[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 48 (Tuesday, March 20, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H1719-H1726]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Budd). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to be recognized to 
address

[[Page H1720]]

you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives.
  I come before this floor to address a topic that has been front and 
center in this country since 1973: when the Supreme Court came down 
with the decisions known as Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, then the 
subsequent case in the early 1990s, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
  This is a nation that has traditionally--and from the very beginning 
of the very first founding document, the Declaration of Independence--
respected and revered life.
  As our Founding Fathers put that language together, and as John Adams 
coached Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Jefferson put his pen to the 
Declaration of Independence: ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, 
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator 
with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness.''
  Now, Mr. Speaker, it wasn't an accident that the order of these 
rights that come from God be started out with life, then liberty, then 
the pursuit of happiness.
  Of all the scholars that I have talked to and the times that I have 
sat in the classroom and in my readings, it just never really claim 
clear. It is not educating our young people about what they were 
thinking about when they drafted that language in the Declaration: ``We 
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, 
that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable 
rights,'' but the right to life is listed first. It is not second or 
third.
  They didn't put together a list of four or five or seven or ten 
different rights. They laid three out in the Declaration. And those 
three start with life, because life is the most paramount right.
  The former Governor of Pennsylvania, Governor Bob Casey, a Democrat, 
who has since passed away, was denied an opportunity to speak at the 
Democratic National Convention some years ago because he was a pro-life 
Democrat Governor and he would speak in favor of life. He said this: 
``Human life cannot be measured. It is the measure itself against which 
all other things are weighed.''
  The measure itself.
  Now, what does that mean and how do we think about this, Mr. Speaker?
  It would be this: when the Frenchmen devised the metric system, they 
set up a distance that was divided out to mean a ratio of the 
circumference of the Earth in whatever manner of calculation they had. 
And they came down to--however many times they divided that around, it 
came down to the length of the meter.

                              {time}  1600

  Then they produced this meter that was a platinum rule that was set 
at precisely the length of the meter. And, in controlled temperature 
and pressure, at standard temperature and pressure, what would the 
length of this platinum rule be? Exactly a meter.
  Now, how long is a meter? I guess I could tell you, we can measure it 
by other measures. We can do some comparisons. But that meter, that 
original meter made out of platinum that is maintained at standard 
temperature and pressure, that is the measure itself; and all other 
measurements of length that are incorporated within the metric system, 
all of those measures of length are in relation to the meter itself. 
That meter stick, the original one, is the measure itself against which 
all other distances are weighed and measured in the metric system.
  Human life is the measure itself against which we measure every other 
value that we have because human life is sacred in all of its forms. 
And then, once we accept that and this Nation accepts that human life 
is sacred in all of its forms--Democrats and Republicans do agree to 
that, I believe, generally speaking, maybe even universally--but the 
disagreement comes in, well, when does life begin? When does life end?
  We can look at any one of the pro-life groups that are here in this 
country. You can ask the priests and pastors around America: When does 
life begin? The most consistent answer to that question is life begins 
at the moment of conception, the instant of fertilization, the instant 
of conception. That language is threaded throughout.
  I have walked into gymnasiums, or maybe a whole school, K-12, or 
maybe a high school alone, and I will say to them: You will be faced 
with a couple of questions in your emerging young adult life, and the 
counsel that you would give to your friends perhaps, or maybe you, 
yourself, you will have to answer these two questions: Is human life 
sacred in all of its forms?
  And I will say to them: Look at the person next to you. Is their life 
sacred? And they will nod their head.
  Look at the person on the other side. Is their life sacred? And they 
will nod their head.
  And I said: And they are looking at you, and they are nodding their 
head at you, too, because everybody in here, your life is sacred. It is 
precious. It is the measure itself against which all other things are 
weighed.
  So once we universally agree that human life is sacred in all of its 
forms, then we have the next question and ask the question: At what 
moment does life begin, at what instant? And that is that instant at 
conception, that instant at fertilization. The rational, moral thought 
and faithful reasoning comes to that conclusion.
  Yet the Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade and in the accompanying case of 
Doe v. Bolton, on January 22, 1973, brought down a decision that 
decided that liberty and pursuit of happiness trumped life. They 
concluded that a mother could decide whether that child was 
inconvenient, whether they didn't want the child at the time, and 
allowed for abortion on demand. Coupling the two cases together, they 
allowed for abortion on demand.
  Doe v. Bolton wrote everything in the list that could be exceptions: 
it could be the mental health; it could be the physical health; it 
could be even the familial health of the mother, which any of this 
could be affected by finances themselves. So if you don't think you can 
afford this baby, Doe v. Bolton lets you say: Well, it affected my 
mental health. It affected my familial health, so I decided to abort 
the baby.
  And any abortion doctor could conduct an abortion at will, staying 
within this framework that was manufactured by the Supreme Court that 
turned the principles that are in our Declaration on their head. They 
no longer recognize that life is the paramount right that is delivered 
to us from God and that liberty is secondary to life and that pursuit 
of happiness is tertiary to life.
  Now, think of this. If any of us, in our pursuit of liberty, would 
decide that someone's life is in the way of our liberty, we can't go 
kill them. We would end up in prison or executed in some States. We 
can't go kill somebody because they infringe upon our liberty. Their 
life is more important than our liberty.
  Neither can someone, in their pursuit of happiness, trample on 
someone else's liberties. Our liberties of freedom of speech, religion, 
the press, assembly, the right to keep and bear arms, the protections 
that we have on a reasonable search and seizure, a jury of our peers, 
the States' rights that are enshrined in the Constitution that are 
subordinate to the enumerated powers in the Constitution, that is all 
laid out within a beautiful framework that has never been done better 
anywhere in the world in the history of the world, but it is based on 
the prioritization of God-given rights. Life is more important than 
liberty, is more important than this pursuit of happiness.
  By the way, to define pursuit of happiness a little more thoroughly, 
some of the young people are growing up and they read that and don't 
give it very much thought. They say, well, pursuit of happiness is a 
fun tailgate party before the ball game; it is getting together with my 
friends; it is sitting down with my Xbox and enjoying the video games 
that are going on. Maybe it is just listening to music. None of those 
things fit the categories that our Founding Fathers envisioned when 
they put pursuit of happiness in the Declaration.
  Pursuit of happiness was lifted from the Greek term ``eudaimonia,'' 
which is spilled E-U-D-A-I-M-O-N-I-A--because we are friends, 
Christina. Eudaimonia, the Greek term, means pursuit of happiness in 
this concept that our Founding Fathers understood, and that was that 
development of the whole human being, not a party at all, not a joke at

