[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 179 (Friday, November 3, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H8481-H8487]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           TOPICS OF THE WEEK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Cheney). 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. Madam Speaker, it is my honor to be recognized to 
address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives, and I 
have a couple of topics that I intend to take up for the folks here 
watching and listening.
  Madam Speaker, I want to talk about the Heartbeat bill and I want to 
talk about the immigration bill and the tax policy all together. But 
there is an important issue before this Congress that I want to hear 
about before I take up these issues. And for that purpose, I would be 
happy to yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. DeSantis) to get this 
off of his heart.
  Mr. DeSANTIS. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Iowa for his 
leadership.
  Madam Speaker, it was really distressing to hear that Christ Church 
in Alexandria is removing a monument honoring its most famous 
parishioner, George Washington. It just made me think: What is this 
world coming to?
  Now, Christ Church is free to do as it pleases, but I think we are 
also free to criticize such an absurd course of action. If we can't 
honor the Father of our Country, then we truly are drowning in a sea of 
knee-jerk political correctness.
  George Washington was one of the few truly great men, an American 
original without whom we would not be standing here today as free 
people.
  I just want to tick off a few things before I yield back to my 
colleague from Iowa, but this is important.
  His stewardship during the American Revolution brought America a 
victory that we really had no right to win against the most powerful 
army on Earth.
  He only had one-third of the country behind the revolutionary cause, 
yet, against all odds, Washington led our country to victory. But then 
having won that military victory, what does Washington do?
  Throughout all of human history, when you win a military victory, 
that commanding general then seizes power for themselves and creates a 
society which is at that individual's beck and call.

                              {time}  1215

  That is not what George Washington did. He famously surrendered his 
sword to the Continental Congress and gave up power voluntarily because 
he wanted to establish a republic. Then he went home to Mount Vernon. 
When word of Washington's relinquishment of power reached King George 
III in England, he was flummoxed. He said: Well, if that is really 
true, then Washington is the greatest man in the world.
  It is unheard of that you would relinquish power in that way. 
Napoleon, on his deathbed--obviously, he had a lot of trials and 
tribulations--said: Look, they wanted me to be another Washington, and 
I just couldn't do it.
  Washington presided over the Federal Convention in 1787, which 
created our Constitution. Had Washington not been willing to lend his 
legitimacy to that proceeding and to the Constitution, I think it is 
pretty clear the Constitution would have never been ratified.
  He gets elected the first President of the United States unanimously. 
I think we really needed somebody with Washington's character and 
stature to be able to launch this new ship of state. If you had had 
anybody else--and there were many great Founding Fathers--you may not 
have been able to launch it successfully. He was that type of man.
  He was also somebody who has offered some of the most eloquent 
defenses of religious liberty in our country's history. I want to quote 
from a letter he wrote to the Hebrew congregation at Newport in 1790.
  He said: ``It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it 
were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the 
exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government 
of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to 
persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its 
protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on 
all occasions their effectual support.''
  Those are words that I think ring as true today and are as important 
today as they were in 1790.
  He established a two-term voluntary limit for President. People 
thought he could have been President for life, and, of course, he could 
have been. He didn't think that that was the right way to go. In fact, 
his entire career--from surrendering his sword at the Continental 
Congress to the two-term limit--was dedicated to the notion that in a 
republic--the government of laws and not of men--no one individual is 
indispensable. Yet he really was the exception to that rule. He was 
truly first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his 
countrymen.
  Mr. Speaker, I think, when you look back at history, you can 
obviously point to things that we don't necessarily like, and I think 
it is fair to air that. But to simply remove somebody's monument--
somebody who truly exhibited greatness--I think is a direction in this 
country that we do not want to go.
  So I just thought it was important to stand up here and to say that 
the Father of our Country is somebody who all Americans should hold in 
profound esteem because I don't think we would be sitting here on the 
floor of the House of Representatives in the most powerful country on 
Earth if Washington had not existed.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for 
his presentation and certainly support and endorse every word that I 
have heard here.
  I think about the leadership that George Washington provided, and a 
couple of things come to mind. One of them is, in my six trips into 
Egypt, I have met with President el-Sisi each of those times. He finds 
himself in a position in Egypt very similar to where Washington was in 
his first term, Madam Speaker, and that is now with a constitution that 
has a limitation of two 4-year terms for the President of Egypt. He was 
elected under that constitution, committed to accepting civilian 
leadership of the military--and that has been taking place--rebuilding 
the Christian churches in Egypt, establishing a parliament that 
reflects women as well as men, and religious diversity in allowing for 
a lot more religious freedom in Egypt. He has followed through on all 
of that.
  The real test will be if President el-Sisi is re-elected in Egypt 
when he is up for that re-election, if that should happen, and I hope 
it does, then I am also listening very closely to what would be his 
second inaugural address. In that second inaugural address, I am 
calling upon him to announce that the second term will be his last term 
in keeping with the standards that are set by George Washington. That 
is how you transition into a republican form of government that is a 
representative form of government, a government of we the people.
  I would also reflect, as I listened to Mr. DeSantis speak about the 
greatness of George Washington--and we understand that there has been, 
I think, an erroneous reading of history and a misinterpretation of 
history--that there is an effort to purge from and to revise our 
American history to conform with what contemporary values are. So now 
if we disparage and expunge from history the statues, the faces, the 
words, and the leadership of people--some of whom were slaveowners back 
in that time: Washington, Jefferson, and a list of others all the way 
up the line--then we fall prey to this weakness of wanting to judge our 
Founding Fathers and the people who went before us in each generation 
by the standards of this generation.
  Yet we admire people like William Wilberforce and John Adams who 
stood for years to defend the battle against slavery. They made the 
moral arguments against slavery. We had people who were against slavery 
who owned slaves. If you were in Virginia, and if you owed taxes, then 
you couldn't free

[[Page H8482]]

your slaves. That was true for some of our Founding Fathers who found 
themselves in that position. They couldn't legally free their slaves. 
They opposed slavery anyway, but they just couldn't pay their taxes. 
That is a piece of history that isn't often discussed, Madam Speaker.
  We need to judge Washington for what he did as the Father of our 
Country and judge him within the context of the values that they had 
then. We should remember that they tried to eliminate slavery in the 
founding documents of this country. They were not able to do so because 
they had enough representation in the South that prevented it.

