[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 17545-17551]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    STAFF SERGEANT SALVATORE GIUNTA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Tonko). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to be 
recognized here on the floor of the House of Representatives and be one 
of the first speakers here on the floor in the aftermath of the 
election that took place a little over a week ago.
  I have a number of things that I hope to discuss this evening; 
however, I would like to start this presentation this evening, Mr. 
Speaker, with a recognition of valor of an Iowan who tomorrow will be 
receiving the Medal of Honor that will be hung around his neck and 
presented to him by our Commander in Chief, President Obama, at a 
ceremony at the White House.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor an American hero, Staff Sergeant 
Salvatore Giunta. He is of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team from 
Hiawatha, Iowa. He will be presented with the Medal on November 16, 
tomorrow, at the White House by the President for distinguishing 
himself by acts of gallantry at the risk of his life above and beyond 
the call of duty.
  In October 2007, while moving along a wooded area with an eight-man 
squad in Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, the squad was ambushed on three 
sides by at least a dozen Taliban fighters.
  Even though Staff Sergeant Giunta received several gunshot wounds, he 
continued the fight, running straight into the path of gunfire to 
rescue one wounded soldier and saving his life as he drug him back to 
safety, then running again directly into the path of oncoming gunfire 
to overtake and kill two fighters while rescuing his brother in arms, 
Sergeant Josh Brennan. Even though Sergeant Brennan would later die in 
surgery, the family still had the comfort of knowing that his brothers 
were with him and had rescued him from being taken captive by the 
enemy.
  That is a small segment of that engagement that day in October of 
2007, and, Mr. Speaker, it is our privilege to express our great 
gratitude and to honor Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta.
  To commemorate this gallantry and this Medal of Honor, which will be 
the first Medal of Honor that will be awarded to a surviving American 
servicemember for either of the Iraq or Afghanistan conflicts, probably 
the greatest supporter and cheerleader and respecter of our military, 
our veterans, our combat veterans, and especially our combat wounded, 
works in this Capitol every day reaching out to them--Albert Caswell. 
Albert has written a number of poems that he has presented to the 
wounded and to the families. He has provided a tremendous amount of 
comfort for those who have suffered so much for our liberty and for our 
freedom.
  This poem is something that he sat up last night and penned. Mr. 
Speaker, I read this into the Record out of great respect for his 
contribution, and also great respect for the Medal of Honor winner that 
tomorrow will receive that medal from the President, Staff Sergeant 
Salvatore Giunta. This poem is called ``At Honor's Height.'' It reads, 
this:

     At . . .
     All, At Honor's Height!
     All in the darkness of war . . . this fight!
     All in those most sacred moments, that which ignite!
     When, who lives or dies . . . and but lives to see another 
           sunrise . . .
     So Sal, so all depended upon you . . .
     While, against all odds . . . as you stood so tall, almost 
           like a God!
     As into the face of death you ran . . .
     As did all your brothers in arms, so too, who on this day 
           began . . .
     Such Brilliance, Such Light, So True This Sight . . . your 
           hue!
     All At Honor's Height, as were you!
     Hooah . . . Airborne! With but your badge of courage worn!
     As all in that moment, as when your faith so chose to crest!
     All in your actions, and deeds . . . to answer freedom's 
           quest!
     As your heart so sailed, up to new heights . . . so now!
     All in your most selfless light!
     Its Highest Point, At Honor's Height!
     Turning The Darkness, Into The Light!
     To win that day! To win that night!
     All At Honor's Height!
     For there can be no greater gift!
     Nor then there, no more blessed thing as this!
     Then, but the will to give up one's life!
     All for, your Brothers in Arms . . . this most sacred 
           sacrifice!
     While, all in that moment of truth . . . by bringing your 
           light . . .
     Which, so brings such tears . . . even to the Angels' eyes, 
           this night!
     Ah yes you, Sal, so stand this day, all at Honor's Height!
     All in what you so gave . . . so brilliant and bright!
     For what child shall so be born, all from your gift in 
           future's worn?
     Who might so save the world, or in harm's way so too . . . 
           climb to such heights!
     For on this day, you and your Brother In Arms have so shown 
           us all the way . . .
     To Honor's Height!

  Mr. Speaker, I don't have the words to embellish the actions of Staff 
Sergeant Salvatore Giunta, nor do I have the words to embellish the 
poem that has been so brilliantly written by Albert Caswell, ``At 
Honor's Height,'' to commemorate the gallantry, the bravery, the 
nobility of this Iowan who tomorrow will be so profoundly honored at 
the ceremony in the White House and the presentation of the Medal of 
Honor.

[[Page 17546]]

  I have had the privilege to get to know one of our top Medal of Honor 
recipients in the Nation. In fact, the most decorated living American 
is Colonel Bud Day, also from Iowa. We happen to have three living 
recipients of the Medal of Honor that I claim as Iowans, and Colonel 
Day heads up that list as the dean of them. He was the top officer in 
the Hanoi Hilton in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. He is a World War 
II, Korean, and Vietnam veteran. He also has been an honorable and 
noble leader here in America that has stepped forward and worn the 
Medal of Honor with courage and dignity, and he has been a noble 
American in every day of his civilian life as well as his invested 
life.
  He has made the advice for Medal of Honor winners that: You wear that 
medal every day of your life; that when you receive the medal, everyone 
looks at you and wherever you go they know that you have received the 
Medal of Honor, so all of your behavior is observed more closely than 
it might be if you were perhaps significantly more anonymous. So you 
can cast disgrace on America or you can cast honor on America.
  The Medal of Honor recipients have by and large, and in all cases 
that I know of, cast honor on America by their deeds, by their bravery, 
by their nobility, and by their actions as they proceed through the 
course of perhaps post-military service and being Americans in a most 
honorable fashion of seeking to make America a better place to live in.

