[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 15770-15777]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           EVENTS OF THE WEEK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the honor to be 
recognized to address you this evening on the floor of the House of 
Representatives, and at the conclusion of what some considered to be a 
long week here in Congress. And I'd like to go back and reflect upon 
some of the events that took place this week and perhaps look into the 
future.
  And always our deliberation here on the floor of the world's greatest 
deliberative body should be about perfecting legislation and moving 
America forward in the right direction.
  Looking back upon some of the things that have taken place this week 
that are unprecedented, some would say that yesterday, and it was 
unprecedented, more votes on the floor of the House of Representatives 
than ever in the history of the United States of America. After all of 
these years, from 1789 until 2009, we had more votes on the floor, 
almost a third more votes on the floor than ever before. The previous 
record was 40 votes. I think yesterday, 54.
  One would ask, why is that? And the answer to that is, because the 
majority decided they were going to shut down the deliberation and the 
debate here in the House.
  And I take all of us back to think about the continuum of events, the 
Constitution that underpins us, the directive in the Constitution that 
all spending has to start in the House of Representatives, not in the 
Senate, Madam Speaker, but in the House of Representatives.
  In fact, if we shut this operation down here, no new spending could 
be initiated in the United States Government, at least 
constitutionally, because it all has to start in the House. That is our 
duty. It's one of our most important duties, not our only duty by any 
means.
  And we've had a tradition of going through a number of appropriations 
bills, 13 in number, as I recall, and it gets changed a little bit from 
year to year as the configuration of the Appropriations Committee gets 
changed. But we've run through those appropriation bills in the years 
that I've been here under Republican leadership, starting, by my 
recollection, at least, every one out with an open rule that allowed 
every Member of Congress to introduce an unlimited number of 
amendments, and offer and debate those amendments on the floor of the 
House, ask for a recorded vote if they chose to do so, ask for a re-
vote if they chose to do so. In fact, there could be a movement for 
reconsideration if we chose to do so.
  If every Member offered amendments, of course this place would slow 
down dramatically and it would come actually to a halt. But for all of 
these years of the United States Congress, we got our work done under 
open rules because we found ways to come together and come to a 
conclusion so this government's business could be done in a legitimate 
fashion, with debate on both sides, with amendments that are offered 
that seek to perfect the legislation that's there, with fiscal 
responsibility on our part of the aisle, at least, and sometimes on the 
part of the Blue Dogs who used to come up and try to slow the growth of 
the government of their own party.
  But that has not been the case this week, Madam Speaker, and that is 
the reason for the unprecedented number of votes that took place here 
on the floor. And that's because the majority party decided to shut 
down the process and disallow amendments and disallow debate in order 
to shield their spending, in order to protect them from, let me say, an 
alternative view. Some would call it criticism.
  But addressing you tonight, Speaker pro tem, Speaker Pelosi received 
the gavel that you hold this evening in January of 2007. The first 
woman Speaker in the history of the United States. I've been here to 
witness the swearing in of that historic event, as well as the swearing 
in of the first African American President of the United

[[Page 15771]]

States. Historical moments. And both of those moments were coupled with 
a degree of optimism that flowed on both sides of the aisle, Democrats 
and Republicans, although I will stipulate that there had to have been 
more euphoria on the Democrat side of the aisle than there was on the 
Republican side of the aisle. But just the same, a level of euphoria on 
each side, a sense of optimism, a sense of we have reached some 
historical milestones.
  But, Madam Speaker, when we reach that moment, that is no time to 
rest on our laurels. That's no time to come to a conclusion that the 
people who have been honored so in such a historically unprecedented 
fashion should be exempt from criticism or exempt from dissent, nor 
should they be handed all the power of the government of the United 
States, whether they're the President or the Speaker of the House. But 
it seems as though that's the attitude of significant numbers of 
Members here in the House of Representatives.
  And so if I take you back to the 12 years that Republicans were in 
the majority here in the House, from 1994 until 2006, those were 
elections, sworn in '95 and until January of 2007 were actually the 
times that our span served, we offered appropriations bills under an 
open rule that allowed amendments, an unlimited number of amendments, 
to be filed. They didn't have to be filed into the Congressional 
Record. Nobody had to come here with their play book and open it up and 
say, here's the play I'm going to run, do you think you can play 
defense on that. We just said, offer your amendments into the Record, 
and we'll deal with them when they come up. And as long as we haven't 
passed that title of the bill in our deliberations, the amendment will 
be in order. And if you have amendments that you'd like to offer at the 
end of the bill, we're going to allow for an unlimited number of 
amendments to be filed at the end of the bill as well.
  And so Democrats and Republicans were able to record their dissent 
from each of the appropriations bills by filing amendments, seek to 
perfect the legislation that was there, and either expand the spending 
or reduce the spending as their conscience and their constituents 
dictated. That went on through the 12 years of Republican leadership.
  And I will also make a point that there were times when we had too 
many amendments and there were times when leadership came together and 
negotiated a unanimous consent agreement. And there were times when 
some people didn't all agree, but didn't really have much opportunity 
to object. And I have been one of those people that saw unanimous 
consent agreement reached and didn't have an opportunity to object.
  But at least the leadership was talking about how to perfect 
legislation, how to bring the most important amendments to the floor 
for debate and for vote so we could bring the will of the American 
people and the wisdom of the American people together and move this 
country forward.
  That's how it was here in this Congress from 1995 until the beginning 
of 2007, when Speaker Pelosi took the gavel, named a whole group of new 
committee Chairs, a new appropriations Chair, a new Ways and Means 
Chair, a new Financial Services Chair, the list goes on. And as the 
appropriations bills were brought to the floor, Republicans and 
Democrats offered amendments to those bills, and there were--and that 
debate, although it was extended more than it was this year, was shut 
down by unanimous consent agreement.