  So we were, then, less than a century later swept into a giant Civil 
War which was still the bloodiest war that we have been involved in in 
our 200-plus years of our history, and that was a bloody war of brother 
fighting brother, North versus South. 600,000 Americans--mostly White, 
male Christians--went to their graves to put an end to slavery. That is 
how huge that contest was.
  That argument needed to be won here. It was debated here in the U.S. 
House of Representatives and in the United States Senate. It went 
through the Supreme Court.
  I listened to the testimony of Star Parker who testified this past 
Wednesday morning on the Heartbeat Bill, H.R. 490. Star Parker is a 
magnificent witness. I count her as a real leader in this country and a 
good friend. She is also an African American who has had several 
abortions before she came to the conviction that she understood that 
life begins at the moment of conception and that human life is sacred 
in all of its forms. So now her voice is being heard--heard in this 
Congress and heard across the land.
  As an African American, she compared slavery to the abortion issue 
today. I look back in the slavery era, the first half of the 19th 
century building up to the Civil War, and I ask myself, in looking back 
at my heritage and my predecessors and the things that they believed in 
and passed on down to me: Where would I have been? Where would I have 
been, Madam Speaker, if I had been, say, born in 1800?
  Would I have had enough vision to step forward and oppose slavery in 
the same fashion that I oppose abortion today? I would hope I would 
have. I pray I would have. I would think that those same principles 
would apply as Star Parker drew that comparison and that juxtaposition 
in her testimony last Wednesday before the Constitution and Civil 
Justice Subcommittee.
  Yet here we are today with a similar debate and a similar argument 
before us. Slavery was morally wrong. Today, I have never in my 
lifetime met someone who defended slavery, but there were many of them 
who defended slavery right here where I stand, Madam Speaker, and 
across the rotunda in the United States Senate where they stand. They 
defended it because it was the legacy of the culture and the 
civilization of their times that was included within every civilization 
throughout the world. Every nation had to figure out how to throw off 
that yoke of slavery and give all creatures created in God's image an 
equal opportunity and equal freedom. It cost a lot of blood to put an 
end to that--600,000 lives.
  As a matter of fact, not that long ago, I was standing in the Lincoln 
Memorial. They call it the temple area there around where the huge 
statue of Lincoln is seated in his chair up in the Lincoln Memorial. 
Every time I have walked up those steps, I have walked over to 
Lincoln's left--it is my right as I face him--I read Lincoln's second 
inaugural address. I don't have the text of it precisely in front of 
me, but I will get the gist of it, Madam Speaker.
  There in his second inaugural address--remember, the Civil War is not 
over yet, so we don't know how it is going to end. He said:

       Until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid 
     by another drawn with the sword, as was said, so it is 
     written that the Word of the Lord is true and righteous 
     altogether.

  Now, I stood there some time back and read that. Sometimes you can 
read things four, five, six, ten, or twenty times before you see the 
wisdom in it, but it hit me as I stood there, a drop of blood drawn 
with the lash shall be paid by a drop of blood drawn by the sword; how 
many Americans died in the Civil War? 600,000. Lincoln could not have 
known that.
  I thought I knew how many Black Africans had been brought to what is 
now the United States to be slaves and to be enslaved here; I thought I 
knew that number. I looked it up. It is without much contention, there 
is a consensus number out there, Madam Speaker--600,000. 600,000 
Americans died to put an end to slavery, and 600,000 Africans were 
brought to what is now America to be slaves.
  Lincoln could not have known either number. He could not have known 
those killed in action and those who died in the Civil War. He could 
not have known that 600,000. He could not have known how many were 
brought to what is now America to be slaves. A drop of blood drawn with 
the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, so it is 
written, the Word of the Lord is true and right and just altogether.
  It turns out to be 600,000 versus 600,000. Those are prophetic words 
that came from the mouth of Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural 
address, Madam Speaker. It is chilling to think about how prescient 
they were. It is impossible for Lincoln to have known, but the instinct 
that the hand of God that guided him, the guidance of providence that 
put those words in his mouth that day, turned out to be true this day.
  I think of all that this Nation went through to put an end to slavery 
and all that we are going through to put an end to abortion. I look at 
the cases of Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and a Supreme Court that one 
might say was leaning very strongly to it as an activist court and the 
string of decisions that brought them to Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.
  I would take us back through that, Madam Speaker. In about--I have 
got to guess at the years here again--about 1964 or 1965, there was a 
case that came before the Supreme Court called Griswold v. Connecticut. 
There, the State of Connecticut, being a strong Catholic State, had 
outlawed contraceptives in Connecticut because that was also the 
position of the Catholic Church. There was a couple that decided to sue 
to be able to purchase contraceptives. So it made its way all the way 
to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court looked into it and decided, 
well, there is a right to privacy, and the State of Connecticut has no 
business interfering with the constitutional right to privacy that a 
married couple has in Connecticut to purchase contraceptives.

  So they created this new right--this right to privacy--that didn't 
exist in the Constitution. It still doesn't exist in the Constitution. 
Now there are those who will argue that it exists in precedent and 
exists in case law, and, according to stare decisis--respect for 
previous decisions--it cannot be changed. We are stuck with this idea 
that the Constitution includes a right to privacy, a right to privacy 
that is applied to married couples who wanted to buy contraceptives in 
the State of Connecticut.
  That was when the Supreme Court reached well beyond their bounds, and 
they needed to stay within the guidelines of the Constitution itself, 
hence this right to privacy.
  Then there was the Eisenstadt case where the decision was that 
unmarried people had the same right to privacy as married people. So 
they extended that right to privacy to unmarried people as well, and 
now everybody could buy contraceptives everywhere at any time, and many 
other things were included underneath that definition.
  So Roe v. Wade came together, and they decided that, yes, these 
rights existed, this right to privacy could be extrapolated into a 
right to abortion because this was all written in the emanations and 
the penumbras that are up there. To explain that, emanations and 
penumbras are like this: they are in the shadows of. So if you look up 
at the clouds during, let's say, a semi-cloudy day, then you will see 
that little shadow along the edge of the cloud. You can't quite see the 
other side of the cloud, but you see that fringe along the edge.

