[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,
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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.
____________________