                              {time}  1630

  Okay. I can accept that. I don't like it, but I can accept it. That 
was the last time we had a legitimate process, Madam Speaker, because 
the 2007 appropriations cycle didn't even have an appropriations bill 
come to the floor, not 1 of 10, not 1 of 13--zero--because Democrats 
didn't want to take a vote on bills to spend money, and they didn't 
want to take a vote on the amendments that would be seeking to slow 
this massive growth in government, so they stacked it all up and put it 
into one continuing resolution that kicked the can down the road until 
after the last election when they brought up an omnibus spending bill 
that put everything into one bill. Then that bill appeared on the 
Internet. It was after 11 o'clock at night. The following morning, 
there were 3,600 pages, as I recall, and around $450 billion in 
spending all wrapped up and stacked into one bill. Actually, it may not 
have been 3,600, but it was a lot of pages of legislation. We had 
overnight to read it, and we are held accountable for everything that 
we vote for or against in this Congress. We have to have an opportunity 
to read the legislation no matter how good our staff is. We can't even 
delegate that we break the bill up into pieces and tell each one of our 
staff to read 100 pages. It's impossible.
  Furthermore, there was no opportunity to tell what was in the bill. 
Even more difficult was to figure out what wasn't in the bill, and that 
all has to be evaluated if we are going to be operating and running the 
finest country that has ever had the privilege of being sovereign on 
the face of this Earth.
  Yet our process is broken. Our process has been usurped. Because of 
the sense that power can dictate, then it has dictated. So, for 2 
years, we haven't had a legitimate appropriations process here in the 
United States Congress, not until this week, not until the Justice 
Appropriations bill was offered. Even then, it wasn't a legitimate 
process. It was offered under a rule that I had never seen before, and 
I believe it was historically unprecedented, which was: print all of 
your amendments into the Record and then we'll make them all in order. 
Now, they can announce this in advance. They can tell us what the Rules 
Committee is going to decide in advance. We filed all of our amendments 
into the Record, 127 of them or some number near that, and that allowed 
the majority to read our entire playbook. It allowed the majority to 
evaluate the political implications and the economic implications of 
every amendment, and it allowed the majority to plan their strategy. 
What was their strategy?
  The strategy was: well, we dare not let them debate this because 
they're going to bring up things that are embarrassing. We dare not 
allow votes because the Members will be held accountable. Who will hold 
them accountable? The voters. So, in order to protect the vulnerable 
Members of the United States Congress, the constitutional duty and the 
deep traditions of this Congress have been suspended by the majority 
party, and they were suspended with the structured rule that allowed 
for these 127 amendments, of which I had some; but even that, Madam 
Speaker, wasn't good enough. Twenty-some minutes into the debate on the 
first amendment, the majority party moved to recess to the call of the 
gavel, and they decided to go up to the Rules Committee and change the 
rules again.
  Now, it is a very bad deal when you change the rules from the 
Constitution and from the tradition of this body, from these 200-and-
some years of this constitutional Republic that we are. That is a very 
serious thing, but those changed rules are the ones we started out 
with. Once we got 20 minutes into the debate on the first Republican 
amendment, they then decided to change the rules again, Madam Speaker, 
and went up to the Rules Committee, which, by the way, is the heart of 
the power of this Congress. The people who decide what debate will take 
place here on the floor are up there on the third floor--that way. It's 
a tiny, little room, and it doesn't have television cameras in it, and 
you can't tune into it on C-SPAN, and there is no live feed that goes 
out of there.
  I brought an amendment up a couple of years ago to present it when 
the Chair of the Rules Committee said, Well, we're going to make sure 
that we report every vote out and that we put it into the Record. I 
simply brought an amendment up there that would require the Rules 
Committee to print every vote into the Record. The Chair became--let me 
just say to understate it--unreasonable and emotional in that I would 
seek to codify a promise that she had made. Didn't I trust her?
  Well, the answer to that, I think, is obvious, because the rules got 
changed

[[Page 15772]]