                              {time}  1230

  Someplace in there, those black-robed jurists could see 
constitutional rights that they couldn't actually find in the text of 
the Constitution, that they couldn't quite find in Griswold,

[[Page H8483]]

that they couldn't quite find in Eisenstadt, but they wrote it into Roe 
v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton and decided: Okay, we are going to guarantee 
this constitutional right to have an abortion as long as the baby is 
not viable.
  The viability, of course, is a pretty mushy definition. The Court has 
thrown some of our pro-life legislation back at us because they thought 
our definitions were a little too mushy, but they write some mushy ones 
themselves.
  Then you have the Doe v. Bolton case settled at the same time, 
simultaneous with Roe v. Wade. There they write in the exceptions, 
which would be anything that might affect the life or health of the 
mother. The health of the mother can be determined to be the physical 
health, the mental health, or even the familial health of the mother. 
So what it means is any reason whatsoever.
  When you couple those two cases together--and if you respect the 
Supreme Court decisions, which America did--it said abortion on demand 
for any reason whatsoever, whether it is a physical reason, whether it 
is a mental health reason, or whether it is a family issue, anything 
that is an inconvenience. We ended up with abortion as birth control 
and abortion on demand for everyone.
  At that time, the Court could not have seen that we would be having 
partial-birth abortions conducted across this country in significant 
numbers to the 24th week and beyond.
  That is such a ghastly process. This Congress did deal with that 
through legislation and wrote legislation to ban partial-birth 
abortion. It was defined. It was outlawed by this Congress. It was 
litigated all the way to the Supreme Court, as we would know.
  When I arrived here, the Supreme Court had found that it was 
unconstitutional for Congress to ban this ghastly process of partial-
birth abortion, of bringing a baby to birth through breach, feet first, 
and one inch before that baby could fill its lungs full of American air 
and scream for its own mercy. They would kill the baby while it 
struggled and squirmed, and they would collapse the skull by 
withdrawing from it the contents. That is the ghastly process. It went 
on over and over again.
  The Court found it to be unconstitutional for Congress to ban--or any 
State, for that matter--that ghastly process. So we went back to work 
here in this Congress in the Judiciary Committee.
  Under the leadership especially of Steve Chabot of Ohio, we held 
hearing after hearing after hearing, and we established and first wrote 
a definition for partial-birth abortion that was precise so that the 
Court couldn't argue that it was too mushy, too vague, not precise 
enough. We wrote a precise definition.
  Then we held hearings that determined that a partial-birth abortion 
is never medically necessary to save the life of the mother. We 
outlawed partial-birth abortion again. Then it went through the 
litigation process.
  Our statute that banned partial-birth abortion, that came from we the 
people, was shot down in three circuits around the country but appealed 
to the Supreme Court, and it finally survived on that final analysis of 
the Supreme Court. Even they couldn't bear the thought of what was 
going on in this country. It was too stark. It was too ghastly. It was 
too gruesome.
  So here we are today, with this House of Representatives having 
passed legislation that bans abortion if the baby can feel pain at 20 
weeks. It was a true and right and just thing for this Congress, this 
House of Representatives to do altogether, Madam Speaker.
  We have sent that bill over to the United States Senate. The bill has 
a little bit of vagueness in it because we are saying 20 weeks. We 
would like to precisely identify the exact time that the baby can feel 
pain. But it screams at our conscience that a baby who is struggling 
for its own survival can be killed in the womb. If it could fill its 
own lungs, it would scream for its own mercy. It fights to get away 
from the abortionist's tools.
  That is the bill that bans that, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child 
Protection Act, which we sent to the United States Senate and now sits 
on Mitch McConnell's desk and probably doesn't move unless there is a 
Democrat who also agrees with us over in the House of Representatives.
  It was bipartisan here in the House of Representatives, and I thank 
the Democrats who have joined us in the pro-life movement; but it has 
diminished significantly among Democrats in my time here, Madam 
Speaker.
  I won't use the name of the Member. I will just say that a Democratic 
Member who is a pro-life Member whom I have served with for roughly a 
decade, but I went to him and said: Can you sign onto my Heartbeat 
bill, H.R. 490? Are you ready to do that?
  He said: Not yet.
  That left the door open for: Well, maybe.
  I said: How many Democrats do you think we can get to sign onto the 
Heartbeat bill that bans abortion from the time a heartbeat can be 
detected, the baby is protected?
  He said, without hesitation: Two. We can get two--which meant, I 
think, him and one other.
  I said: How many pro-life votes were there in the House of 
Representatives among Democrats when you came here roughly 10 years 
ago, how many pro-life votes among Democrats?
  His answer, without hesitation, was 60. Sixty Democrats would put up 
a pro-life vote. Ten years later, today, two, maybe three. I hope and 
pray it is more than that. I will work for all the votes that we can 
get.
  But that, I think, tells us something about how polarized the 
political arena here is in this House of Representatives, in the United 
States Senate, and explains why Tom Perez, head of the DNC, can say 
there is no room for pro-life people in the Democratic Party. If you 
can't be a Republican, then transform the Democratic Party so we can 
save the lives of these innocent unborn.