                              {time}  2030

  We look forward to the future that Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta 
has and the message that he will deliver to this country as he proudly 
wears the Medal of Honor. I ask that this Congress stop and pause and 
reflect upon the sacrifice that he has made.
  I think also that there are circumstances where we have lost 
Americans who have conducted themselves in as noble a fashion who are 
unrecognized. I pray that Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta does grow old 
here in America and leaves the legacy of his nobility and bravery 
wherever he goes as an inspiration to the young, as an inspiration to 
all of us. He is certainly an inspiration to me, and he should be an 
inspiration to us here in this Congress.
  As someone says, I don't really want to have that debate. It is a 
brutal debate. We have never had such a thing here in this Congress. 
There are brutal battles in war. Lives are lost, blood is spilled, 
hearts are broken, destinies are changed. The destiny of America has 
turned for the better when the destinies of individuals are 
occasionally sacrificed in that noble cause. And Staff Sergeant Giunta 
was willing to make that sacrifice. He stepped into the gunfire over 
and over again. Tomorrow he steps up to receive the Medal of Honor from 
the Commander in Chief, the President of the United States.
  I salute Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta, and I ask that especially 
the young people in America look up to him as an example. There are 
many others. Tomorrow we honor Staff Sergeant Giunta.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your indulgence on this subject matter, and 
I appreciate the privilege to deliver this summary of Staff Sergeant 
Giunta's sacrifice here on the floor.
  I ask that as we go forward into the 112th Congress, we keep in mind, 
we get into our parochial battles here, and I mean that, of course, 
figuratively, because they really aren't battles by comparison. And we 
wear the Republican jerseys, the people on the other side wear the 
Democrat jerseys, and we go at each other day after day here trying to 
gain some kind of advantage.
  This Congress, Mr. Speaker, especially over the last 2 years, but I 
think over the last four, and those on this side of the aisle would 
say, no, further back than that, has gotten away from the principle of 
doing the right thing for the American people and instead gotten 
involved in the one-upmanship that takes place when you have partisan 
conflict here.
  I do recall coming to this Congress when I was elected and sworn in 
here on this floor in 2003. And I recall those 4 years, and subsequent 
to that, if I had a policy issue, I had constituents that had a problem 
that needed to be dealt with, if I had something that made a good 
argument for where we could take America, I took that argument to the 
committee or I took it to the committee chairs. I took it to members of 
the committee. I testified before committees to move that policy 
forward, Mr. Speaker, and there was an ear for a policy discussion. 
That ear was there on the part of the committee chairs, the members of 
the committee, to a certain degree with the leadership, that would seek 
to accommodate those concerns that I would bring forward.
  I am convinced that most of the Members were in the same condition I 
was in. There was an ear there and the system was set up so that the 
wisdom of the American people could be synthesized and poured into each 
of the 435 Members of Congress. We would sort those issues out and 
raise the priorities of them, and as we brought those issues here and 
the priorities came to the top, this Congress acted upon those 
priorities. At least the process and the system was wired to do that.
  Sometime in 2007, perhaps, that began to devolve. In 2007, in the 
beginning of that session, we did have a legitimate appropriations 
process where we had an open rule and a Member could write an amendment 
to an appropriations bill, bring it down here to the floor and 
introduce that amendment, and if it met the rules of the 
Parliamentarian, it would be deemed in order and one could force a 
debate and a recorded vote on an issue that had to do with an 
appropriations bill.
  Now, that had gone on for 200 years in this Congress. And it went on 
in the early part of 2007, which I remember is the last time we had a 
legitimate appropriations process with open rules. And along about 
2008, that began to get shut down. And by 2009 and 2010, it was shut 
down and Members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, were shut out 
of the process.
  Our constituents can't understand about electing someone to the 
United States Congress, it a powerful seat, 1/435th of the spending and 
the initiation of the taxation and the deliberative proceedings that 
take place as directed by our Constitution, electing someone to 
establish that franchise, and having that franchise cut out from 
underneath them because the Speaker of the House had deemed that there 
wouldn't be any amendments on appropriations bills, there wouldn't be 
any open rules on appropriations results.
  I am pretty sensitive to this, Mr. Speaker, because in 2007, my staff 
analyzed this--I didn't pay attention to it--they analyzed it and 
concluded that I had introduced and successfully passed more amendments 
than anybody else in Congress in that appropriations process of 2007. 
And I look back on that time and I think, where have we gone?
  We have gone from having an active open rule that was consistent with 
the first two centuries of American process here in this Congress to a 
kind of system that not only is there a closed rule on appropriations 
bills, it has been shut off now for 2 years, but no appropriations 
bills. No budget. Just a continuing resolution, a CR, that is written 
in the Speaker's office by the Speaker's staff. And if someone can 
knock on the door and slip a piece of paper underneath the door, and if 
somebody inside there decides they want to incorporate it, you might 
actually be able to have your voice heard.
  But the voice of the American people has been shut out, and that 
intransigence is one of the biggest problems we have had in this 
Congress.
  If we don't have enough faith in the positions that we take here that 
we can allow open public debate, and if we can't allow amendments to be 
offered, debated, and voted upon so that we can perfect legislation in 
subcommittee, in committee, and here on the floor, then the system is 
dysfunctional, and it shuts out the wisdom of the American people and 
it puts it into a monopoly of one office, the Speaker's office, the 
Speaker's staff, and to the extent that any of the committees can weigh 
in.
  That is the piece that I am hopeful will change. That is the pledges 
that I