twice in the middle of the game. The second time, they decided they 
would only allow amendments to come to the floor of the House that they 
thought were good for them politically. So these 127 amendments got 
chopped down to 23 amendments. Of the 23 amendments, 20 of them were 
about spending.
  You know, it surprises me, but the Democrats didn't mind voting for 
more spending and voting against reducing spending with the exception 
of this $100,000 on capital bicycles today. Trillions of dollars have 
been spent, but they did get mobilized, some of them, about the 
spending on the capital bicycles.
  So the rules were changed from tradition. Then they were changed in 
the middle of the game. This Justice Appropriations bill came to the 
floor, and it was set up so that there wouldn't be embarrassing votes.
  For example, the Speaker of the House has declared the CIA to be 
willfully lying to the Congress of the United States of America and to 
her, and this issue is unanswered and unspoken to, and the security of 
the United States of America is hinged upon our ability to have a 
working and trusting relationship to fund the CIA and the 14 other 
members of the intelligence community and our Department of Defense, I 
might add, and our domestic law enforcement, I might add. Well, now 
there is no relationship between the Speaker of the House and the 
intelligence community other than one of being directly at odds against 
each other, with the Speaker's declaring the CIA up here in the secure 
room in the Capitol to be lying to the person who is third in line for 
the Presidency--the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
  Yes, they lied to me. They did it all the time. They misled the 
Congress of the United States of America.
  That's the statement--not retracted, not clarified, no evidence 
given. Just an allegation.
  Now, when someone accuses someone else of lying outside of these 
doors and on the street, in the family, at the workplace or in private 
society, they had better have the evidence before they accuse somebody 
of being a liar. That is the standard in America. If you think somebody 
is not telling you the truth, you don't call him a liar unless you have 
the facts. We have worse than that here in the Congress because there 
is a statute that has been passed that directly prohibits anyone from 
lying to Congress, especially about domestic or international 
terrorism, and that's what these briefings were about. They were about 
enhanced interrogations that most of America, Madam Speaker, thinks 
took place down at Gitmo, waterboarding among them. The truth is that 
no waterboarding took place at Gitmo. None of it took place in this 
hemisphere, and I can't verify that there were any enhanced 
interrogation techniques that took place even in this hemisphere, let 
alone at Gitmo by United States forces.
  So that's a long subject, and I won't go into that, Madam Speaker, 
except to say, to the extent when that declaration was made by the 
Speaker of the House, that declaration of the CIA's lying, it was an 
allegation of willfully committing repeated felonies against the 
Congress of the United States.
  This is an untenable position. We cannot have a situation where the 
most powerful Member of the House of Representatives, the person third 
in line for the Presidency, can declare our intelligence community to 
be willful liars, to be lying to us here in this Congress and to be in 
violation of Federal statute. We cannot just simply decide, because the 
Speaker doesn't want to talk about it anymore, we aren't going to talk 
about it either.
  I am bringing this up because this is the only arena that exists. 
This is the only forum that exists right now. We could not force a vote 
on it. We could not shut off funds. We could not direct the Speaker. We 
could not bring any language, because it was shut down in the Rules 
Committee. I will submit that the security clearance for the Speaker of 
the House of Representatives must be suspended until this matter is 
cleared up. It is her responsibility to clear it up, not mine. It is 
not the part of some outside working group or of some factfinding 
force. It is for the person who made the allegation.
  Madam Speaker, I would ask you to reflect. When Jesus stood in front 
of the high priest, Caiaphas, Caiaphas asked him, Jesus, did you really 
say these things? Did you really preach in this fashion?
  Christ said to Caiaphas, It's you who say I did. Ask them. They heard 
me. I was open.
  The guard struck Jesus, and Jesus said again to Caiaphas, If I have 
spoken wrongly, then you must prove the wrong, but if I have spoken 
rightly, why do you strike me?
  That's the standard. When someone speaks rightly, you can't attack 
him. You can't strike him. You can't challenge him. You can't beat him. 
You can't call him a liar; but if he speaks wrongly, the one who makes 
the allegation of speaking wrongly must prove the wrong. That's the 
standard in the Book of John. That's the standard in this American 
culture. That needs to be the standard here in the United States 
Congress. We need to hold the Speaker accountable for this for the very 
sake of the integrity of this institution and for the very sake of the 
security of the United States of America, which, surely, is put at risk 
when you think about the majority party, the majority party that is all 
trying to work together, to get along and to follow the direction of 
the Speaker, all of the staffs of all of the committees--the committee 
Chairs, the subcommittee Chairs, the rank-and-file members, the Armed 
Services people, the Select Committee on Intelligence, which just had 
their markup in secret. That won't hit the press. You won't know what 
went on in there in the Select Committee on Intelligence. You won't 
know what kind of debates took place, because that's in secret. You 
won't understand how partisan the Select Committee on Intelligence is 
today because the committee has been stacked with people who will 
support the Speaker.
  Madam Speaker, the American people don't have any insight into what 
goes on within the intelligence zones here in this Congress nor do they 
have an opportunity to view it, because a lot of it is classified. I 
can tell you, when you have a partisan committee, partisan votes, 
partisan debates in secret in the Committee on Intelligence, and when 
you have all of the intelligence agencies that are now colored with the 
allegation from the Speaker of the House that they willfully lied to 
the Congress of the United States, let me ask:
  Does that produce more funding for on-the-ground intel? for more 
devices? for more technology? Is America safer because of this tension, 
this conflict? Are we less safe? Are there more of our resources put to 
bear to gather this intelligence that we need so that we can direct our 
military to protect us from attacks from terrorists, both foreign and 
domestic, or is it less resources?
  When you send a brother and a sister out to the kitchen to clean up 
the table after dinner at night and they're fighting, does the job get 
done better or worse? Does it get done quicker or sooner? When people 
are at odds with each other, that lack of cooperation ultimately leads 
to less efficiency and to a poorer product.
  One of the problems that we had that left us vulnerable for September 
11 were the silos of intelligence when we didn't have our members of 
the intelligence community sharing intelligence. They weren't 
communicating as well as they should have. That is the foundation for 
the reason of establishing the Director of National Intelligence and 
for putting it under at least one command. I have concerns about the 
results of that as well, but that was the reason, and now we have a 
silo of politics here under the Speaker of the House, who declares 
Intelligence to be lying to Congress. She continues to go up to the 
fourth floor to receive intelligence briefings from an intelligence 
community that is probably walking on egg shells.
  The CIA, itself, directed by Leon Panetta, has laid out that they 
have the documents and that they have the proof, and their notes show 
that the

[[Page 15773]]

Speaker was briefed in line with what had been taking place with the 
enhanced interrogation techniques of three individuals and that it had 
already taken place prior to the briefing that she received on 
September 4 of 2002.
  This is an untenable position. It must be rectified, and it can't go 
on. This Congress has been shut down partly so we don't have a debate 
on this issue.
  Another reason this Congress has been shut down--and I'm talking 
about the open amendment process to appropriations bills--is there is a 
partisan interest in protecting ACORN. It can't be anything else. Most 
everybody in America at this point has heard of ACORN, the Association 
of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN was in the news 
constantly throughout the election cycle last fall. I've been watching 
ACORN for 4 to 5 years. ACORN has been involved from the beginning, and 
here is a series of things, and I'll just lay them out and then talk 
about them to the depth that I can at this point, Madam Speaker.

