Congressional Record, Volume 164 Issue 48 (Tuesday, March 20, 2018)

[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.

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