[[Page 17547]]

am hearing, that we are going to see more open rules, the 
appropriations process comes down with open rules, and that any Member 
of Congress, whether they be Democrats or Republicans, can offer 
essentially an unlimited number of amendments in an appropriations 
process so that the American people can see it is a legitimate process, 
we can debate those issues, we can vote them up or down, and we can 
move on.
  Mr. Speaker, I am looking forward to this reversion back to the fresh 
air we had, some might say a new breath of fresh air. I would say it is 
reverting back to the fresh air we had. And it is high time. And all of 
the issues that have been debated up and down in the media, a lot of 
them didn't see the light of day here in this Congress, and I am 
hopeful they will see the light of day.
  The first issue that I am hopeful that is debated here in this 
upcoming 112th Congress with this incoming new freshman class, these 
80-some arriving new freshmen, actually it might be in the nineties by 
the time we add those on the other side of the aisle too, I believe as 
God's gift to America, just in time. I think the cavalry has arrived.
  I think we have been fighting the battle of the Alamo, and we 
actually held out before we got overrun. And this massive freshman 
class full of conviction and vigor and dreams and passion, the 
lifeblood of the vigor of America, is in this city now, going through 
orientation, getting prepared, putting their offices together, hiring 
their staff, finding out where everything is, positioning themselves 
for committee assignments, et cetera, so that they can hit the ground 
running here on the 4th of January, when they will swear in to the new 
112th Congress in large numbers, 80-some Republican freshmen, who will 
bring their vigor and their legislative valor here to this floor. And 
they expect that their voice is going to be heard, and we need to make 
sure that their voice is heard and that the process is open.
  It might mean long days, long nights, long debates. It might mean we 
get a little tired of coming back over here to vote time and time and 
time again. But the American people expect us to do our work, we should 
want to do our work, and in fact if we shrink from that, the work 
product that we have won't be the work product of the reflection of the 
wisdom of the American people, Mr. Speaker; it will be the work product 
then of folks that are sitting behind closed doors instead of out here 
in front of the C-SPAN cameras where we belong. We should be doing our 
business here.
  But that first piece of business that I am hopeful comes out in the 
112th Congress, and think it will have the full-throated support of 
that freshman class that is prepared to grab ahold of the levers here 
in the 112th Congress, I am hopeful, and I will seek to establish that 
H.R. 1, the first bill coming out of the chute, is the repeal of 
ObamaCare.
  If there is any piece of legislation that symbolizes this dramatic 
change that has taken place here in the seats here in Congress, these 
290-plus freshmen that will be seated here, most all of them 
Republicans, if there is any one single piece of policy that embodies 
that reason for the transformation, the passing of the gavel, it is the 
repeal of ObamaCare as the clearest example of what people have risen 
up against.