[[Page H1721]]

all, not a time necessarily of laughter, but it was a component; to 
develop one's self intellectually, develop one's brain power with a 
knowledge base that was as strong as it could be, and for a lifetime, 
to develop one's mind and develop it thoroughly and contemplate deep 
thoughts to develop themselves. That is the intellectual component of 
it.

  There was a theological component to develop one's self religiously, 
which they did. Even though they were pagan, in my view, they developed 
themselves in a belief in a hereafter and in a belief in higher beings. 
It was plural for the Greeks, the higher beings. But they were 
developing their intellect. They were developing themselves spiritually 
and theologically and also physically.
  They kept their bodies in shape, and they worked out and they 
exercised, and they competed in the sports that are the foundation of 
our Olympics today. All of that was wrapped up in the eudaimonia of the 
time that our Founders read and understood. Thomas Jefferson thoroughly 
understood. There is no doubt he understood the meaning of the word 
``eudaimonia.'' He just didn't think the American people would 
understand it, so he wrote in there, ``pursuit of happiness.''
  We have just kind of given a short and a brief definition of that. We 
haven't given it the full respect it was intended by the drafter and, 
in many cases, the author of our Declaration, Thomas Jefferson.
  So now that I have reset this, life is paramount and it is the most 
important, and any of us should be willing to sacrifice at least some 
of our liberty to protect and save the lives of others because those 
lives are that precious and that important. Any one of us who is in 
pursuit of our eudaimonia, our pursuit of happiness, should be willing 
to give up some of that in order to secure and protect the liberties--
not only our liberties, but the liberties of others.
  So a nation that is built upon those principles would also be a 
nation that would do most anything to protect the lives of the most 
innocent among us, our unborn, our unborn that don't have the ability 
to scream out for their own mercy. They don't have the ability to come 
to Congress and lobby for themselves. They are silent. They have no 
chance to make a noise even until the day that they draw their first 
breath, if they have the opportunity to draw that first breath.
  But the tally for the decision of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton on 
January 22, 1973, now has reached or exceeded 60 million babies--60 
million babies sacrificed on the altar of choice.
  Watching the prioritized rights that came from God, we are endowed by 
our Creator with certain unalienable rights. Our Supreme Court got it 
wrong, and they set the liberty of the mother over the life of the 
baby. They set the pursuit of happiness, the eudaimonia, presumably, of 
the mother, over the life of the baby.
  We have a hole in our society; not only a hole that comes from the 
heavy, heavy guilt of tolerating this throughout these years, but it is 
a hole that is a multigenerational hole: 60 million babies not born 
that would otherwise be living, loving, laughing, learning, falling in 
love, having babies of their own, worshipping, and raising their 
children with the values that have made this America a great nation.
  But that is all denied this Nation. It is denied the world. The 
solutions that they would have provided, the happiness and the joy they 
would have delivered, intellectual firepower that would come from 60 
million babies is denied to us.
  And to go back and look and think, also, a good number of those 
little girls that were aborted since 1973 would have otherwise been 
mothers today. And to look at it generationally, and this is a back-of-
the-envelope calculation, to take those little girls and predict that 
maybe each one of them would have had three babies, each one, that 
calculates out to be, Mr. Speaker, another 60 million babies--another 
60 million.
  So the population of this country would be something like 120 million 
stronger if the Supreme Court had believed and had conviction on what I 
have just described about the right to life being the paramount right--
more important than liberty, more important than the pursuit of 
happiness, eudaimonia, the right to life.
  When the Supreme Court made that erroneous activist decision, they 
started this country in a downward spiral, a spiral where there is less 
respect for life than there was before 1973.
  Mr. Speaker, if I just take you to the school shooting data and 
address that, we look back through the history and the records of the 
school shootings as well as mass killings that have taken place in 
schools, look back over the last century, the earliest one that we 
could find was 1924, in Michigan. It was a series of bombs that were 
planted in the schools there in Michigan, set to go off by alarm 
clocks, which would be the kind that we would see in the old cartoons 
today. Those bombs were timed to go off, and the result of that was 40 
people were killed in the bombings at the school in Michigan in 1924, 
mass school killing. That is the largest mass school killing that we 
could find by sorting through history as deeply as we could research 
it, 40 killed, bombings, 1924.
  Then not another mass school killing or shooting, not another killing 
until 1940, when an individual went into a school in Pasadena and 
killed five people with a pistol. Then not another school shooting, 
mass shooting of any kind at least, took place from 1940 on. It took us 
all the way to 1963, 23 years after that single mass school shooting in 
Pasadena.
  Twenty-three years later, the Supreme Court came down with another 
erroneous decision called Murray v. Curlett. Murray v. Curlett is the 
case that took prayer out of public schools. Up till that time, we went 
to school and we went into school and started the day with the pledge 
and a prayer in the classroom with the teachers, especially in 
elementary school. I remember that clearly.
  But by the time the Murray v. Curlett decision came down, I was a 
freshman in high school, and I remember that order. The Supreme Court 
commands no more prayer in the public schools. Where did they get the 
authority to declare that we couldn't exercise our freedom of religion?
  Now, I have been challenged on this a good number of times in 
subsequent years, but I remember them saying: Well, what will you do 
about the separation of church and state?
  Well, first of all, there isn't a separation of church and state, but 
it is being exercised by Supreme Court decisions as a separation even 
not only of church and state, but church and school.
  Now, the First Amendment of the Constitution writes, and what it 
specifically does is it prohibits Congress from establishing a law that 
creates a state religion. And it denies the ability of Congress to pass 
that legislation that establishes a state religion, so that is all it 
does.
  And the freedom of religion shall not be infringed. We have a freedom 
of religion, but they still, the Supreme Court, made the decision to 
take prayer out of the public schools, an activist act that then began 
to scrub faith and morality out of our public schools.