                              {time}  1645

  ACORN's involvement early on way back in the Community Reinvestment 
Act. This Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977 and 
then refreshed it under Bill Clinton in the 1990s. The Community 
Reinvestment Act recognized something that was wrong, and that was that 
we had lenders who looked at neighborhoods and concluded that the real 
estate value in those neighborhoods was declining because of violence, 
because of activities going on in those neighborhoods.
  And so they drew what they called--they did what they call redlining. 
They drew a red line around those neighborhoods and concluded they 
weren't going to loan money for homes for real estate in those 
neighborhoods because the value of the real estate was going down.
  If you looked at the racial makeup of the residents of those redlined 
areas, often it was African Americans in those inner-city parts. Some 
of them contributed to the decline in the value of the real estate. 
Some of them were victims of the decline in value of the real estate. 
The Community Reinvestment Act was passed to encourage lenders to--let 
me just say in simplistic terms--make bad loans in bad neighborhoods, 
to loan into the redline neighborhoods so they could improve the 
percentage of home ownership, get more people into their own homes, and 
the theory is they will take care of them: They'll have a nest egg to 
work with, and they will be more stable with everything they do. The 
families will be more stable, too.
  I don't disagree with the philosophy of the Community Reinvestment 
Act. I disagree with the result of what came about. And what came about 
was ACORN seizing on the Community Reinvestment Act and learning that 
they could go in and, essentially, intimidate lenders. If lenders 
wanted to expand or open up a branch office, they had to meet the 
standards of the Community Reinvestment Act. Vaguely written. But those 
standards were easier to prove if you had the approval of ACORN. If you 
had the disapproval, it was hard to get them approved because ACORN 
established political connections, and supported political candidates, 
and became a get-out-the-vote machine for Democrats.
  Now, think in terms of Chicago politics. I think Chicago is a city in 
America that best illustrates the foundation that is ACORN.
  And so ACORN intimidated lenders. They got groups together--some 
would say gangs; I'm calling them groups. And they went into lenders' 
offices and sometimes shoved the banker's desk over to the wall and 
surrounded him and hollered at him and screamed at him, intimidated the 
lender into making bad loans in bad neighborhoods. They intimidated 
lenders and banking institutions to write nice big checks to ACORN, and 
ACORN used that money to operate, and if they wrote a big enough check, 
ACORN wouldn't be in there demonstrating or jamming the entryways to 
the banks and shutting down their commerce. These were intimidation 
shakedown tactics. ACORN is just one of the entities that did that. We 
know of a few others, and I think the name Jesse Jackson comes to mind 
for most people when I raise this subject matter. There were other 
entities out there that did the same thing.
  But ACORN was in the center of this. And not only that, but ACORN 
found themselves in a situation where they could go out and identify 
and broker the people who would qualify for these low-interest loans, 
subprime loans--a lot of subprime loans were promoted by ACORN. The 
lending institutions made those loans because then ACORN would be off 
of their back and allow their doors to stay open, and they kept this 
relationship going.
  ACORN also found themselves in a position to be brokering these 
subprime loans through into the secondary market of Fannie Mae and 
Freddie Mac. So I think already, Madam Speaker, you see the pattern 
here.
  The Community Reinvestment Act was a foundation that allowed ACORN to 
go in and intimidate lenders and set themselves up where they became 
the broker for home mortgage loans that many times were subprime loans 
that were sold in the secondary market to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac 
And on up through the line to the investment banks, where these loans 
were sliced, diced, sorted, shuffled, cut, stacked, and tranched.
  And all of that went on to the point where you couldn't trace where 
all of the loans had gone anymore, but the collateral still was 
attached to the mortgage loans. And this became part of the core of the 
financial meltdown that we've experienced in the last several months.
  That's transgression number one for ACORN.
  Transgression number two is ACORN's pledge to go out and register--I 
think their goal was 1.3 million new voters for the 2008 election 
cycle. So they put their minions out into the streets across the 
streets of America. Interesting. They've been active doing this before. 
There were investigations that came up in 2006. In the 2006 election in 
the State of Washington, ACORN turned in in one sample 1,800 voter 
registration forms, and the number of legitimate registration forms out 
of 1,800 was six. Only six were real. The rest were phony. I didn't do 
the percentage on that, but I can tell you it's not very good.
  And so they brought about a prosecution there and got some kind of 
settlement. But that was 2006. There were other incidents scattered 
across the country. The focus of these incidents seemed to show up in 
swing States, swing States like Ohio, States that they wanted to affect 
the result of the election. Of about five or six important swing 
States, ACORN was the most active in them.
  Now, this is also an organization that has received, as a matter of 
fact, more than $53 million of our tax dollars to fund them. To do 
what? Well, in part, facilitate bad loans in bad neighborhoods sold up 
through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--which have since been nationalized, 
by the way, because of the insolvency in part created by some of those 
transactions--and a get-out-the-vote Democrat drive that took place in 
many of the cities, Chicago for example, and registered hundreds of 
thousands of fraudulent voter registrations. And in fact by ACORN's own 
admission, over 400,000 fraudulent registrations were filed by ACORN in 
that cycle leading up to the 2008 election.
  And I asked for investigations. I asked for congressional inquiries. 
I asked for the Justice Department to look into ACORN. And I had no 
sympathy on this side of the aisle. I temporarily had some sympathy 
from the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Conyers, who for 
about 3 weeks was on record as believing there was evidence there that 
may warrant that we take it up and investigate ACORN. But 3 weeks after 
he expressed the sentiment, he concluded there wasn't enough evidence 
there.
  There is a lawsuit against ACORN that has been won and a settlement 
that's been achieved. We have put hundreds of pages of data into the 
records here in this Congress, and still they