                              {time}  2040

  I remember 4 years ago--it will be 4 years in January--right behind 
me, Mr. Speaker, as the gavel was passed from Republican to Democrat; 
from John Boehner to Nancy Pelosi, the incoming Speaker of the House of 
Representatives. I remember that day. It was a historic day, the first 
female Speaker of the United States House of Representatives in its 
history. Nearly 4 years have gone by. Some would say a lot of water 
under the Golden Gate Bridge since that period of time, Mr. Speaker. 
And we have seen unpopular policy after unpopular policy come unfolded. 
For example, the theory that spending billions of dollars extending 
unemployment benefits is the best bang for the taxpayer's buck when it 
comes to stimulating the economy. I was not prepared to rebut such an 
argument. I never conceived of such a thing. But that's one of the 
principles that the American people know better, and they went to the 
polls and said, Uh-huh. We're really uneasy with that path it is going 
down.
  The idea of pushing ObamaCare down the throats of the American people 
when it was clear that they had rejected it; when you think of tens of 
thousands of people who poured into this city I will say a year and a 
week ago on November 5, a little more than that now, but it was 
November 5, 2009. Tens of thousands of people were stacked up out here 
on the West Lawn of the Capitol building, swarmed around the Capitol. 
They swarmed down through the hallways of the office buildings. They 
came out here to say, Keep your hands off of our health care. We don't 
want ObamaCare.
  This Nation has never seen the kind of resistance that we saw come 
out of the streets of America in opposition to a policy this was 
proposed. We have never seen that. And it says in the Constitution 
freedom of speech, religion, and the press, and the freedom to petition 
the government--peacefully petition the government for redress of 
grievances. And they did, all within the confines of the Constitution, 
a lot of them with the Constitution in their pocket. It was in their 
head and in their hearts and tears running down their cheeks because 
they saw what was being done to America. They saw what was being done 
to the Constitution. And they saw what was being done to their personal 
liberty and their personal freedom. And they came here to this city and 
to most of the big cities--in fact, most of the towns and even county 
seat towns in Iowa, people filled up the meetings to resist the coming 
of ObamaCare.
  That was the summer buildup in 2009 to the vote that took place here 
in the House on November 7, 2009. And then we saw a vote on Christmas 
Eve in the Senate when Harry Reid decided that he had enough leverage 
on people that if they wanted to go home for Christmas vacation and see 
their families, they had to catch a plane on Christmas Eve. If they'd 
have held out until 9 o'clock that night instead of 9 o'clock that 
morning, a lot of those Senators would have spent Christmas here in 
Washington, D.C., which is what they deserved. They deserve coal in 
their stocking for what they did that day. But they passed through by 
using the leverage that they had and with no margins to spare a health 
care bill that didn't match the one here in the House. But they moved 
the ball down the field a little ways on Christmas Eve. So that would 
be December 24.
  And now some of us said, What do we do? How do we stop this ObamaCare 
juggernaut that had passed the House on November 7, 2009, and a 
different version of it squeaked--and squeaked through the House, too, 
but squeaked through the Senate on Christmas Eve morning--How do we 
stop it now? And I asked one of the senior Senators over on that side, 
What do we do now? And his answer was, Pray. And pray for a victory in 
the special election in Massachusetts.
  I don't think very many people believed that Scott Brown was going to 
be the next Senator from Massachusetts on Christmas Eve of 2009. And I 
went up to Massachusetts to participate, to the extent that I could 
contribute, and for 3 days up there I saw valiant constitutional 
conservative Americans making phone calls, one after another, lined up 
to make phone calls for the benefit of Scott Brown's candidacy. 
Constitutional conservatives, tea party activists, regular Baystaters 
from Massachusetts. And I met couples that say, Well, I'm a teachers' 
union member here and my husband is a member of the electrical 
workers--the United Electrical Workers--and we've always walked the 
streets and campaigned for Democrats. Not anymore. We're campaigning 
for Scott Brown. We've had it. We've had enough. We don't like that 
health care proposal that's coming, and we want to send somebody there 
that's going to stop it. And Scott Brown pledged that he would vote 
against ObamaCare and he would block it.

[[Page 17548]]

  And we know what happened. January 19 of this year Scott Brown was 
elected to the United States Senate to fill--he always said it is the 
people of Massachusetts' seat. It is their seat, like any seat in the 
Senate or the House belongs to the people who elect their 
Representatives to that seat. He was humble enough in that regard. And 
he was precisely right. We see it as the seat that was occupied by 
Senator Teddy Kennedy for all of those years. A dramatic shift in the 
political dynamics of America took place on that day on January 19, and 
a lot of people thought, myself cautiously included, that that was the 
end of ObamaCare because they would not have the votes to move 
ObamaCare by a conference version back through the Senate because it 
had to sustain itself in a cloture vote.
  And so we saw President Obama's mojo be diminished dramatically. We 
elected a Republican Governor in Virginia when they said it couldn't be 
done. And even more improbably, elected Chris Christie, a Republican 
Governor in New Jersey when it seemed completely improbable that could 
happen. And even though he had a lead in the polls going into the last 
few days, a lot of us thought that something would happen to trip up 
Chris Christie. Well, he's the Governor. Bob McDonnell is the Governor 
in Virginia. That message came out loud and clear and strong. And when 
Scott Brown was elected, it was clear that President Obama's mojo had 
been diminished dramatically and the prospects of America having to 
live under ObamaCare had also been diminished and perhaps crushed.
  But the President came before the Republican conference and had a 
conversation that lasted about 90 minutes. And subsequent to that he 
called the meeting on February 25 at Blair House, which was a big 
square-table discussion about health care, challenging that Republicans 
didn't want to talk, we just wanted to disagree with the proposals that 
he had. Well, Republicans wanted to talk and it was the President that 
didn't seem to want them to talk. So I had a staff person that sat 
there and put it all into a spreadsheet and timed everybody's speeches. 
It was limited time. There was a strict rule involved. But of course 
the President said, I'm the President. I don't have to follow the rules 
that we have written for the meeting that he's hosting. He interrupted 
Republicans 72 times that day on February 25 at Blair House. That was 
the level of respect that he had for our input. But he gained some 
traction, and they found a way to leverage ObamaCare back at us.
  From February 25 until March 23, they marched through this Congress. 
And finally on that day when ObamaCare passed here in the House, it 
didn't have the majority support of the House in order to be passed. To 
get enough votes to pass it they had to meet a couple of conditions. 
One is the President had to make the pledge or the oath that he would 
sign an executive order that was designed to amend the legislation that 
was about to pass Congress. Can you think of such a thing? Standing up 
to take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States of 
America, so help me God, and thinking that as a President you can write 
an executive order that eclipses or amends legislation that's passed by 
the Congress and tell them you're going to do it in advance? That's 
what the President did.
  Now if that's not appalling enough, on top of that, another group of 
House Members here--Democrats--wouldn't vote for ObamaCare here on the 
House even with the fig leaf executive order that the President 
promised for the gentleman from Michigan. But they had to also have a 
locked-down pledge that the Senate would pass a reconciliation package 
that would also effectively amend the package that was coming to the 
House.
  So, for those who didn't live through this, Mr. Speaker, I'd put it 
this way: ObamaCare was the first big piece of legislation that made it 
to the President's desk and was signed into law and became the law of 
the land that on the day of its passage didn't have the majority's 
support in the House of Representatives and it could not have passed 
the United States Senate under their current rules, but they had to do 
this by legislative sleight of hand to package up the three components 
to ObamaCare--the bill itself that started out at 1,994 pages and ended 
up 2,500 pages--the bill itself; the fig leaf executive order that the 
President promised and did sign that was supposed to prohibit the 
funding of abortion through ObamaCare, which we know it did not; and 
the third thing was the reconciliation packaged that circumvented the 
requirement for a cloture vote under the rules of the Senate and send 
it over here to the House.