  That is what the Heartbeat bill is, H.R. 490, the Heartbeat 
Protection Act, which we held a hearing on last Wednesday. The 
testimony, I think, was stellar that came out of the panelists who were 
there.
  David Forte delivered the constitutional arguments even more so in 
the Q&A than he did so in his presentation.
  We heard from Dr. Kathi Aultman, who has been an abortionist and 
committed an uncounted number of abortions, and she has also had an 
abortion herself. She has delivered a baby girl vaginally herself. So 
she is a mother and an abortionist.
  She said in her testimony: I realize that when I meet the young 
people whom I delivered--an OB/GYN who had a dual purpose of bringing 
babies forth in the world, protecting their lives with all the medical 
technology and skill set that can be developed on this hand, but over 
on this hand, kill them, and the dichotomy of that hit her after she 
delivered her own daughter.
  She went back to work and her hands were still doing what they had 
been doing, but her conscience screamed at her, and she had to put the 
tools down and stop this ghastly practice of abortion. Now she has 
committed a significant portion of her life to putting an end to this.
  But she said she realized, when she met young people, the joy that 
she had helped bring them into the world if she delivered them; but at 
the same time, she understood that there were a lot of young people who 
are not here because she aborted them. So it always tore at her 
conscience that way.
  Another thing that I had not heard from anyone in this movement in 
the past, in all of our discussions, was this. She said: If I was going 
to abort the baby, I always referred to it, when I spoke with the 
mother, as a fetus. But if we were going to deliver the baby and give 
this baby a chance at life, I always referred to it as a baby.
  I think that explains to us the difference in the disagreements we 
have here in the House of Representatives. Almost universally, over on 
this side, people support abortion in every form they can, with those 
exceptions whom I tip my hat to and those who will be converted, 
hopefully, by their conscience over time like Cathy Aultman was.
  They say ``fetus''; we say ``baby.'' God knows it is a baby. God 
knows that it is a unique human being from the moment of conception. 
What we can't yet do, medically, is precisely tell the mother the 
moment of conception. We don't have a medical way to determine that 
moment, or I would be focusing our legislation on that moment. But what 
we do have now, with ultrasound,

[[Page H8484]]

is the ability to identify that heartbeat in that baby.
  The legislation in H.R. 490, the Heartbeat Protection Act, says this. 
We require the would-be abortionist to check for a heartbeat before 
that abortionist would continue with an abortion. They have to maintain 
records on this: check for a heartbeat, and then if a heartbeat can be 
detected, the baby is protected. We know that is life. If an 
abortionist stops that beating heart, we know that has ended the life 
of that innocent baby.
  As we brought this legislation forward, we found out that there is 
something about that heartbeat that speaks to the conscience and the 
hearts of America, Madam Speaker. We know that billboard after 
billboard--there must be thousands of them around America, many of them 
put up by the Knights of Columbus--saying: Abortion stops a beating 
heart.
  When we see that billboard, maybe it only registers a little bit, but 
many of us have seen it hundreds and hundreds of times, and we 
associate the heartbeat with life. If there is a beating heart, we know 
there is life. If you stop that beating heart, you know that you ended 
a human life.
  On the argument that a baby isn't viable, in the Roe v. Wade era back 
in 1973, the Supreme Court said maybe that is at 28 weeks. But now we 
have babies that survive at 22 weeks. That is a month and a half less 
than before.
  I recall a circumstance in 1992 where I had an individual who was 
part of the administrative oversight on a construction project that I 
was on that fall. He was gone for 2 weeks, and I knew why. His wife had 
gone into labor and delivered a little baby boy prematurely.
  This little baby boy was in the early part of 20-some weeks. And I am 
not certain, but I am just guessing earlier than 24 weeks, but 
certainly not 28.
  They went to the city and stayed in that hospital with this little 
boy for 2 weeks and didn't leave. They stayed at his side and prayed 
for him and they did all they could. He was hooked up to all kinds of 
tubes.
  When he came back to me after 2 weeks, he was relatively assured that 
this little boy would survive. He walked up to me and handed me a cigar 
that said, ``It's a boy.'' He wasn't handing out those cigars the first 
2 weeks because he wasn't confident this little boy was going to live.
  But he handed me that cigar--and I knew where he stood politically--
and I said to him: We would do anything to save the life of any little 
baby. Any little boy or girl, we would do anything to save their life. 
There is no amount of expense we wouldn't go to. There is no amount of 
medical effort we wouldn't go to to save the life of a baby, no matter 
how small their chance was to survive. We will do everything. We will 
spend $100,000, $200,000, $500,000 to save that innocent little life. 
We do everything we can do with all the medical technology that we 
have. We spare no effort from doctors or nurses. We will spare no 
effort on our knees praying to God this little baby can be born and 
grow into a full human being.
  He agreed with me 100 percent. He said: I agree with you, and I am so 
glad that my little boy looks like he is going to be okay.
  I said: Then are you going to go into the polls of next month--this 
is October of 1992--and vote for the man for President who will appoint 
Justices to the Supreme Court who are going to continue to enable 
abortion in America?

  He looked at me and called me a name that we can refer to by the 
first letter of those three words, but he said it in such a way that it 
wasn't insulting to me. It said instead: You have drilled a point home.
  After these 30-some years, I ran into him in the grocery store here 
several Sundays ago after mass. We are both Catholic. I hadn't talked 
to him in a long time. I asked him how that little boy was doing, and 
he told me.
  He said: You straightened me out back then, didn't you? Do you 
remember that?
  He asked me if I remembered it. Of course I did. I said: Yes, I 
remembered it, but I didn't want to bring it up. I did want to know how 
he is.
  So that is a composite of the conscience of the Nation, Madam 
Speaker. I think it tells us that we all haven't come to the 
realization of the immorality of abortion yet, but America came to the 
realization of the immorality of slavery. We will get to the 
realization of the immorality of abortion. We are making progress.
  Looking at this legislation, H.R. 490, we have a number of 69 percent 
of Americans supporting protecting any baby with a heartbeat.