[[Page 15774]]

conclude that there is not enough evidence there to bear looking into 
it. We've named hundreds of--I don't know if it's hundreds--we've named 
dozens of post offices this year. We debate these on the floor under 
suspension. We vote and name post offices. We've got time to name post 
offices, but we don't have time to look into ACORN, which is corrupting 
our election process and has undermined the financial integrity of the 
United States of America?
  And furthermore, we have to suspect that there is a real lack of 
enthusiasm on the part of the administration, as well as the Democrats 
in the Congress and the House and in the Senate, because when we look 
back through the history of the President of the United States, we find 
a consistent association with ACORN on the part of Barack Obama. Barack 
Obama, who was a lawyer for ACORN and argued for them in a voter 
registration case, albeit pro bono, but still their employee, still 
representing ACORN in court.
  And when someone does that pro bono, does that tell you they agree 
with them or disagree with the agenda of ACORN? I think we all can 
agree that if you're going to take a case for free and argue in court 
that surely you must agree with the principles and the people that 
you're working for. You're not going to see me go represent Planned 
Parenthood in court for free or for a check, for that matter, because I 
disagree with the agenda of Planned Parenthood.
  Barack Obama clearly agreed with the agenda of ACORN. When he worked 
for them for free and represented them in court, that makes him their 
employee as their attorney.
  Now, if that's not compelling enough, Madam Speaker, we'll take 
another component of this. Barack Obama headed up Project Vote. Project 
Vote is a subsidiary of ACORN. That's not disputed. They're the get-
out-the-vote machine in Chicago. That's not disputed. The head of ACORN 
in Chicago hired President--well, at that time Barack Obama--to train 
the people that were going to work under Project Get-Out-the-Vote and 
also those that would go into the bankers' offices and encourage them 
to make bad loans in bad neighborhoods.
  Part of this enterprise that has all of the trappings of a criminal 
enterprise headed up in Chicago by--I will check the name--- but I 
believe it's Margaret Talmage, who hired Barack Obama to head up 
Project Vote, and he got paid. The canceled checks exist. He worked for 
Project Vote as an employee, hired by the head of ACORN in Chicago to 
work for their subsidiary to get out the vote and to train people in 
community-organizing activities and postures himself as if community-
organizing is a highly virtuous endeavor.
  Well, hardly anybody knows what a community organizer does. And I 
suspect that it's different from community-to-community, county-to-
county, State-to-State, and nation-to-nation.
  But when it comes to community organizing in Chicago, clearly there 
are those who adhere to the mission of Saul Alinsky, the great 
community organizer, Rules for Radicals Saul Alinsky--whom also Hillary 
Clinton studied under, by the way directly, and whom Barack Obama seems 
to be a philosophical protege.
  But the ``Rules for Radicals'' clearly applied to ACORN. They were 
activists. They did intimidate. It was part of their M.O. ACORN, 
Project Vote, and dozens and dozens of other subsidiaries of ACORN 
scattered across this country. And ACORN central headquarters is down 
in New Orleans. It's been moved from downtown New Orleans out to the 
outskirts of New Orleans at 2609 Canal Street. A $2.5 million building, 
roughly relatively new and modern, that houses many of the subsidiary 
corporations that one can connect.
  And I've filed a list that is incomplete but is a list of 174 of the 
more than 250 corporations that are affiliated with ACORN. I filed them 
into the Congressional Record as part of the amendments that were to go 
on the justice appropriation's bill that was managed by Mr. Mollohan 
and concluded yesterday. But of course, those amendments were denied 
not quite in secret, but up here where you can't hardly get six 
reporters in the room if there are going to be a dozen Members of 
Congress, if they're pleading to be heard here on the floor.
  So that's the record. That's the standard. 2609 Canal Street, ACORN's 
building. One should go on Google Earth and take a look at that and 
zero in on it and see what it looks like, Madam Speaker, and the 
corporations that are involved as subsidiaries, the inner-connecting 
spider web of corporations.
  By the way, Louisiana is one of the easiest States in the union to 
incorporate in. I don't think it's a coincidence that ACORN is there 
with their central headquarters. But they have headquarters scattered 
across this country in 50 cities, at least that they announce--and I 
don't know how many States--and activities going on, and also they say 
over 100,000 members--that number actually is higher than that, around 
175,000 families.
  Annual dues for an individual, whether you're poverty stricken or 
aren't, I understand is around $120. So they raised some of that money 
from dues from people that may or may not be able to afford that. 
Fifty-three million dollars from our tax dollars, and now--actually, we 
don't know the whole picture because it takes a lot of work to unravel 
this spider web of corporations that exist that are affiliated and part 
and parcel of ACORN that have interconnecting boards of directors and 
sometimes copy-and-paste boards of directors where if the board of--
let's just say Project Vote or one of the other subsidiaries happened 
to meet and then walk into another room and you would sit down with 
ACORN and that board met, you might look around and not find any faces 
that are different. They might all be the same. Some of these 
interconnecting corporations, subsidiaries of ACORN, have identical 
boards of directors and identical addresses and identical corporate 
filings with the exception of the name and the date that they're filed.
  This is a copy-and-paste reproductive method that allows them to go 
out and take all kinds of money in from every avenue, pour that 
through, commingle those fungible funds and spend them however they 
like, including getting out the vote for Democrats, registering 
hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes.
  And when ACORN's asked about this, Madam Speaker--and that question 
came up in a little debate with the head of ACORN last night--they say, 
Well, ACORN's not under investigation or indictment. Not true. They 
clearly are. Absolutely in Nevada they are. But they are alleging that 
there were only investigations or indictments of their employees that 
were just a few, not very well managed, maybe rogue employees that were 
out there registering.
  Well, it turns out to be a fact that ACORN's policy in print was, in 
some of the States, to pay commissions for people to sign up voter 
registrations. Clearly against the law in a number of the States across 
the country and many of the States across the country, including 
Nevada. We will see more of these investigations and convictions 
unfold.