                              {time}  2050

  That's what it took to give America ObamaCare.
  Americans rose up on that weekend, and for 3 days they would stay on 
these Capitol grounds. By the thousands, they would stay outside the 
windows of the Rules Committee and chant, ``Kill the bill. Kill the 
bill.'' When I'd say to them, ``We're going to have to break this up. 
We can't keep this up,'' they would say, ``We won't go until they all 
vote `no.' We won't go.''
  These are courageous Americans who stayed here all night. If they 
slept at all, it was out here on the cement or maybe on the grass. They 
would not go until they killed the bill. There were enough Americans 
who poured out here--tens of thousands--and who kept that vigil around 
the Capitol. They surrounded the Capitol building. They joined hands 
and surrounded the Capitol building.
  Mr. Speaker, I'm not talking about one human chain with long arms 
each. I'm talking about six or eight deep all the way around the 
Capitol building and clusters in the corners of thousands who were 
needed to fill the human chain around the Capitol. They came to 
peacefully petition the government for redress of grievances, and still 
the Speaker marched through the crowd with her huge, oversized gavel in 
her ``let them eat cake'' moment.
  So here we are, Mr. Speaker. The American people saw all of that.
  They saw the takeover of three large investment banks. They saw $700 
billion in TARP spending. They saw $180 billion go out to AIG, the 
insurance company. They watched the formerly private sector, then 
quasi-government, now completely government-owned, -operated, -
functioned, -guaranteed, and -backed up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, 
which has saddled the American taxpayers with a contingent liability of 
$5.5 trillion.
  They saw all of that, Mr. Speaker.
  They saw as the Federal Government took over General Motors and 
Chrysler to operate those formerly private sector businesses for the 
benefit of the people affected by them. That's when they handed the 
secured assets of the investors over to the unions.
  The American people saw all of that, and their sense of justice was 
offended: the affront to the free enterprise system, the 
nationalization of three large banks, AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, 
General Motors, and Chrysler, and the Federal Government takeover of 
100 percent of the student loan program.
  How? With a debate here on the floor of the House or the Senate? With 
hearings before committees and markups before subcommittees and 
committees in a process as envisioned? No. Written into the 
reconciliation package as a sleight of hand that came out of a 
circumvention of the cloture vote in the Senate and slipped over here 
to the House of Representatives to be stuck in as ObamaCare. That is 
how they took over the student loan program.
  Then we saw the Federal Government, under the direction of President 
Obama with the magnum gavel that Nancy Pelosi regally walked through 
the crowds who simply wanted to maintain their freedom and liberty, 
nationalize our skin and everything inside it. That's ObamaCare.
  The second-most sovereign thing we have is our body and our health, 
and the Federal Government took it over to manage it and to make it the 
law of the land. They nationalized our skin and everything inside it, 
and they put a 10 percent tax on the outside if you go to the tanning 
salon. There was no

[[Page 17549]]