                              {time}  1615

  I remember that freshman year when I learned this. I remember in that 
classroom--and these images are in my mind clearly. It was: How are 
they going to stop us from praying in our schools? What could they 
possibly do to keep us from praying?
  They hadn't invented duct tape yet at that time, Mr. Speaker, but, 
you know, I am thinking the white adhesive tape that doctors use, the 
medical tape, and I had images in my mind: Well, they could tape our 
mouths shut with that tape. We could pray silently. They couldn't stop 
us from praying by taping our mouths shut.
  The only way to stop prayer in the public schools, if we refuse to 
accept the order, was to empty the schools out themselves. That image 
is in my mind. Denison Community Schools, where I went to high school, 
I can still see the central building in my mind's eye, clearing out all 
the rooms, emptying the rooms, all the students going outside, outside 
of that school.
  And the Army. The Army is in my imagination--Vietnam era--that the 
Army would come in, and they would have a new chain to roll around 
those bars that you push inside the doors to open the doors, wrap that 
chain around there, put a new padlock on it, and post a guard, an Army 
uniform outside those doors, every entrance into that

[[Page H1722]]

school. That is the only way they could have stopped prayer in that 
public school.
  But they stopped it because we accepted the order of the Supreme 
Court. We accepted the beginning of the degradation of the moral core 
of America that was being taught in every public school in America at 
that time.
  We revered our faith. We understood our history. We knew that our 
Founding Fathers, who put this country together, who I believe were 
moved around like men on a chessboard by the hand of God--I believe the 
Declaration is written not with divine inspiration, like the Bible, but 
with divine guidance, just a little bit lower standard of proof. We are 
gifted in this country with the divine grace that God guided the men 
and women who built this country in the nearly perfect foundation that 
they put in place in the Declaration and in also the Constitution.
  But we let the Supreme Court, that was never designed to be the most 
powerful of the three branches of government--we let the Supreme Court 
rule. And then, now, today, we teach in those schools that there is 
three equal branches of government. They are not equal. They were not 
designed to be equal. The Founding Fathers put them together that the 
judicial branch of government was designed to be the weakest of the 
three branches of government, and they were not even the branch of 
government that was designed to come down with a rule on what is 
constitutional and what is unconstitutional.
  The Constitution requires that Congress establish a Supreme Court. 
And I had made this case to, God rest his soul, Justice Scalia, an 
awfully hard man to say goodbye to for all that he has done for our 
country and all the clarity that he has brought to the understanding of 
the Constitution. I am grateful that Justice Gorsuch is there to 
replace him in picking up on the things that are so well perfected by 
Justice Scalia.
  But in a meeting with 30 or 40 other members here several years ago, 
I made the point, Mr. Speaker, to Justice Scalia, and I said to him 
that Congress is the most powerful branch of government, the 
legislative branch of government, and the House, in particular, because 
all spending bills have to start here, and the Constitution doesn't 
require that we establish all of the Federal circuits that are out 
there or the Federal district courts below that.
  The Congress only--and this is how I put it to Justice Scalia--
Congress is only required to establish a Supreme Court. We could 
abolish all of the other Federal districts if we chose to do so. In 
fact, Congress did abolish two judicial districts back in about 1802. 
That is a pattern. It has been established.
  So if Congress decided to do so, we could weaken the judicial branch 
of government, and we could reduce the judicial branch of government 
down to just a Supreme Court, because it requires that we--
constitutionally, we are required to establish a Supreme Court. But 
there is nothing that requires us to build a building, fund a building, 
or to fund an administrative staff and team for them.
  So I said to Justice Scalia: We could eliminate all the Federal 
courts, except the Supreme Court. We could reduce the Supreme Court 
down to the Chief Justice at his own card table with his own candle, no 
staff.
  And I think it was a bit of surprise for the very glib Justice Scalia 
to hear that out of a Member of Congress, especially in a setting that 
was, I will say, quasi-public at least.
  He thought about it for a little bit. I am not sure if he had ever 
thought about what I had presented to him, Mr. Speaker, but he thought 
for a little bit, and he said: Well, I would argue that you could 
reduce the Supreme Court down to three Justices because, otherwise, if 
you don't have anything but a Supreme Court Chief Justice, there is 
nothing to be the chief of. So I would argue for three Justices.
  And I said: Well, Justice Scalia, there have always been too many 
chiefs and not enough Indians.
  And we, more or less, declared a case ready to move on for further 
discussion.
  But the point of this exercise, Mr. Speaker, is to make the point 
that the Court's power exists because Congress empowers it. And if 
there is a struggle between the legislative branch of government, 
Article 1; or the executive branch of government, Article 2; or the 
judicial branch of government, Article 3, I would remind the folks 
involved in any discussion like that that the branches of government 
were prioritized in the Constitution in the same fashion that the God-
given rights are prioritized in the Declaration--life, liberty, pursuit 
of happiness.
  In the Constitution, Articles 1, 2, 3--legislative, executive, 
judicial branches of government--prioritized because our Founding 
Fathers envisioned that there would be a struggle between the three 
branches of the government, and they wanted to set up a static power 
base so that they expected that each branch of government would 
jealously protect its constitutional authority, and there would be that 
tug of war, a struggle, ethically and peacefully, they hoped, between 
each branch of government.