                              {time}  1245

  That is, 55 percent of Democrats support protecting a baby with a 
heartbeat, and this legislation would save the lives of at least 90 
percent of the babies that are otherwise being aborted.
  So I want to thank all the people who have done so much work on this 
that brought us to this point. We are at 170 cosponsors. We have had a 
hearing. Next step, hopefully, is to get the markup before the 
Judiciary Committee. My goal is to bring the Heartbeat bill to this 
floor of the House of Representatives January 19 of 2018. That is the 
date of the March for Life here in this town, and that is the date we 
need to bring that legislation to this floor. If we can do so and send 
it over to the Senate, if the Senate can take it up and pass it, I am 
confident our President will sign it, and we can begin to put an end to 
this carnage.
  To speak of the magnitude of the carnage of abortion: 60 million 
babies aborted since 1973 in Roe v. Wade.
  I had a lady, who is a Democrat, say to me just over here a couple of 
months ago: Steve, why are you so worried about this? We have abortions 
down to where they are almost, or maybe even are below, a million a 
year?
  Only a million abortions a year? How can anyone quantify that and say 
that is anything other than a bloody carnage and a loss of human 
potential and a denial of the gifts from God?
  Sixty million babies aborted since Roe v. Wade in 1973. And how many 
babies would be born to those who were aborted? How many of those 
little girls that were aborted in the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, and 
even in the early part of this millennia--for a small part, the 
earliest part of this millennia--how many of those little girls would 
be having babies today? And how many would they have?
  Just a back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that there are 
another 60 million babies that are missing because of the 60 million 
that have been aborted. And here we are, America. I am listening to 
people argue, and they will say: Well, you know there is work that 
Americans won't do, and we have a shortage of labor, so we have to go 
to some other culture, some other civilization and bring in hundreds of 
thousands or millions of people to do work that Americans won't do.
  I wonder, if you would ask those innocent little voices that are in 
Heaven today, if they wouldn't mind laying a few bricks or maybe 
cutting some grass or doing a little bit of landscaping around or maybe 
cutting a little bit of meat. These are all things I do, by the way, 
even today, if I get the chance. Ask them if they wouldn't have liked 
to have had a chance at the right to life, if they wouldn't have liked 
to have an opportunity to live, to love, to breathe air, to laugh, to 
have their own children, to enjoy the greatest country the world has 
ever seen, and it is all denied to them.
  It is denied to 60 million of them, and it is denied to perhaps 
another 60 million who didn't even have the chance to be aborted 
because their future parents were killed in the womb. So 60 million 
plus 60 million is 120 million missing in this country today. No wonder 
we have a labor shortage.
  Oh, here is another reason why we have a labor shortage, Madam 
Speaker. If you look at the numbers of--according to the Department of 
Labor statistics in their website, there are 94\1/2\ million Americans 
who are simply not in the workforce. They are old enough to work. They 
are not in the workforce, 94\1/2\ million.
  If you add to that the 7-plus million who are on unemployment today, 
you get up to right at 102 million Americans who potentially could be 
in the workforce, they are not looking for work or they are on 
unemployment, and I am listening to employers scream for more labor, 
more labor, more labor.
  By the way, they are screaming for more unskilled labor. I look on 
that same website, and I see--where are the highest levels of 
unemployment?

[[Page H8485]]

  In the lowest skills we have. We don't have a shortage of low-skilled 
laborers. We have a shortage of employers who want to pay a competitive 
wage.
  So call it 102 million Americans that could be in this workforce. 
Then we took that number and we started chopping it down.
  How about those that are too old?
  We can't ask them to work, so dial that down a little bit.
  And then how about those that are physically disabled?
  They can't work, so dial that down.
  What would it be if we were going to mobilize our workforce on the 
levels of, say, World War II, where at the end of World War II, we had 
the lowest unemployment in history? And often this is misquoted and 
people want to point to some other number. 1.2 percent was our 
unemployment rating at the end of the Second World War.
  Women went to work. My mother did. Of course, my father was deployed. 
But if we mobilized on that level, how many would be available to go 
into this workforce?
  We think about 82 million Americans are sitting there today. Some of 
them on a couch in their front lawn, some of them are riding around in 
their Mercedes, but a lot of them could be going to work.
  In fact, everybody I mentioned so far should be at work contributing 
to our GDP instead of just consuming. Eighty-two million or so out 
there out of the 102 million that are not in the workforce, and they 
say: Well, we have to bring in hundreds of thousands or millions or 
tens of millions of people to do this work in America.
  Around our family, Marilyn and I raised three sons. I started a 
business in 1975. I started a family in 1975. Those three sons got an 
allowance. They got paid for the work they did. In addition, the 
allowance was younger, paid for the work they did came a little later. 
But of those three sons, they all knew what they had to do.
  Now, if one of those three sons--by the way, I am talking about one-
third of our workforce is not in the workforce. They are simply not in 
the workforce. But one-third of the people who could be are sitting 
back on the sidelines.
  So let's just say, around our operation, there is work that has to be 
done. You got to scoop the tracks out of the dozer. Somebody has got to 
change their oil. Somebody has got to mow the lawn. Somebody has got to 
take care of the other chores. Somebody has got to trim the trees, all 
those things that need to be done. They all got their assignments and 
they did them.
  But if one of those sons said, ``Well, I am not working. I am going 
to sit on the couch and watch the ball game or sit on the porch and 
watch the rest of you work. I want to eat with the rest of the family. 
I want to put my feet under the table. I want good food. I want my 
clothes all clean. I want them ironed. I want them ready to go. 
Somebody else can clean my room, too, but I still want my allowance,'' 
you all know, if you grew up in the family, how long that would last.
  If one of the siblings, a brother or a sister, said, ``I am not doing 
my work, but give me my allowance, and I still want the keys to the 
car,'' it wouldn't last one day.
  In our house, it goes completely the other way. It is: ``Oh, you 
think that? Now you get all the work, and they get your allowance until 
you change your mind.''
  We fixed that really quick in my household, and I think it would be 
fixed a number of different ways, but really quickly in every household 
in America. We don't tolerate a slacker sitting there taking up a room 
in the house that is demanding all the benefits of the work of the rest 
of the family.
  But we have got 102 million Americans sitting there. Many of them are 
being bribed not to work by welfare checks. We have over 70 different 
means-tested Federal welfare programs in the United States. Over 70. 
Some say 87 of them. No one has even memorized the list. So that should 
tell you that no one understands how they interrelate with each other. 
No one understands whether there are disincentives or incentives for 
people to do the right thing and step forward and carry their share of 
the load.
  So why wouldn't we dial the welfare down in America until the labor 
force magically shows up in the workplace?
  That is what happened with John Smith. His experiment early on in 
America worked exactly like that. He said that there were--of all the 
royalty that was there, they thought, because they had blue blood--and 
that is, of course, the expression of royalty--that they didn't have to 
work and those commoners needed to work for the rest of time.
  He said: I am not going to burn up the labor of these common people 
here so that a bunch of royalty can sit around with their feet up.
  That is a summarization of the statement.
  Everybody had to work, and they had the ``no work, no eat'' policy. 
Well, when you get to that policy, a lot of people decide that working 
is better than going hungry, but it doesn't mean we don't take care of 
the people who are needy. It doesn't mean we eliminate these programs. 
It just means, as I said, maybe we need 10 million more American 
workers. We can dial this welfare system down, ratchet it down.
  It is now a hammock. It used to be a safety net, and this Congress 
with special interests has cranked up the level of the safety net to 
the level of the hammock, and now 102 million Americans, a good share 
of them, are in that hammock.
  We just crank it back down. We could dial it down in proportion to 
the amount of labor that we need. Everybody that gets off the hammock 
and goes to work becomes a contributor. They grow our GDP--our gross 
domestic product--and they pay taxes and they take themselves off the 
welfare rolls.
  So why wouldn't you do the twofer, instead of go to some other 
country and bring people here to do the work who don't speak our 
language, who don't understand our culture, and who don't embrace the 
American civilization in many cases, and who run down people in bike 
paths in New York, and who attack us at Fort Hood--the list goes on and 
on--Orlando, Florida; San Bernardino, on and on, the people who hate 
us?
  As Louie Gohmert often says, ``We don't have to pay people to hate 
us. They will hate us for free.'' He was talking about foreign policy. 
We have got people on welfare who hate us. We don't have to pay them 
either. We need more people working. We need more people back in the 
rolls.
  So I want to applaud Kevin Brady, the chairman of the Ways and Means 
Committee, and I thank him for the very diligent work that he has done 
in order to bring this tax policy as far as it is today, and to roll it 
out with the coordination that they have, with the support from the 
leadership within the House, the Senate, and the White House, and that 
message has been clear.
  Also, Kevin McCarthy, our majority leader, stood here today and 
defended it and explained it, I think, very well. He is an articulate 
voice for our entire conference and he does an excellent job, along 
with our Speaker and our whip.
  By the way, our whip, Steve Scalise, maybe he doesn't have all of his 
moves back yet, but his heart and his head are back as strong as ever. 
His voice is as strong as ever. Steve Scalise has his mojo back, Madam 
Speaker, and I am awfully glad to see that. We need that. It is a gift 
to us to have him.
  So what do we do with this need for labor?
  I asked the question a little earlier in a tax conference downstairs: 
Of this tax policy, the bill now that was dropped yesterday, does it 
allow an employer to deduct as a business expense the wages and 
benefits that are paid to illegals who are in his employment?
  The answer that I got was: We didn't address that in the bill, so 
whatever it is today is what it is.
  What it is today, Madam Speaker, is every employer--let me put it 
this way: I will say virtually every employer who deducts the wages 
that are paid of them is often--if they have illegals working for them, 
they go on the schedule C, like any other employer.
  So let's just say, if there is an employer there who pays $1 million 
out to illegals, that shows up in his schedule C as a business expense, 
wages. And those wages then are deducted as a business expense. Of 
course, you don't pay taxes on business expenses.