square inch of skin left not nationalized by this government, and the 
American people rose up in a peaceful way.
  I have to give the American people credit, a tremendous amount of 
credit. In any other country in the world, if they watched their 
liberty go like that, they would be demonstrating in the streets like 
they did in Athens not that long ago or as we watched take place in 
France or in Great Britain, for that matter. I mean the French may have 
to work until age 62, and they think that's worth burning tires and 
cars and demonstrating over.
  What do we do in America when we disagree with our government? We 
come to Washington, DC. We fill up the parks in America. We do rallies 
all over. We fly the American flag. We run the yellow Gadsden flag up 
alongside it, down just an inch or so from height, the yellow Gadsden 
``Don't tread on me'' flag, and we petition the government for redress 
of grievances--peacefully--and they were peaceful.
  When these rallies were done, when these press conferences were done, 
I sent staff people out with cameras to look so they could take 
pictures of the litter. Could they find at least a cigarette butt out 
there to take a picture of to show me how disrespectful it might have 
been? These crowds were the most respectful crowds that the park 
service had ever seen. They cleaned up behind them. They didn't drop 
anything in the first place. They looked out for each other when they 
were done. They might have walked the grass down a little bit, but 
there wasn't any litter to pick up. They love this country. They love 
this beautiful Capitol. They respect the history of this Nation, of the 
Constitution, and of the system that we have.
  They were maybe not successful in rolling back ObamaCare in November 
of 2009, in December of 2009, or in March of 2010, but they understood 
what happened. They understood that our freedom and our liberty had 
been marginalized by an arrogant attitude--that the people up in the 
Speaker's office knew best and that the American people didn't know. 
When the statement came that we had to pass the bill so that the 
American people could find out what was in it, I met a lot of people 
outside this Capitol, outside the beltway, who read every word of that 
health care bill.
  Now, I wouldn't say that I've ever met anybody in or outside of the 
beltway who could read and understand all of its implications--that's 
impossible given the depth and the magnitude of it--but they understood 
that this was an affront to our liberty and to our freedom, that it 
would forever transform the way health care would be delivered in 
America and that it was a component of this vast overreach, this taking 
of our liberty and our freedom that had been initiated, oh, several 
generations ago. It was brought to a head several times, but never had 
it seen the configuration of an intense liberal President with a 
determination to use the majority that a happenstance of history had 
given him in the House and a supermajority that was filibuster-proof in 
the Senate.
  They used it and they abused it, and the American people rose up and 
went to the polls and said, Enough. Enough. We're going to send people 
here to this Congress who understand that the Constitution is our 
default position, that whenever there is a question, we look back to 
the Constitution for guidance; and if the Constitution constrains us, 
we don't disregard the Constitution. What we must do is either comply 
with the original intent of the Constitution or take the trouble to 
amend it, and it takes a lot of trouble to amend the Constitution.
  The Constitution needs to be our default mechanism. We have a lot of 
new freshmen coming in here who understand that. One of them is Bobby 
Schilling, from Quincy, Illinois, who understands it. The opponent whom 
he ran against was Phil Hare, who famously said, Oh, the Constitution? 
We don't care about that.
  His constituents do.
  They sent their message, and they sent a new Representative here to 
Congress who does care about the Constitution. His colleagues in this 
class are 80-some strong, and all of them, I know, do care about the 
Constitution. When they take their oath of office, they will take it 
seriously. It will be something branded on their hearts, as it should 
be of any Member who comes in here and who has the privilege to serve 
Americans. We all have to brand down our oath to uphold the 
Constitution of the United States of America.
  I am looking forward to this class coming in, Mr. Speaker. I 
understand the message that has been sent by this country, and it has 
been sent with those new Representatives who are arriving here in 
Washington, D.C. They are here now, those who will be sworn in on 
January 4. That message is: Adhere to the Constitution. Hold on to the 
Constitution. Believe in it, and defend it as there have been so many 
who have died in its defense. We can at least stand and defend it and 
adhere to it. Understand also that debt and deficit, jobs and the 
economy are the central theme that have been flowed out here.
  But the takings of our liberty in the form of the nationalization of 
all of these companies and entities has been an affront to the American 
free enterprise system. It diminishes the vigor of America to have the 
government running Fortune 500 companies in America with no plan to 
divest themselves of it and to think that the Federal Government would 
make decisions with a ``one size fits all'' formula for our health care 
and do that to us when we completely have the ability to manage that 
health care for ourselves.

                              {time}  2100

  I think there's something also that was missing on the part of the 
liberals here in Congress, Mr. Speaker. And that's this: That as much 
as the progressive movement draws its instruction from Western Europe, 
when the progressive movement was generated by intellectuals that 
visited Germany in the latter part of the 19th century and came back 
here and began to inject the progressive thought process with social 
democracy. Western European social democracy values, to keep it simple, 
Mr. Speaker, came to us out of Western Europe in the latter part of the 
19th century. It's been debated in this country over and over again. 
These are the people that decided they would undermine our Constitution 
not by amending it but by trying to redefine its meaning and its 
intent. And they made the argument that it's a living and breathing 
document, and therefore, it has to adapt itself to the mores of the 
day, otherwise we couldn't possibly be burdened with something that was 
so rigid and structured that we would have to amend it as society 
evolved.
  Well, I would make the statement that human nature does not change, 
and that if we ever get the fundamental structure of our Constitution 
and law correct--and for the most part, we have the fundamental 
structure of our Constitution correct--if we ever get it correct, then 
the only reasons to meet in the legislature is to make appropriations 
for the upcoming year or two and to make adjustments to new technology, 
if that's required.
  But the progressives from a century and a generation ago have 
polluted the thought process of Americans. And the people who are 
progressives--and there are some 77 in this Congress, at least today, 
and they're listed on their Web site, and they're linked with the 
Democratic socialists of America. Socialists and progressives are one 
and the same by essentially their own admission. They miss this thing 
about America: We're not a dependency people. Even if the socialism was 
right, social democracy is right for Western Europe, it's not right for 
Americans. And there are a good number of reasons why it's not right. A 
lot of them are in the Bill of Rights.
  We have guaranteed freedom, rights that come from God. They don't 
believe that in--well, some believe it, but it's not in anybody else's 
Constitution that I know of. It's in our Declaration actually here, and 
it's in the Iowa Constitution as a matter of clarification. But our 
rights come from God. They don't come from a sovereign, from a king. 
They don't come from government. If rights come from government