  That is why they put the checks and balances in place. They gave the 
legislative authority to the United States Congress, and the spending 
authority to Congress, and the initiation of all bills that initiate 
spending to the House of Representatives. They didn't give it to the 
Senate because we were to be the hot cup of coffee, and the Senate was 
to be the saucer that that coffee cooled in.
  That is why we are 2-year terms here, 6-year terms over in the 
Senate, but they wanted a legislative body that would be a quick 
reaction for us, a fast response for if things got out of whack, if 
they needed to be addressed quickly, then they wanted the House of 
Representatives to perhaps turn over quickly so that the House could 
respond to these issues in a fast way.
  They wanted a judicial body, that legislative body that could sit 
back, maybe fold their arms a little bit, and wait and be patient and 
think things through so it wasn't just emotional. It was also kind of a 
hard-charging reaction force in the House, and seasoned by experience, 
I might add, Mr. Speaker; and a more careful, slower moving body in the 
Senate, which I think they clearly achieved a more careful, slower 
moving body in the Senate.
  But one of those examples in modern day, when things went against the 
American people in the elections of 2010, around March 23, 2010--it was 
March 23--the final passage of ObamaCare passed out from the Senate and 
the House to President Obama's desk, and he signed that bill as fast as 
he could get his signature on it. The American people had rejected a 
Federal Government takeover of our health insurance, at least as a 
minimum.
  And I long said that, you know, our soul is the most sovereign thing 
that we have, and the government hasn't figured out how to nationalize 
that yet. I don't believe they ever will.
  The second thing that is the most sovereign thing that we have is our 
bodies, our skin, and everything inside it. ObamaCare nationalized a 
Federal takeover of the management of our body, our skin, and 
everything inside of it, took out of our hands the ability to manage 
our own health in a free market system, and the public rejected such an 
idea. They rejected ObamaCare.
  On March 23, it passed and was signed into law. That election that 
ensued the following November brought 87 freshmen Republicans to the 
House of Representatives. Every one of them pledged and every one of 
them ran on the ticket to 100 percent, rip it out by the roots, repeal 
ObamaCare. That is the reaction of the public when this body here was 
not responding to the will of the people. They changed that over in the 
very next election, which was just months later, from the third month 
to the eleventh month as--so you are only--and 8 months later, the 
election had taken place, and we had 87 new freshmen Republicans on the 
way.
  We didn't get as far as we needed to get. We didn't get it fully 
ripped out by the roots, as I wanted to do, but you can see the effects 
of that election to this day, Mr. Speaker.
  That is how our Founding Fathers envisioned it would work--the House 
of Representatives to be a quick reaction force. They reacted quickly 
in the 2010 election. The American people weighed in. When the 
executive branch gets out of line, there are provisions there. If there 
is going to be impeachment, the

[[Page H1723]]

House has to initiate that impeachment. But over in the Senate, the 
impeachment doesn't remove a President from office.
  I believe it constitutionally requires a trial in the Senate, but to 
remove a President from office takes a two-thirds majority in the 
United States Senate. I don't think they served us very well in 1998, 
when the impeachment went before the United States Senate, when William 
Jefferson Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives, 
because the trial in the Senate didn't bring us a verdict. It put all 
the questions together.
  And instead of asking the question, ``Did he commit the acts that the 
House had indicted him for,'' and in a separate question, ``Should he 
be removed from office for that,'' they jammed those questions 
together, and it gave some of the Democrat Senators a way out. They 
didn't have to answer the question, whether they believed he was guilty 
or not, so they never really heard the case and gave us a verdict on 
the conclusion.
  It was inconclusive in the Senate. I think that the way they framed 
those questions that were voted upon by the Senators, I think it was a 
disservice to the American people, a disservice to our Constitution.
  But, nonetheless, there is a check and a balance. If an executive--if 
a President gets out of line, if his executive branch gets out of line, 
the House of Representatives can initiate impeachment. The House of 
Representatives can shut off all funding to that branch of government 
or--well, it wouldn't do that, obviously, but to a division within that 
branch of government, we could cut the funds to the funding to bring 
about the result that is necessary if we have the conviction here and 
if we believe it is prudent policy.
  The House controls the spending. The House initiates any impeachment 
that might be required, and we don't want to ever exercise that unless 
it is judiciously done for good reason and good cause. And the Senate, 
the prudent group of the Senate, come up for election every 6 years, so 
they can sit back a little bit. Only a third of them have the level of 
apprehension that all of those who are up for reelection in the House 
of Representatives do.
  But this balance, this check and balance between the three branches 
of government, was that the branch of government and the division 
within it--the legislative branch and the U.S. House of 
Representatives, the division within it was always designed to be able 
to control the other branches of government and, by the way, able to 
limit the United States Senate.
  The reasons for that are why we are up for election every 2 years so 
the people would be sovereign. We the people are the ones who really do 
decide who is right in all of this Republican form of government, which 
is guaranteed to the American people in the Constitution. We are 
guaranteed, Mr. Speaker, a Republican form of government. But in this 
form of government, it is we the people; and we the legislators within 
the United States House of Representatives are the most accountable to 
the people, and, by that, we need to be the most responsive to the 
people as well.