[[Page H8486]]

  I don't pay taxes on fuel. I don't pay taxes on parts. I don't pay 
taxes on the wages our company pays in 42 years in the construction 
business or on the benefit packages that we have there. And--but--so 
employers are deducting wages and benefits paid to illegals, and that 
is supposed to be against the law.
  But they don't address that in this tax bill. And the way the IRS has 
addressed it is that--it says this--according to section 162(e) of the 
Internal Revenue Code, it denies a deduction for ``illegal payments.''
  But even though it denies a deduction, under the statute for illegal 
payments, the IRS has interpreted this a little bit differently. So it 
says here in this document: even though it is illegal to employ 
unauthorized alien workers, the IRS has ruled that section 162(e) does 
not apply to the wages paid to those aliens--and I would call them 
aliens--even if the employer knowingly broke the law.
  Well, there is a problem with IRS interpretation, but I also know 
they are not very likely to change that interpretation, unless Congress 
should crack them over the knuckles with some legislation.
  I have, for a number of Congresses, introduced legislation known as 
the New IDEA Act. Today, the New IDEA Act is H.R. 176. It does this: it 
clarifies. It amends 162(e) of the Code, and it clarifies that wages 
and benefits paid to illegals are not tax deductible for Federal income 
tax purposes. It gives the employer safe harbor if he uses E-Verify to 
verify his employees.
  In other words, if you hire people, you have got people on your 
payroll, you run them through E-Verify. We know all about this program. 
The Judiciary Committee passed a mandatory E-Verify bill out of the 
committee here a couple of weeks ago. But you run them through E-
Verify. If you are the employer and they have qualified to be legal to 
work in the United States through the E-Verify program, then the IRS 
cannot touch you with regard to hiring illegals. So it is a safe harbor 
that we build into the bill.
  So tax, wages, and benefits paid to employers are not tax deductible. 
The employer gets safe harbor if he uses E-Verify.
  We also require the IRS to exchange information and build a working 
committee with the Social Security Administration and the Department of 
Homeland Security so that the right hand, the left hand, and the middle 
hand know what each other is doing.