                              {time}  1700

  Now, why am I concerned about this, Madam Speaker? The answer is, 
first, it is essential that we maintain a legitimate, reliable and 
honorable election process in America. If first you corrupt the voter 
registration rolls, the next thing that happens is the votes themselves 
are corrupted. And ACORN's position is, well, maybe we gave you 400,000 
or more fraudulent voter registration forms, but never fear, there were 
no fraudulent votes that came from that. In fact, the Attorney General 
of Nevada, who happens to be a Democrat and is involved in the 
prosecution of ACORN, and I applaud him for that, says that he's 
certain that there were no fraudulent votes that came from this. I 
don't know how anybody can be certain that there were no fraudulent 
votes that came from 400,000 or more fraudulent registrations. That 
defies my ability to imagine. 400,000 fraudulent voter registrations 
and no fraudulent votes? That is a leap of faith that I can't take.

[[Page 15775]]

  It's logical to me that the more fraudulent registrations you have, 
the more fraudulent votes you have. It's not logical that every 
fraudulent registration would be a fraudulent vote, but it's clearly 
logical that with over 400,000 fraudulent registrations, you're going 
to get fraudulent votes. How many, is the question. Who were they? We 
don't know because a fraudulent vote is almost the perfect crime. If 
you can walk into a polling place and the poll worker says, Who are 
you, and you answer, my name is Joe Schmo and I live at--let's just use 
a previously used address, 2609 Canal Street, New Orleans, and if 
there's someone registered under that name, they hand you a ballot and 
you go vote, no ID required, no picture ID required. In fact, in New 
Mexico--and this is part of the Congressional Record where the 
Secretary of State of New Mexico testified before the Judiciary 
Committee about 3 years ago--it comes down to this: if I am working as 
a poll worker in New Mexico registered to vote in New Mexico and 
someone walks into that polling place and says, I'm Steve King and I 
live at--names the address that I live at, even if they say they are me 
and I'm working the polls, by law in New Mexico I can't challenge that 
fraudulent voter. It's against the law to challenge voters in New 
Mexico and many other States because the liberals have so corrupted the 
process.
  First, they passed Motor Voter, so that when people get a driver's 
license they ask them, Do you want to be registered to vote? Well, who 
says no? Also, there is a little spot on there that attests that you 
are a citizen of the United States. Well, who says no? What if you 
don't understand the language, are you really going to read that as a 
legal document and know that if you attest that you're a citizen of the 
United States, that you're guilty of perjury?
  By the way, out of 306-or-so million Americans, does anybody know 
anybody that has been prosecuted for falsely attesting that they are a 
citizen on a voter registration form? No. That's an unprosecuted crime; 
a crime of perjury, which exists as a felony in every State that I know 
of, unprosecuted. So our voter registration rolls were corrupted by the 
low standard of Motor Voter.
  And then we had the Florida fiasco in 2000. And there, if we looked 
across what was going on in Florida, there were allegations of voter 
fraud on both sides. I don't know that there wasn't some on both sides. 
But what I saw was indicators that there could have been significant 
votes shifted. And I think all the scrutiny that came into those 
counties in Florida helped. I think it was a good thing that a lot of 
people went down and watched the hanging chad count.
  But I also have seen film of the director of the Miami-Dade County 
Election Board, Michael--last name starts with an L, and I actually 
can't remember it, it's been 9 years. In a previous election, there is 
videotape of the hanging chads that would come in. How did they deal 
with the hanging chads in Miami-Dade County? And I've seen this 
videotape; I don't think it could be reconstructed in any way. They had 
70 volunteers from the League of Women Voters--now, they haven't been 
on my side very much, they really don't seem to be very bipartisan to 
me--long table, 70 volunteers from the League of Women Voters. They 
were set down at a table, and they would bring in these punch-card 
ballots and set them on one side of each of the ladies that were there 
working, issue them two or three nice sharp No. 2 lead pencils--like 
you take your Iowa basic skills with where I come from--and they would 
pick up these hanging chad ballots, these punch-card ballots, and clean 
them up. If any chad is hanging and it's still dangling there, they 
would punch the pencil through the hole, break it off, and stack these 
cleaned-up ballots over on this other side where, once they got done 
cleaning up the hanging chads, these 70 volunteers from the League of 
Women Voters, then the process ballots would go through the vote 
counting machine. Now, does that give you a lot of confidence if you 
put somebody there at a table to decide your vote for you by where they 
poke the pencil and which chad is hanging? Not me it doesn't. That 
process should have never happened.
  The Collier brothers did investigative research on election fraud 
down in Florida. Neither one of these gentlemen are alive today--and I 
don't have any sign of foul play and I don't allege such a thing, I 
just haven't been able to track what brought about their demise.
  But I read a fair amount of material. And they did a movie in 
investigative journalism where they went into the previous election 
board director of Miami-Dade County that took care of the voting 
machines, sitting in a warehouse out along the edge of the swamp. And 
they walked in and said, What do you do? Well, I fix these vote-
counting machines and I keep them up in shape. Well, how do you make 
this all work? And they got to talking about how the elections got 
rigged. And he said, Here's how it is--and the video exists. He pulled 
some plastic gears out of a drawer and he showed, here it is, we grind 
one of these teeth off on this plastic gear, we put it in the vote-
counting machine, and then where we put that gear makes a difference in 
which side gets an extra vote for every 10 that comes through. Openly 
in the videotape.
  And they went up into the loft in the attic and filmed a bunch more 
of that before they got suspicious and they had to skedaddle out of 
there with their cameras. I saw those things while I was doing this 
research back then.
  I bring this out, Madam Speaker, because, just because this wasn't a 
particularly close election in November of 2008 doesn't mean that we 
shouldn't be alarmed about the corruption of our election process; 537 
votes made the difference in Florida, and Florida made the difference 
on who would be the next leader in the Free World, Madam Speaker.
  And those 537 votes could easily be blended through the more than 
400,000 fraudulent registration forms that ACORN has admitted to 
turning in that corrupted voter registration rolls and opened the door 
for the corruption of our election process.
  Now, I have discussed the Community Reinvestment Act, and now I have 
discussed the voter registration fraud process. And these are the ``get 
out the vote'' people for Democrats, please don't forget. And if we do 
forget--I should put another fact out.
  President Obama, as a candidate for President, then-Senator Obama, 
hired ACORN to get out the vote and wrote the check to one of their 
subsidiary corporations for over $800,000. There's three ways the 
President is tied--more than three ways the President is tied to ACORN. 
One is as their attorney, one is as an employee of Project Vote, 
heading up Project Vote in Chicago, receiving paychecks, ACORN through 
Project Vote into President Obama. The third one is hiring ACORN to get 
out the vote.
  There are rumors that donor lists got circulated back and forth; I 
haven't been able to chase that down. The fourth component is the White 
House has hired ACORN to participate in the census.
  Now, over 400,000 fraudulent registrations turned in, admitted by 
ACORN--I suspect significantly more. I have never met someone who 
admitted to such wrongdoing and admitted to it in the full magnitude of 
their wrongdoing. They always try to minimize. So at least 400,000. And 
now the President, who has worked for ACORN in two capacities, hired 
ACORN in at least one capacity, now hires ACORN in another capacity as 
President of the United States to help with the census, to help count 
the people of the United States.
  Now, if you want to direct what goes on in America, if you want the 
power of this country, there are two ways: through the ballot box and 
influence the elections so you get your people in these seats here and 
in the seats in the Senate and in the White House, where there is 
tremendous power. That's one component. Another component is through 
the United States Census.
  What does it do? Well, the Constitution requires us to count the 
people every 10 years, count the people--not by formula, not by some 
magic formula, but actually count the people. It