  I think history has proven that out. So it doesn't mean either that 
the Supreme Court gets to decide necessarily what the Constitution 
means. I will define what it means here, Mr. Speaker, and that is, the 
Constitution has to mean what it says. It has to mean literally what it 
says, but it has to also mean what it was understood to mean at the 
time of its ratification.
  Every one of us takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution. 
Here, in the House, 435 of us; and over in the Senate, 100 Senators; 
and a good number of executive branch employees, a long ways down the 
line, take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United 
States.
  Now, I take that oath seriously, and I carry a Constitution in my 
jacket pocket every day, as close to my heart as it can get, to 
remember what this means, what it means to me.
  But I don't take the oath to support and defend the Constitution with 
the idea in mind that I am going to shift my oath and the meaning of my 
oath to conform to a Supreme Court decision that does not reflect the 
original understanding of the Constitution. None of us can take an oath 
to a living, breathing, moving interpretation of a document.
  This Constitution, Mr. Speaker, this Constitution constitutes a 
contractual guarantee, an intergenerational contractual guarantee that 
this God-given liberty, as defined in our Declaration, and the Bill of 
Rights and the structure of our government and the function of our 
government, the enumerated powers that are in here, that this is an 
intergenerational contractual guarantee passed down to us generation to 
generation, and it can't change its meaning just because five Justices 
over there in the Supreme Court decided to change its meaning.

                              {time}  1630

  Now, I want to respect their jurisprudence and I respect almost all 
of the decisions that have come down, but there have been times in 
history when an activist court has decided that they are going to 
rewrite this society according to their whim.
  I have always admired Congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas, who is a 
former judge. He came to this Congress and he ran on this ticket. He 
has been to Iowa a few times, and he is coming back. He says this:

       I found myself on the bench as a judge, and I was 
     constrained to interpret the literal meaning of the 
     Constitution and to interpret the literal meaning of the laws 
     that were passed, and when I felt the urge to be a 
     legislator, I knew my obligation then was to leave the bench 
     and run for Congress.

  That is what you need to do when you feel in your heart that you are 
a legislator, when you reason that you can do more to contribute as a 
legislator than you can as a judge.
  So Louie Gohmert came to this Congress. Congressman Louie Gohmert 
came to this Congress in the right way for the right reasons, to 
legislate, because that was his heart's desire, and that is where he 
believed, and I hope today he still believes, that he can do the most 
good for this country.
  But the Justices that sit on the bench that decide that they can just 
ignore the meaning of the Constitution are undermining our God-given 
liberty. They are undermining the foundation delivered to us by the 
Founders. They are undermining the Declaration. They are undermining 
the Constitution itself.
  I can think of a few of those decisions. The Kelo decision, where the 
Supreme Court ruled that private property could be confiscated, 
condemned, through eminent domain by a local jurisdiction of government 
and then handed over to another private interest.
  Let's just say that there is a widow lady that lives in a certain 
section of town, and she wants to live in that house the rest of her 
life, but there are developers that own the rest of the land around 
her, and they want to put in a shopping mall. So they would come in and 
say to the lady: Hey, here is our offer. We want to buy your house.
  And she says: No. No amount of money can buy my house. I am going to 
live in this house the rest of my life.
  Well, in the Kelo decision, they went to government, and government 
condemned the property, took that property away from her. It was 
litigated all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court ruled 
that local government could condemn property under the Fifth Amendment, 
the Fifth Amendment, which says ``nor shall private property be taken 
for public use, without just compensation.''
  And think of this. They didn't say ``nor shall private property be 
condemned and handed over to other private interests, without just 
compensation,'' because the Founding Fathers never imagined that 
government would have the audacity to condemn private property to hand 
it over to other private interests.
  But the function of that decision was, and so now the effect of the 
Kelo decision is, the Fifth Amendment now reads, in effect, de facto, 
we say: Nor shall private property be taken without just compensation. 
They struck out those three words ``for public use.''
  That is the effect of a Supreme Court decision, and it is an 
erroneous decision. It is a wrong decision. It doesn't reflect the 
language in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.
  The dissent was written by Justice O'Connor. I didn't know until 
after I had made my statement on the floor after that decision that her 
dissent mirrored almost exactly the statement