[[Page 17550]]

and government takes your rights away, then who are we to complain? Who 
do we complain to? If the government takes our rights away, they're the 
ones that are sovereign.
  But what we have here in America are God-given rights that are vested 
in the people. The people are sovereign, and the people then entrust 
the power of their sovereignty through the representative form of 
government, the republican form of government, and they elect those 
representatives to represent them here in Washington and around the 
country. They must guarantee a republican form of government. That is a 
constitutional requirement. But it's the people who are sovereign. The 
vigor that Americans have that come from these rights is this vigor--a 
lot of it's in the Bill of Rights. The freedom of speech in a full-
throated way to step out on the courthouse steps and let fly with your 
deepest convictions without fear of a punishment that might come from 
the government.
  I recall standing on the courthouse lawn in Sioux County, Iowa, in 
Orange City during the Tulip Festival. Myself and another candidate had 
lined up a couple of big speakers and a microphone. It's always a good 
crowd during the Tulip Festival. So we just started to holler up a 
crowd and give speeches. As we did that, more and more people started 
to gather. And after a little while, a fellow came out of the 
courthouse, and he came over and approached Representative Dwayne 
Alons, who represents that area and is from there. And he said, You've 
got to shut this down. These men can't stand here and give these 
speeches on the courthouse lawn because this is a polling place. Now 
this is the first weekend in May. There are no elections going on, no 
elections near. So the fact that it was a polling place during 
elections was really irrelevant. But the man said, They can't be 
speaking here like this. This is a polling place. This is 
electioneering, and it's a violation of State law.
  Now we're speaking away in our full-throated positions on the things 
that we advocated and believed in. And Representative Dwayne Alons 
looked at that courthouse employee, and he said, Well, if you can't 
exercise your right to freedom of speech here on the courthouse lawn, 
could you tell me just where in the world you can exercise your right 
to freedom of speech? That gentleman turned around and went back in the 
courthouse, and that's the last we heard of him.
  But the vigor that comes from this freedom of speech and the 
confidence that we can write a letter, send out an e-mail, put it on 
Facebook, put it on Twitter, get on the radio, go out on the street 
corner and the curb, or stand at the pulpit and express our deepest, 
most firmly held convictions without fear of retribution or recourse 
that would come from government--at least in an official fashion--that 
is one of the essential principles of being an American that adds to 
our vigor. It allows us to be the people that can use our reason, our 
ability to rationalize, our ability to continually self-examine our 
culture and civilization to make these adjustments, like the American 
people made adjustments when that gavel was passed to Speaker Pelosi in 
January of 2007. They made more adjustments in 2008, and more 
Republicans went home, and more Democrats came. And then they watched 
the results of their decision, and they weren't particularly alarmed 
when it was Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid until 
President Obama came in. Their decision, all right?
  I sat out there on the west portico of the Capitol, and I had a great 
seat. And I saw the momentous time in history when the first black 
President of the United States was sworn in. And I felt that uplifting 
feeling. We had reached a milestone as a nation, and perhaps we had put 
race behind us. And perhaps, just perhaps, he would find a way to blend 
the two sides together and get us to a postpartisanship era in America. 
Well, the American people gave him 2 years, and they could see the 
pattern over and over again. It wasn't going to be postpartisanship. It 
was going to be more and more partisanship, and an economic theory that 
had been discredited since the New Deal in the 1930s by FDR. This 
Keynesian economist on steroids had decided he was going to spend money 
hand over fist in a desperate effort to try to stimulate the economy, 
dug us a hole deeper than the hole the Chilean miners were in, and he 
was still down there with that shovel digging on Election Day November 
2, 2010.
  The American people looked at that. They were appalled. They thought 
that good judgment would take over sooner, or at least some time. So 
they decided the quickest and most effective way that they could take 
the shovel out of the President's hands was to take the gavel out of 
Nancy Pelosi's. And that's what happened. Debt and deficit, jobs and 
the economy became the order of the day. And the American people were 
appalled that their ability to manage their own health care had also 
been taken away from them and company after company had been taken over 
by the Federal Government. And another principle that is a pillar of 
American exceptionalism, the pillar of free enterprise, also was being 
diminished on a regular basis by--I don't know that I can say clearly 
that it's an anti-capitalist administration. But certainly the 
President surrounded himself with many anti-capitalists.
  Free enterprise, another foundation of American greatness. Freedom of 
speech, freedom of religion. And by the way, this freedom of religion 
has been diminished by the IRS by the intimidation that the churches 
might lose their 501(c)(3) status. So pastor after pastor steps up to 
the pulpit. And about the time their convictions and their conscience 
open up the volume in their throat, they think, ooh, but what if I lose 
a not-for-profit status? I will be standing on the street corner 
preaching from the curb? Some let fly, and I am proud of them, all of 
them. Some pull it back and decide they're going to be more careful. 
And they're afraid of the tax penalties that might come if they lose 
their not-for-profit status. But freedom of speech is part of American 
vigor.
  Freedom of religion is part of America's core culture. It is the 
moral foundation that holds our civilization together. You cannot hire 
enough police officers to do that job for you. It has to be part of our 
moral character. If you think otherwise, take a look at what happened 
to the police force in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. More 
police officers, more problems in that scenario. But the core of our 
values is tied to our Judeo-Christian faith which is the center core of 
American civilization. That's part of American vigor. And speech, 
religion, and the press, the freedom to freely assemble, and the rights 
to property under the Fifth Amendment, freedom from double jeopardy, 
the list goes on and on.