[[Page 15776]]

costs a lot of money, and it takes a lot of people out there to do it 
to actually count them.
  But once the people are counted, it affects two big things: one is 
the redistricting process, where new lines get drawn on the maps of all 
the States of the Union. And those maps are drawn and approved by the 
State legislatures. And some of them it's very, very partisan, and they 
decide how they expand the number of Democrat or Republican seats, 
whoever happens to be in charge. In my State I am really fortunate 
because it's far less partisan than it is in any other State that I 
know of. But that determines, in a large way, who will be in the 
majorities in the State legislatures after the next elections. Some 
seats will be lost and some seats will be won because of the lines that 
are drawn that are the result of the census that is taking place in 
2010.
  Not only does it make a difference in who is in the majority in the 
State legislatures--and every State is bicameral, with the exception of 
Nebraska, which is unicameral--but also it makes a difference in the 
congressional districts, these 435 districts that are seated here in 
this Congress, Madam Speaker. And when those lines are changed, it 
makes a difference on sometimes who comes to this Congress. It makes a 
difference on whether a few more Republicans get elected or a few more 
Democrats get elected. And if you can stack the count in certain areas, 
you can expand the number of seats and make a difference on who holds 
the gavel here behind me, Madam Speaker.
  If we just look at the count of illegals in America, there is a study 
done by a reputable organization, Dr. Steve Camerata, as I recall, that 
comes to a conclusion that there are between nine and 11 congressional 
seats in America. This is an election or two ago, so the analysis 
probably shifts down. But it was between nine and 11 seats in America 
that are shifted because we count illegals along with legals for 
purposes of apportionment. It takes, in my opinion, a constitutional 
amendment to fix that. But someone like Maxine Waters in California, it 
will require perhaps 50,000 votes to get reelected to Congress because 
I suspect she doesn't have as many legal Americans there and a lower 
percentage of citizens, and certainly a lower incidence of people 
voting. My particular seat, it will take about 120,000 votes to be 
elected or reelected to the Fifth District of Iowa because we have a 
high percentage of citizens and a low percentage of illegals.
  The census makes a difference. And if the census is an accurate 
count, then we can draw better lines. If the census is an inaccurate 
count, then the lines will be drawn to favor the partisan interests of 
the people that produce the inaccurate count.
  Now, if I were going to look across the entire United States of 
America and try to come up with entities that have the wherewithal to 
significantly provide the manpower for this census and who had the most 
ability to corrupt the process, number one on my list of alarm would be 
ACORN and all of their affiliates for all these reasons that I've said. 
Now, how can anyone expect to get a legitimate count on the census from 
the very people that have produced the illegitimate voter registration 
forms? And yet President Obama, his administration has contracted with 
ACORN to assist with the census.
  Madam Speaker, the question came up--actually, it came up last night 
in national media--about do I have any proof of this because ACORN 
denies it. And Madam Speaker, I have in my hand the documents that do 
determine--these are documents that come from the U.S. Census Bureau, 
and they read that, let's see, they were looking for some entities that 
could help with the census. Their goal was to work with national 
organizations and corporations that could help us reach the hard-to-
count populations. And as I look down through this information that 
includes an agreement with ACORN, it says, Our overall goal was to work 
with organizations that could reach the hard-to-count populations.
  And here's what they did to identify who to partner with. They went 
to a list of national organizations, they added advisory committees, 
they have used a cluster segmentation approach. They looked at the 
economically disadvantaged, the unattached mobile singles--that's a 
term I had not seen before--in high-density areas with ethnic enclaves. 
Okay. These are legitimate places where we would have difficulty with 
the census, and I recognize and agree with that. But then they had 
criteria for not partnering with a group. One is if they didn't meet 
the criteria above that I mentioned. The second one is if they're hate 
groups. Now, I would like to see that list of hate groups that's filed 
under the United States Census Bureau.