                              {time}  1300

  This is the Federal Government, after all. And how can we have 
departments within this government working at cross purposes with each 
other?
  So the IRS' job should be to collect taxes. They should not be 
allowing the deductions of wages and benefits paid to illegals. They 
are not legal to work in America.
  If you are buying illegal drugs, do you get to deduct your illegal 
drugs?
  If you pay off somebody to commit an illegal activity, do you get to 
deduct that?
  No. In none of those cases, we don't allow deductions for illegal 
activity. That is partly what the legislation said. But the IRS has 
their practice.
  By the way, before I wrote this bill, I was looking around for what 
department within any branch of government do the people respect fear 
the most. As one who has been audited thoroughly a number of times, I 
notice that the IRS is the one that we respect the most--probably fear 
the most--and the last organization that we want to show up at our door 
that is going to check to see if we are hiring illegals.
  So what would happen under this bill is the IRS would show up--we 
don't accelerate any audits. The IRS would show up to do a normal audit 
under normal terms of identifying businesses that they would normally 
audit, and, in the course of that audit, they would run the Social 
Security numbers and the identifying information of the employees off 
of the I-9 forms that have been required since 1986 and punch them into 
E-Verify.
  If they could verify that all of the employees could work legally in 
America, then, fine, no problem, and that employer only has his other 
tax issues to worry about. But if E-Verify kicks any of those employees 
out--one or more--then the employer has 72 hours' notice to cure, like 
they would under any other circumstance, to correct any records that 
might need to be corrected. Otherwise, the IRS could look at that and 
say: Okay, this million dollars that you wrote off as a business 
expense is not a business expense. That goes back into the gross 
receipts and shows up at the bottom as net taxable income.
  If we do the math on this and break it down, what is the impact? 
Well, the impact works out to be this:
  If you have a $10-an-hour illegal and the audit comes in and says you 
can't deduct that $10 an hour, then the impact of it is that the 
employer then would be billed for interest and penalty and the tax 
liability that we calculated, I think, at around 35\1/2\ or 36 percent. 
That turns your $10-an-hour illegal into about a $16-an-hour illegal.
  Now, if you are going to have to pay $16 an hour, maybe you could 
actually hire an American to do that work. You wouldn't have to hire 
somebody that is sneaking around and that snuck into America. That is 
one way to look at this is it raises the cost.
  There is also a 6-year statute of limitations. Nothing goes 
backwards. There is no ex post facto in this. It would only be from the 
day of enactment. From that point forward, there could be a 6-year 
cumulative liability.
  So the first year that the bill would pass--hopefully, in this tax 
package that we have in front of us that is coming to us next week--
from the first year the bill would pass, you have 1 year of liability.
  And say the IRS doesn't audit you the first year. The second year, 
now you have 2 years of liability. That risk accumulates then for the 
period of 6 years, that statute of limitations. So, each year, the 
employer would see that they had a contingent liability: the IRS. If 
the IRS shows up and audits, they are going to go back at least 4 
years, I am going to guess, maybe longer.
  That means that they are going to work to clean up their workforce. 
They can do it incrementally or they can do it all at once. But nobody 
is going to want to sit there with a 6-year statute of limitations 
hanging over their head.
  Madam Speaker, I include in the Record an article that is written by 
the Center for Immigration Studies, dated August 31, 2017, titled: 
``Raise More than a Quarter Trillion Dollars of Tax Revenue by Ending 
Tax Subsidies for Unauthorized Employment of Illegal Aliens.''

       [From the Center for Immigration Studies, August 31, 2017]

Raise More than a Quarter Trillion Dollars of Tax Revenue by Ending Tax 
        Subsidies for Unauthorized Employment of Illegal Aliens

                                (By CIS)

       Aliens enter the United States without authorization for 
     many reasons, but for most of them the goal is to secure 
     employment at much higher wages than are available in their 
     native countries. While breaking the law provides very 
     significant economic benefits to these illegal workers and to 
     the businesses that hire them, it comes at a cost to American 
     workers. According to Harvard economist George Borjas, recent 
     empirical research indicates that American workers suffer a 
     reduction of $99 billion to $118 billion in annual wages 
     because of illegal immigration.
       The economic rewards of unauthorized employment of aliens 
     are not limited to the higher wages of the illegal workers 
     and the lower labor costs of their employers. Unauthorized 
     alien workers and their employers also enjoy multi-billion 
     dollar tax deductions and tax credits that were enacted into 
     law for the benefit of law-abiding workers and businesses.
       When Congress returns from summer recess on September 5, it 
     is expected to focus attention on a major reform of the 
     federal income tax system, including a combination of lower 
     rates and other tax incentives to families and to businesses. 
     The largest challenge facing tax reformers is finding 
     sufficient additional revenue to pay for the tax cuts and tax 
     incentives they promised to the people who elected them. In 
     fairness to the American families and businesses to whom 
     these tax cuts have been promised, and in particular to the 
     American families whose household incomes have been 
     diminished by illegal immigration, Congress should consider 
     eliminating unwarranted tax breaks to unauthorized alien 
     workers and their employers.
       Each of the following reforms--one that eliminates a tax 
     subsidy for employers of unauthorized aliens and the other 
     that eliminates a tax subsidy for the unauthorized workers--
     comes with an estimate of the additional revenues that would 
     be raised by the reform Together they could raise $296 
     billion over 10 years--more than a quarter-trillion dollars.
       1. No Deduction for Wages Paid to Illegal Aliens. Section 
     162(e) of the Internal Revenue Code denies a deduction for 
     ``illegal

[[Page H8487]]

