lips: No new taxes.'' Not only did he sign that
and not get the spending cuts, but they beat him over the head with
that at his reelection. He lost his reelection because of it, and we
ended up with Bill Clinton.
I think that lesson should be enough to make us all smart enough to
know not to make a deal like that. Ronald Reagan recanted and regretted
that he signed the Amnesty Act because of the damage he did to the rule
of law when he signed that. There were to be 1 million who would be
recipients of the Amnesty Act of 1986. It turned out to be 3 million
because, let's say, the estimates were wrong, but there was a lot of
fraud and corruption, and people slipped through because we didn't have
tight enough security on it.
So 3 million people got amnesty in 1986, and that was a path to
citizenship--a fairly short path to citizenship--as well. I have talked
to some of them, and they say: It was great for me.
And some of them think that amnesty for another group of people is
all right.
But if the law means nothing to someone and they violate the law, or
it is an obstruction and they slip around that law, or, as we have
today, some number that is 750,000 to 800,000 DACA recipients, they are
demanding that we grant them amnesty. Illegal aliens came here to the
Capitol, right out here on the grass, 2 weeks ago, on a Monday,
gathering around, demanding that Congress grant them amnesty.
Now, how do you go to a foreign country and be unlawfully present in
that country and you go protest to the government that they should
ignore their own laws because you have something that you want that you
slipped across the border to have access to?
And I do not buy the idea that most of these DACA recipients are
kids. The average age is 23. Some of them go all the way up to 37. Some
of them are bald. Many of them have gray in their beard. Some have a
build like mine. I don't think of them as kids when I look at them. Yet
there are some who came across the Rio Grande River on their mother's
arm. And, no, they didn't know and they didn't form intent.
But there are a whole lot of them who would qualify under this, who
did have intent and did know. And we know there are a whole lot of them
also--and I have witnessed this with my eyes and helped to collar some
of them as this goes on, and I have walked through the desert and seen
the burlap backpacks that they haul marijuana in into the United
States. And it is not only marijuana.
But some of these will qualify under DACA. Drug smugglers will
qualify.
And they say: We will do background checks.
Well, how do you do a background check on somebody who doesn't have a
legal existence in their home country?
If there is no record of them existing there, then they will say:
Well, we didn't find anything negative.
Of course not. The person didn't exist.
I know I had an individual I wanted on my Hispanic Advisory
Committee. A smart, personable, young businessman. I said: I would like
to have you sit down and I would like to hear your advice. I would like
to have your finger on the pulse because I want to know what is going
on in the minority communities, and I want to make sure that I am doing
a good job of representing them, too.

And he said: That is fine. I am interested.
And I said: But before I put you on this committee, I have to make
sure. So I want to see--and he said he was born in America--no. Excuse
me. He said he was born in Mexico, but he is a naturalized citizen.
And I said: Well, I would like to see your birth certificate.
And he said: Okay. I can get it for you.
And I said: How long will that take you?
And he said: Well, it will only take me a few days. What do you want
the birth certificate to say?
Now, that is a legal document, and you don't get to ask that question
if you have respect for the rule of law.
I just dropped him as a potential candidate on my advisory committee.
And a year or two later, I found out that ICE had come in, picked him
up, and deported him. I didn't know that he was illegal, even at that
time. I just didn't trust him any longer when he asked me that
question. So that is another individual that could have been, and may
still be, qualified to be a recipient.
Those that come across the border, I have gone down and looked into
the jail cells of the Border Patrol, and there were hundreds there at
the times that I have been there--hundreds of them. They are sorted
between children, women, men. And the men far outweigh the numbers of
women or children. Some of the numbers we looked at were 80 percent
men. Some of these men will present themselves as under 18--many of
them will.
And I have seen the cell with those minor males that are in there.
And some of those, supposedly, minor males have gray in their beard.
They would also qualify, or at least apply for. And if we didn't have a
way to do a background check on them--and many cases we don't--and they
give you a false name, what do you do after that if they had never been
printed? They would qualify.
And MS-13. We know that there have been a significant number of MS-13