[[Page H1724]]

that I made on the floor in rejection of it. I didn't expect the 
gentleman at that time from Massachusetts, Barney Frank, to agree with 
me either, but Barney Frank, Justice O'Connor, Steve King, and many 
others agreed: an erroneous decision.
  A Supreme Court amended the Constitution, in effect. They de facto 
amended the Constitution of the United States by coming down with a 
decision that effectively struck the words ``for public use'' out of 
the Fifth Amendment, ``nor shall private property be taken for public 
use, without just compensation.''
  So now there are extra constitutional takings of private property 
handed over to private property because local government has concluded 
they can collect more tax dollars off of that private interest that 
wants to build a shopping mall or a truck stop or whatever it might be 
to expand. That is the kind of decision that a Supreme Court can make 
that are activist decisions that effectively amend our Constitution if 
we let them do that.
  So we think of a decision like Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. How did 
they cook that up? Where does that come from?
  Well, it comes from out of the emanations and penumbras, Madam 
Speaker, and it is rooted back in a decision called the Griswold 
decision from the sixties. I believe it was 1964.
  Connecticut, at that time, a strong Catholic State, had decided that 
they would not allow for contraceptives to be sold in Connecticut. The 
Griswold couple, husband and wife, decided that they had a right to 
privacy to purchase contraceptives to exercise their liberties.
  Now, that decision that was made by the State of Connecticut not to 
sell contraceptives was a part of the laboratory of the States. It is a 
State's right to pass a decision like that; and as soon as the people 
in the State of Connecticut decided they rejected that decision, they 
can elect some new people to their legislature.
  But this was litigated to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court of the 
United States decided that that couple, the Griswold couple, had a 
right to privacy, and that right to privacy included the right to 
purchase contraceptives.
  So they created a new right, a right to privacy. They created it out 
of thin air, which we now call out of the emanations and penumbras. 
That is a little shadow around the edge of the cloud that maybe a 
Justice in a black robe can see but the rest of us lay people or even 
the brightest attorneys in the land can't quite see because they aren't 
seated on the Supreme Court.

  Well, if you can find rights out of the emanations and penumbras that 
you can't find in the very language of the Constitution or statute, for 
that matter, you are an activist judge, and you are trying to alter our 
society, amend our society into your own fashion. You are legislating 
from the bench.
  So they created a right to privacy, and this right to privacy was 
then used as the foundation of the decision in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. 
Bolton that granted, those two cases together, abortion on demand--
abortion on demand, at least before viability. And viability is a very 
vague measure of a baby that would be able to survive outside the womb.
  Now, that length of maturity within the womb and the ability to 
survive outside the womb has changed substantially, Madam Speaker, 
since Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. Now we have babies who survive 
clear down as early as into the 20th week. Viability has changed 
because medicine has gotten ahead of this, and we have saved more 
babies.
  But viability wasn't the only measure, because Doe v. Bolton gave all 
the exceptions that I talked about earlier, made exceptions for the 
health of the mother, the physical health, the mental health, the 
familial health, the financial health, anything that might affect her 
psyche. So it amounts to abortion on demand for the sake of, well, 
let's wait until it is convenient to take the life of that innocent 
little baby.
  But what we see now, Madam Speaker, what we see now is that we are 
watching these babies grow in the womb and the ultrasound. My iPhone 
has a number of little babies and the ultrasounds in it, and you can 
watch as those little babies will squirm and reach their arm out, suck 
their thumb. They look like they are trying to talk, stretch their legs 
out. They move around a lot more than we ever thought they did.
  I have talked to mothers who say as they watch their little baby that 
is 19, 20 weeks along, squirming around in the ultrasound, that a lot 
of the time they can't yet feel that movement. We know that as we get 
later on, even us dads get to feel that movement, and it is a glorious 
thing. This is the development of a miracle, and you can't be a parent 
or a grandparent and hold a little baby that is flesh of your flesh and 
not be amazed at the miracle of a little baby.
  When I took my firstborn in my hands, little David Steven King, and 
put him in my hands and looked at him, it was with awe that I saw so 
many pieces about him: counted the fingers and toes, took a look at his 
eyes, saw every little feature that is there, that little son.
  And I began to ask that question shortly after his birth: Could 
anyone take his life now within minutes after he was born? As squirmy 
and beautiful and miraculous, created in God's image as he was, could 
anybody take his life then? I don't know anybody who would be ghastly 
enough who could do so.
  So I thought, if he is 20 minutes old and we can't take his life, if 
he is 5 minutes old and we can't take his life, if he is 1 minute old 
and we can't take his life, how could we take it a minute before he was 
born? or 5 minutes? or an hour? or a day? or a week? or a month? Where 
along this continuum from this moment of conception would there be a 
time that we could say: Oh, he is only a blob of tissue?
  He was never a blob of tissue. He was always a unique human being, 
joining together the DNA of his mother and his father in a unique 
fashion that would never be matched again.
  Madam Speaker, think of this. Seven billion people on the planet, 
every one unique. Even the identical twins, the identical quadruplets 
that are there, their mother can tell them apart. Their father can tell 
them apart most of the time. And the older they get, the easier it is. 
But 7 billion faces on this planet, and God created those faces to be 
unique. No two faces are the same. Even if their DNA is matched up in 
identical twins or identical quadruplets or identical triplets, as rare 
as they are, their mothers can look them in the face and know which 
child is which. The rest of us can figure out everybody else, and we 
can, a lot of times, figure out the twins, too.
  I have twin nieces that I could always tell apart. They would ask me 
how I could, and I would say: Well, one of you is really intelligent 
and the other is really beautiful. You two figure out which is which. I 
am not going to answer the question.
  But we can tell them apart. Now, what a gift from God, the creation, 
to have the imagination to create faces, every one unique. No matter 
how many people on the planet there are, just the facial features are 
unique, let alone all the rest of us, let alone all the things that go 
on in our heads and in our minds and the experiences we have, the 
personalities that develop differently. That combination of nature or 
nurture that we will never unlock the mystery of that, that is all a 
gift from God.