                              {time}  2110

  That's just in the Bill of Rights.
  And then we have this other vigor, this American vigor. And it's 
unique to us.
  This situation where, I'm going to make this argument, Mr. Speaker, 
that Americans are a distinct race of people, a race of people. And I 
don't know anybody else that takes this position; but if they listen, 
then I think everybody that listens will take this position.
  We have a distinction that characterizes us. We may look different, 
we may have different skin tones and different shapes to our facial 
features. We may come from every--we do come from every continent on 
the planet. We come from hundreds of countries on the planet.
  But what we have in common is we either, people that came to America 
bring with them the distinct vigor of their culture and their 
civilization. It isn't that somebody that comes from France or Italy or 
Argentina or Russia, wherever it might be, Sweden, that comes to the 
United States, it isn't that those nationalities have these unique 
vigorous characteristics of hardworking industrious entrepreneurs that 
love freedom and want to build something and put a mark on life and 
leave this world a better place for the next generation.
  We got the dreamers from every civilization. We got the can-do spirit 
from

[[Page 17551]]

every civilization. The American culture, the American Dream is built 
because we are the recipients of the cream of the crop of every donor 
civilization on the planet that sent legal immigrants here to America. 
And they rose up. They had to sacrifice to get here. They had to plan. 
They had to sometimes sell out their future to get here. But when they 
came here, they were determined to build something that had value. And 
when they saw the Statue of Liberty it meant something to them. It's a 
dream. It throbbed in their heart when they looked at that and they saw 
themselves sailing into Ellis Island. Here was this promised land. Yes, 
some of them thought the streets were paved with gold. But also, many 
of them believed that they had an opportunity to go out there and mine 
for that gold and pave their own streets in this country, and nobody 
could take away their freedom, their liberty, their property rights, 
and no one could put them in double jeopardy of a crime. That vigor 
that is from each donor civilization is part and parcel of the 
character of America.
  I come from a number of different sources, but some of my ancestors 
came across the prairie in a covered wagon. They walked beside that 
wagon or behind the oxen, and on a good day they traveled 10 miles 
across the prairie where the prairie grass was high in a sea of grass. 
On a good day they traveled 10 miles. Why they ever decided to drive 
that stake in the ground where they did and declare a homestead, I 
don't know how that process goes through one's mind.
  I've never read nor have I heard how they were thinking. But I know 
this: they came to the Midwest to live free or die on the prairie. They 
took the State motto of New Hampshire. They transposed it to the 
Midwest and on to the points to the West as well, where you had 
freedom-loving people that wanted spaces and opportunity, and they put 
their stake in the ground for that homesteaded 160. However they got 
started and they built, they built a house out of sod, and they started 
raising kids and putting them to work. And they took the axe and 
chopped the tree stumps out and turned them into farms, and they ran 
cattle and they found ways to make a living. They came out to live free 
or die on the prairie.
  And those of us who are descended from that kind of stock, we 
understand why. Why are my neighbors proud, independent? They don't 
want to be dependent upon government. They just want to have an 
opportunity to work and succeed and support their church and their 
family and their neighborhoods and their schools. That's all they ask 
for. The proudness, the independence, the industriousness, that's 
what's built America. And we took the cream of the crop off all those 
donors civilizations, and we gave them an opportunity here under the 
banner of freedom and liberty. And American vigor rose up. This giant 
Petri dish of this experiment of freedom and liberty rose up, and here 
we are.
  We're not a people that's suitable to be put under the yoke of 
socialism, or have a Federal Government dictate to us where we can or 
can't get our health care, or take away our shares in General Motors or 
Chrysler and hand them over to the Union, or have the Federal 
Government say that we want a guarantee that people can buy houses 
whether they can afford it or not, and we're going to guarantee that 
we're going to charge the taxpayers to pick up the difference when they 
can't meet those mortgages.
  These people want to be free. They want to be left alone. We want to 
allow for the vigor of Americans to shine and to glow and project 
itself across this continent and across this globe.
  As I've said, Mr. Speaker, with the opening remarks about Staff 
Sergeant Salvatore Giunta, the risk that he took running into enemy 
gunfire over and over again to save his fellow troops, miraculously 
lived through that, will be receiving the Medal of Honor tomorrow in 
the ceremony at the White House. He put his life on the line. Some of 
his people lost theirs.
  And we owe to him, and we owe to all of those who have put their 
lives on the line, who have put on the uniform throughout the 
centuries, we owe them the fight for freedom and liberty here on the 
floor of the United States Congress. We owe them that fight. We owe 
them that liberty.
  We owe them that we're going to shut off this accumulation of debt, 
we're going to reduce and eventually eliminate the deficit. And in 
doing so, it will bring the economy back around, and it will produce 
jobs, and it will enhance our freedom and liberty, and those 
entrepreneurs that came to this country for that freedom, for a chance 
to build, and the descendents of those entrepreneurs that came here in 
earlier generations so that their children would have an opportunity 
for a better life, to earn, not to receive as if America is some giant 
ATM, but to earn a better life here. We owe it to Staff Sergeant 
Salvatore Giunta and everyone like him our best effort here on this 
floor to honor his effort, to uphold the Constitution, to uphold the 
oath to the Constitution that we will again take on January 4, here on 
the floor of this House of Representatives, to raise America up to the 
next level of our destiny, do honor to those who've gone before us, and 
to leave a legacy for those that come behind us.

  And this is the beginning, Mr. Speaker. This class, this new freshman 
class, for the 112th Congress is God's gift to America, and the 
American people will appreciate it. And we need to empower them to the 
maximum amount because I believe that they will lead us forward to that 
next level of our destiny.

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