[[Page H7913]]

gang members, who also are DACA recipients. That has been published
multiple times throughout the last couple of years.
So many people that we would want to get out of this country would be
granted a path of citizenship to stay in this country. That is why it
is so wrong. And it disrespects natural-born American citizens. It even
more disrespects naturalized American citizens, who came here the right
way, applied the right way, and spent maybe 7 years to get in a
position where they could take the naturalization test and then the
oath; which is a grand day, by the way, Mr. Speaker.
I look forward to every opportunity I have to speak to the
naturalization services that take place in the Federal building in
Sioux City, Iowa. And I always tell them: Remember this date that you
became an American citizen, and I want you to memorize it.
I hand them a Constitution with the date on it and my signature on
it. Hopefully, they will have the reverence for the Constitution that I
and many have developed as well.
But we have a vigor that comes into America. These are self-selected
people. If you have ten kids growing up in a family in Bangladesh or
Ireland or Italy, or wherever it might be, and one of them has the
inspiration to come to America, you are going to get the one who had
the greatest aspirations, the one with the strongest ambition, the one
with the deepest convictions in themselves. The most can-do sibling out
of 1, 5, 6, or 10 is the one that has the dream to come to America. So
they line up and come here legally. And they built this country for
over 200 years. We need to respect the rule of law that they came here
to embrace.
We have people who are leaving countries that don't have the rule of
law, that are corrupt. And when I go to Mexico, I see the problems down
there. Any country that I go to, I can put together a formula to put
that country into the First World from the Third World, except for
corruption.
How do you address the corruption?
Law doesn't mean law in Mexico and points south the way it does in
this country. If you get pulled over by the police, they might pull you
over because they might need an extra tip that week. You may not be
speeding, you might not have run a stop sign, they might just pull you
over, and you have to pay the ``bribe,'' ``mordida.'' That is
corruption itself. That doesn't happen in this country hardly ever
because we get their badge number and they are out of a job.
No country is free of corruption, but we have a healthy country with
a rule of law. It is a pillar of American exceptionalism. We cannot,
Mr. Speaker--and my message is to the President--we cannot reward
lawbreakers. It destroys the rule of law. Our hearts cannot be leading
ahead of our heads.
There is a DACA recipient that I would like to adopt, if that is what
it takes to keep that individual in America. I think that much of that
individual. I like this individual a lot and respect this individual a
lot, but I love the rule of law. I love the rule of law because,
without it, we descend into the Third World.
So this debate about, ``don't you have a heart, don't you know that
these are just 800,000 kids, and can't we just give them the confidence
of having a legal status in America,'' I say, no, not if you love the
country, you can't do that.
And it is not our doing. They either came here of their own volition,
formed the intent, or their parents did. The law is the law. We don't
tell the judge: Don't be putting this criminal in prison because he has
kids at home.
We don't worry about the separation of families when it comes to
enforcing the law against American citizens, but we worry about
enforcing the law against people who have intentional and willfully
divided themselves.
Now, what happens if we should grant amnesty to DACA recipients and
then deport their parents?
That splits up the family.
I say: Get right with the law, go to your home country and apply to
come in the legal way. By the way, when you arrive in your home
country, if you truly are characterized for DACA, you will have a free
American education that the American taxpayers pay for. You will be
bilingual. You will have familial connections in your community. You
will have a skill set that is there, a good educational set. You will
know what it looks like to live in a country where things work
generally right.
And if you think of the 7,000 Peace Corps workers that are working in
about 130 countries in the world and how much good they do, they go to
countries without speaking the language, they don't know where they are
going to land, they find a way to help out and contribute. People going
home is not being condemned to hell. People going home is like sending
out 750,000 or 800,000 fresh Peace Corps workers back to their home
countries.
What could be a greater economic development plan for Mexico,
Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua than for their best and
brightest to go home and build their countries while they apply to come
back to the United States?
That is the best solution we can have, Mr. Speaker. And we don't even
have a serious debate on that in here unless I bring it up.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address you here on the
floor of the House of Representatives this evening. I am hopeful that
we made a little bit of progress. I will continue to defend the rule of
law and the Constitution. I challenge my colleagues to do the same.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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