  We have aborted 60 million of the gifts from God--60 million--and 
another 60 million babies not born because their mothers were aborted. 
Children who never had the opportunity to live to draw that first 
breath of free air.
  When I welcome a new grandchild into the world, I say a prayer over 
them, Madam Speaker, and I pray that they have a long and a healthy 
life, a faithful life, and a life that is long and healthy and 
faithful. And when that day comes that they are called home at the end 
of that long and healthy and faithful life, I pray that the last breath 
that they draw is more free than the first breaths that they are 
drawing on that day. And that is what we need to work for: more 
freedom, more God-given liberty, more young lives brought into this 
world.
  The very source of all joy comes from little babies, from our 
children, and if we stopped having babies, the joy would finally just 
die down. The laughter, the giggling would just diminish day by day by 
day until there was no joy left in the world, because that is the 
source of it. And yet we are aborting 1 million babies a year.

[[Page H1725]]

  That is why, Madam Speaker, I brought the Heartbeat bill to this 
House of Representatives, H.R. 490, the Heartbeat Protection Act. That 
is why we have worked so hard to get cosponsors on this legislation, we 
worked so hard to get the cosponsors.
  People like former majority leader Tom DeLay came here to work pro 
bono. The leader of Faith2Action, Janet Porter, a driving force, worked 
to get cosponsors on this legislation, worked to send the messages in 
the right place. We carefully drafted language that reflects our intent 
to save the lives of as many babies as we can from the moment of the 
heartbeat.
  We require that, if the abortionist is intending to commit an 
abortion, he must first check for a heartbeat, and that heartbeat would 
be detected at 7 to 8 weeks. If a heartbeat can be detected, the baby 
is protected, because we know that is a unique human being, a sacred 
human life.

                              {time}  1645

  I would like to go back to the moment of conception, but we can't yet 
medically identify that moment. But we can identify when a heartbeat 
can be detected. We all know that if there is a beating heart, there is 
a baby there. That heart doesn't just sit down there on its own beating 
away. It is in the chest of a baby, a little baby, a little unique boy 
or a girl who is a gift from God. That baby has at least a 95 percent 
chance of successful birth once we can detect that heartbeat in the 
womb.
  So how could we allow for the ending of that unique human being's 
life without that baby ever having a chance to draw a breath of free 
air or to scream for its own mercy? How could we say no to that? How 
could we have in our earpieces that ultrasound of that beating heart?
  That little granddaughter is 20 weeks along and her heart was beating 
last week, anyway, at 161 beats per minute. That beat is strong, firm, 
and solid. She has at least a 95 percent chance of successful birth and 
being welcomed into this world drawing that breath of free air, and I 
will pray as freer still on her last day many, many years from now.
  But we need to get there. We need to protect these lives, and we need 
to get a bill before the Supreme Court. So here in this House, we are 
170 cosponsors strong. We are far ahead of any other significant piece 
of pro-life legislation. I drafted the bill with the strategy in mind, 
Madam Speaker, to get the Heartbeat bill before the Supreme Court after 
the next appointment to the Supreme Court.
  I am very pleased with what I see with Neil Gorsuch. When I hear the 
rumors of the potential retirements in the Supreme Court, our three 
oldest members of the Supreme Court are 84, 80, and 78 years old, Madam 
Speaker. So we can expect a retirement fairly soon. We need to have a 
bill out of the House of Representatives sitting on Mitch McConnell's 
desk long enough and hard enough that we can gin up the effort to get 
it passed out of the United States Senate.
  There are four windows that need to be open before we can start to 
save lives in significant numbers, Madam Speaker. One of them is a pro-
life majority in the House of Representatives. We have that, 237 votes 
behind the pain-capable 20-week bill.
  The next one is a pro-life majority in the United States Senate. 
Senator Roy Blunt made mention in our values team here a couple of 
weeks ago that they have a bare majority, a pro-life majority in the 
Senate. Fifty-one votes voted for the 20-week bill over there. They 
didn't break the filibuster, but 51. That is a pro-life majority. If 
they suspend the rules over there and get rid of the filibuster rule, 
the votes are there to pass Heartbeat bill over and send it to the 
President's desk. That is the third window.
  The first window is a pro-life majority in the House. The second 
window is a pro-life majority in the Senate. The third window is a 
President who will sign the Heartbeat bill to protect these lives from 
the seventh or eighth week all the way through. I don't have any doubt 
President Trump will sign such a bill, and I don't have any doubt that 
Vice President Pence will be standing right next to him when that day 
comes. I don't know whether I am going to be standing there, but I am 
going to do everything I can, Madam Speaker, to get the Heartbeat bill 
to the President's desk.
  Yes, it will be litigated. The pro-abortion people will litigate 
everything that slows down the abortion mills in this country. So it 
would be litigated. And the timing of getting it out of the Senate to 
the President's desk and before the Court after the next confirmation 
means we are called upon to move the Heartbeat bill out of the House 
within the next few months because as we get closer to the election, it 
gets harder. Things get crazy around here. So if it gets passed around 
July, it is going to be really hard to move the Heartbeat bill.
  There is a little rule that was handed down, I think, from the 
previous Speaker that says that pro-life legislation doesn't move off 
the floor of the House unless the top three pro-life organizations 
support it and will actively support it here in the House of 
Representatives.
  Those organizations would be Family Research Council. Tony Perkins 
supports the bill. The next organization is Susan B. Anthony List. They 
also have agreed to support the bill. Yes, they have a priority they 
would like to have move ahead of that, but Marjorie Dannenfelser said:

       Of course, I would never stand in the way of something so 
     good as the Heartbeat bill.