     payments''. Even though it is illegal to employ unauthorized 
     alien workers, the IRS has ruled that section 162(e) does not 
     apply to the wages paid to those aliens, even if the employer 
     knowingly broke the law. On January 3, 2017, Rep. Steve King 
     and eight other members of Congress introduced H.R. 176, the 
     New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act, Section 2 of which 
     would amend section 162(e) to clarify that no deduction is 
     allowed for wages paid to unauthorized alien workers. H.R. 
     176 provides employers a ``safe harbor'', allowing a 
     deduction to employers that used the Department of Homeland 
     Security's free, online E-Verify system to confirm the 
     employee's eligibility to work.
       The amount of wages paid to unauthorized alien workers 
     cannot be known with certainty. One of the most extensive 
     studies of unauthorized immigrants in the United States was 
     conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center in 2009. According to 
     that study, there were approximately 8.3 million undocumented 
     immigrants in the U.S. labor force, a figure that Pew more 
     recently estimated had fallen to 8.0 million. Pew estimated 
     the median household income of unauthorized worker families 
     to be approximately $36,000 and that there were approximately 
     1.75 workers per household, implying median per-worker 
     earnings of $20,571. Multiplying Pew's estimated number of 
     unauthorized alien workers by the earnings-per-worker 
     estimate yields an estimated total of wages paid to 
     unauthorized alien workers of approximately $165 billion.
       Many unauthorized workers are employed in the ``underground 
     economy'', i.e., by households and other employers that are 
     not reporting or paying payroll taxes and presumably are not 
     deducting the wages. A 2013 report by the Social Security 
     Administration estimated that, of approximately seven million 
     alien workers in various irregular work statuses in 2010, 
     approximately 3.1 million (44 percent) had Social Security 
     numbers (mostly false or fraudulently secured), while 
     approximately 3.9 million (56 percent) were working in the 
     ``underground economy.'' On the assumption that employers 
     reported payroll taxes and claimed wage expense deductions 
     only for the 44 percent of unauthorized workers who could 
     produce an SSN, and that most employers deducted wages at or 
     near the corporate tax rate of 35 percent, we estimate that 
     disallowing a deduction for wages paid to unauthorized alien 
     workers would increase federal tax revenues by approximately 
     $25.4 billion per year (35 percent x 44 percent x $165 
     billion), or $254 billion over 10 years.
       2. Deny Refundable Tax Credits to Illegal Aliens. Section 
     24(a) of the Internal Revenue Code allows a $1,000 per-child 
     tax credit for taxpayer's whose earnings fall below a 
     specified threshold. The Child Tax Credit is refundable to 
     the extent it exceeds the taxpayer's tax liability, in which 
     case it is referred to as the Additional Chad Tax Credit or 
     ACTC. A 2011 report by the U S. Treasury Inspector General 
     for Tax Administration explained that aliens authorized to 
     work in the United States are required to obtain a Social 
     Security number (SSN). For aliens who need to file U.S. 
     federal tax returns for other reasons, such as to claim 
     refunds of withholding tax on dividends, the IRS issues 
     Individual Tax Identification Numbers (ITINs). Unfortunately, 
     according to the inspector general, the IRS had been 
     permitting aliens to claim ACTCs on returns that reported an 
     ITIN rather than a Social Security number.
       The payment of ACTCs to illegal aliens is arguably a direct 
     violation of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity 
     Act of 1996 (``PRWOA''), which expressly provides that an 
     illegal alien ``is not eligible for any Federal public 
     benefit.'' The IRS has applied the PRWOA rule to prohibit 
     payments of Earned Income Tax Credits to ITIN filers, but 
     based on a questionable interpretation of the law has allowed 
     ITIN filers refunds of ACTCs.
       According to the Inspector General, ``[b]ased on claims 
     made in Processing Year 2010, disallowance of the ACTC to 
     filers without a valid SSN would reduce Federal outlays by 
     approximately $8.4 billion over 2 years,'' i.e., $4.2 billion 
     per year. Although the inspector general's figures are based 
     on 2010 fiscal data, Treasury Department tax expenditure 
     estimates indicate that the total child tax credit 
     expenditure was virtually unchanged between 2010 and 2017. 
     Accordingly, based on the inspector general's report, we 
     estimate that limiting the Child Tax Credit to taxpayers with 
     Social Security numbers would increase federal tax revenues 
     by approximately $4.2 billion per year, or $42 billion over 
     10 years.

  Mr. KING of Iowa. The bulk of this article addresses my bill, H.R. 
176, the New IDEA Act, the New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act. They 
go through the calculations here, and I will just touch on some of 
them.
  This is data from a Harvard economist, George Borjas. It is his 
empirical research. He shows that the workers in America, because wages 
have been suppressed by an oversupply of unskilled and illegal 
laborers, that American workers are suffering somewhere between a $99 
billion and $118 billion loss in annual wages because they haven't 
gotten a raise in a long time. Nobody gets a raise as long as there is 
cheaper labor there that keeps that down--no effective raise. So 
between $99 billion and $118 billion. That is the Harvard economist, 
George Borjas. That is the annual wages loss because of illegal 
immigration.
  If we go to the next page on this, it lays out the conditions, and we 
are seeing this. This is a number from the Pew Hispanic Center in 2009. 
It says that there are 8.3 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. 
labor force. They recently estimated that number is actually ratcheted 
down to about 8 million. It doesn't say why. But if they estimated the 
median household income of unauthorized worker families to be 
approximately $36,000 at 1-\3/4\ average workers per household, that is 
roughly--let's see. It says, ``implying median per-worker earnings of 
$20,571,'' they estimated that the earnings-per-worker estimate yields 
$165 billion a year. This is some of the magnitude of the money that is 
going out of our economy. Also, added to that, roughly $60 billion is 
being wired out of America.
  So those who say, ``Well, we really need these illegal workers 
because they stimulate our economy, they grow our economy,'' they are 
siphoning this off. They are holding down the wages for the working 
people in America to the tune of $100 billion or more a year. They are 
earning something like $165 billion a year, and they are sending at 
least $60 billion of that south of the border, about half to Mexico and 
the other half to Central America, South America, and the Caribbean.
  So all of these are economic impacts.
  But the CIS, the Center for Immigration Studies, drew this estimate 
that, should my bill, the New IDEA Act, H.R. 176, become law--and the 
perfect place for it is in this tax policy--they estimate that it would 
score at, the number would be, $25.4 billion a year. If we do a 10-year 
estimate, that means a $254 billion score, a quarter of $1 trillion 
poured into our budget at a time that we are cutting taxes and we have 
a red ink tax policy--which I want to see passed, by the way. We have 
got some solutions here, and I want to see those solutions become law.
  H.R. 176 is one of the unique tools that has been here for some time. 
It is thoroughly vetted. It has had a good number of cosponsors on it 
over the past years. I knew Barack Obama would never sign it, but 
Donald Trump will. It was on his website.
  Early on, when he first launched his Presidency, the support for the 
New IDEA Act was on his immigration policy that was posted then. I 
haven't checked it now in quite some time, but I don't have any doubt 
that, if we send a tax bill to Donald Trump's desk with H.R. 176 in it, 
it will score better, to the tune of probably a quarter of $1 trillion.
  It will put an end to the illegal workforce in America, or at least 
an end to the deductibility of wages and benefits paid to illegals, and 
it brings together the Social Security Administration, Department of 
Homeland Security, and the IRS to exchange information so that, if 
there is a Social Security number that is overused, they need to tell 
the DHS and they need to tell the IRS. If the IRS comes up with 
employers that are hiring illegals--and they will--they need to tell 
the Department of Homeland Security so ICE can come in and enforce the 
law.
  So each one of these agencies needs to cooperate with each other. 
This way, we open up jobs for American workers, and we give the 
American workers a raise.
  Now, what could be better than giving the American workers a raise 
and giving the American workers a tax cut all at the same time, while 
we nearly guarantee an economic growth cycle for the next decade of an 
average of over 3 percent per quarter? We can do that. It is all 
sitting here in front of us. And my hope, my prayer, and my effort is 
that we can all work together to reach all of those goals.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________