                              {time}  1715

  It seems as though the Department of Homeland Security had identified 
conservatives as hate groups. It seems as though the FBI had the 
resources to send investigators out to mill through the crowds on TEA 
Bag Day, April 15, Tax Day. The FBI was looking at the people that came 
to the courthouse square to voice their objection to the oppressive 
taxes that have been imposed upon this country and the irresponsible 
spending, and they're identified as hate groups. Conservative groups, 
hate groups. I don't know of a liberal group that would be on that, but 
I hope that we are able to make that request and get a list in the 
Congressional Record of who are the hate groups. I suspect I'm probably 
alleged to be on some of them.
  Then other groups that were not considered were law enforcement 
groups, anti-immigrant groups. I don't know what an anti-immigrant 
group is. I know there are some anti-illegal immigrant groups. I don't 
know of a single anti-immigrant group, but that gives you a sense of 
the biased ideology that lays this out. Also, any groups that might 
make people fearful of participating in the census. I don't know who 
that might be, but it gives them a way out. Or maybe any groups that 
did not serve the hard-to-count population.
  So it looks to me like they have written some regs here that will 
qualify ACORN. I have in my hand a document from the U.S. Census 
Bureau, National Partnership, and it is a document that says the 
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN, their 
tasks check-marked and dated January 13, 2009, 3:02 p.m.: ``Dear sir or 
madam, I am writing to inform you that on behalf of the 2010 census 
partnership program, we would like to invite you to become a national 
partner with the Census Bureau for the 2010 census.''
  ACORN is already in. It's not a matter of conjecture. ACORN is 
involved in the census. And if we don't suspend that here in this 
Congress, the result will be, I fear, a corruption of the census 
process that is nearly as serious as the corruption of the election 
process.
  Why would you go to the people that have exactly the wrong track 
record and put them in control? Why did the President ask to move the 
Census within the White House and out of the Department of Commerce? 
Why is Rahm Emanuel involved in directing this, the man from Chicago, 
the Chicago politics visits and arrives at the White House with the 
President?
  And, by the way, if one goes back also and even begins to think that 
President Obama wasn't involved with ACORN and this is just a random 
hiring process that took place because it made sense, I would point out 
also that President Obama chaired for a time and sat on the board for a 
longer time of the Woods Foundation in Chicago, which distributed funds 
to community organizing groups and directed funds to ACORN. As chairing 
the Woods Foundation, he sent money to ACORN. He also sat on the board 
of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. This is a liberal education 
initiative, the brainchild of the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers. 
William Ayers recruited President Obama, at that time State Senator 
Obama, to sit on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which 
what did they do? Raised money and distributed it to places including 
ACORN.
  So I think I have given you enough threads, Madam Speaker, to 
understand that President Obama is tied in with ACORN, part and parcel. 
He's been their attorney. He's been an employee under the Project Vote. 
He's

[[Page 15777]]

hired them and written them a check out of his campaign for over 
$800,000, sat on the board of the Woods Foundation and the Chicago 
Annenberg Challenge. Both of them sent other money to ACORN. William 
Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist, was the founder of the Chicago 
Annenberg Challenge. And by these documents here, Madam Speaker, ACORN 
is working on the census and at a minimum providing temporary employees 
to work on the census to count the people. And we know what's happened 
to our election process. It's been corrupted. And, by the way, there 
are news reports of fraudulent votes and prosecutions on fraudulent 
votes and people that voted multiple times that were enabled by the 
registrations of ACORN. Some of that, Madam Speaker, is in the news 
today.
  So I revere this election process, and I would rather lose elections 
than I would lose the integrity of the election process. And I'm happy 
enough to accept the results of a legitimate census no matter what it 
is. If it draws a district out of Iowa, I will lament that. I want to 
have the most representation possible from Iowa. But we have got to 
have a real count and we have got to deal with integrity. And when we 
have corrupt organizations that have all the trappings of a criminal 
enterprise, this Congress should shut off funding to that criminal 
enterprise.
  But, instead, we don't get a vote and we don't get a debate because 
the rules are unprecedentedly changed and corrupted up there on the 
third floor in the Rules Committee where nobody goes, and if many did, 
they couldn't get in. We need cameras there. We need the press there, 
and we need open rules here on the floor. And we need people that are 
willing to engage in this debate and take come whatever may. If you 
believe in yourself, stand up and say so. I will be happy to yield to 
you. But I see it never happens. You sit on your hands, and you accept 
this power that you happen to have right now.
  But the American people are going to take it back, and they are going 
to give it to the people that they trust.

                          ____________________