  The third organization is the one that is not fully on board. In 
fact, I don't see that they are supporting it in any way, and back 
channel says to me that there are some statements made to try to slow 
it down. That is the National Right to Life, the oldest and the largest 
pro-life organization in the United States of America. They said that 
they don't oppose the Heartbeat bill.
  Madam Speaker, this is right off of their electronic publication, 
whether it happens to be a tweet or whether it is their website, but 
here is their statement: National Right to Life, protecting life in 
America since 1968.
  National Right to Life says they do not oppose the Heartbeat bill. I 
struck through there with a red line and said: Well, neither do they 
support it. They don't oppose the Heartbeat bill. Well, they don't 
support the Heartbeat bill.
  They are stuck on this. They are hidebound on this. Their mission 
statement says that they support and protect life from the beginning of 
life until natural death. They define the beginning of life at the 
moment of fertilization.
  So how can you be National Right to Life and not support the 
Heartbeat bill?
  Their reasoning is that they are stuck in this. They refuse to 
challenge the Supreme Court. They refuse to challenge the viability 
standards that were written into Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and 
Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
  If the number one pro-life organization refuses to challenge the 
Supreme Court on those standards, then what they are really doing is 
accepting--and some would say accepting the idea that we are going to 
see 1 million abortions a year in this country, as far as the eye can 
see, because if you are not willing to challenge the Supreme Court, 
then you are accepting 1 million abortions.
  That is what we get if we are trimming around the edges with pain-
capable at 20 weeks. I support all of this legislation. Let's do it 
all, Madam Speaker. The pain-capable doesn't get the job done. It shies 
away from challenging the Supreme Court.
  We wrote this Heartbeat bill, H.R. 490, in order to challenge the 
viability standard the Supreme Court has. We want to measure life--
unique, precious, sacred human life--from the moment of conception 
until natural death, protected. By the way, protected in the 14th 
Amendment. We are all protected in there: life, liberty, and property. 
So all we need to do is define when life begins, and we are obligated 
by the Constitution to protect that life.
  But the Supreme Court has different ideas. I don't believe they will 
after the next appointment to the Supreme Court.
  So some of the people who agree with National Right to Life have said 
that not enough States have passed it. Okay. So we went to work. Here 
are the States that have passed heartbeat protection language: Ohio, 
North Dakota, and Arkansas.
  Now, John Kasich vetoed that legislation.

[[Page H1726]]

  Who lobbied him to do that?
  The arm of National Right to Life and Planned Parenthood; side by 
side, by the way.
  What brings them to do that, Madam Speaker?
  Because they don't want to challenge the Supreme Court. There is 
testimony that went before the Ohio Legislature December 13, 2011, that 
said: We don't want to force Justice Kennedy to vote ``no'' on a 
Heartbeat bill because then Justice Ginsburg might write the majority 
opinion. If she does that, she might take away the things we have 
gained. And we should not go before the Court and risk what we have 
gained.
  I would argue instead that every time we have gone before the Court, 
we have gained. We gain something. We gain ground. The Court is 
sensitive to the movement of our society. They were sensitive to that 
when they ran up the Obergefell decision that imposed same-sex marriage 
on America. They decided American society was ready for same-sex 
marriage, and they gave us an extraconstitutional decision and forced 
it on everyone in America.
  They must have been right because there wasn't a very big fight that 
was put up. But by their rationale, we are a lot more ready to protect 
innocent unborn human life than we ever were for gay marriage. Yet we 
need to get this legislation before the Court.
  Tonight at 6 o'clock eastern time, 7 o'clock central time, there is a 
full hearing before the Iowa House of Representatives on their 
Heartbeat legislation, which has passed the senate 30-20. It went 
before the house. It has passed out of committee out of the house last 
Thursday night in the last hour that was available in what they call 
funnel week. Now this hearing is called for by the pro-abortion people 
who want to have a full house hearing. The witnesses will be lined up 
there. They will stand up for life tonight.
  If the hearing goes the way we expect, I expect the bill will come 
before the Iowa House of Representatives and it will pass. Watching the 
expressions on our excellent and wonderful first female Governor in the 
State of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, I can't imagine she would do anything but 
sign it. I don't want to put words in her mouth. I am just anticipating 
a wonderful result.
  I believe in 1 week or 2 weeks that becomes law in Iowa. Likely the 
pro-abortion people will litigate like they did in Mississippi on 
Mississippi's 15-week bill that we have just seen before today, an 
injunction that is going before the Sixth Circuit. The viability 
standards in Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and also Planned Parenthood v. 
Casey will be challenged in the Fifth Circuit on the basis of the 
Mississippi law. Then that means that the Iowa law that I anticipate 
also will be litigated.
  Why wouldn't we send this standard over to the Senate and on to go 
before the Supreme Court?
  H.R. 490, the Heartbeat Protection Act, litigated at the same time 
before the United States Supreme Court along with Mississippi's 15-week 
bill and Iowa's Heartbeat bill. That looks to me like a good result. 
That brings it from several different angles.
  I would remind the body that there were three Federal circuits where 
the partial-birth abortion legislation was heard simultaneously. They 
arrived packaged up in one case before the United States Supreme Court, 
and life prevailed in that case, as eventually life will prevail in the 
United States of America.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________