[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10750-10757]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       NATIONALIZING THE ECONOMY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Maffei). 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 of being 
recognized to address you here on the floor of the House, and I have 
only a short privilege to look at some of the data that's been 
presented by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle in the 
previous hour.
  I did look at the poster that says here's the economy as we know it 
in a very short snapshot in billions of chain GDP dollars. I don't know 
what chain dollars is. I have never discussed an economy within chain 
dollars. But I have also not discussed it within trends that are 
compressed down within the very few quarters that are presented in this 
graph that's been presented here before us on the floor of the House 
tonight, Mr. Speaker.
  Here is what I would present. Let's just back up a little bit. Let's 
back up all the way to October of 1929 and think about what's really 
happened. This Nation has been challenged over and over again to come 
forward and determine where we are with our economy.
  What kind of an economy are we? Are we the managed economy proposed 
by the Democrats on the other side of the aisle that believe that the 
President of the United States, the Cabinet, and the Pelosi Congress 
and the Harry Reid Senate should be the ones to make these economic 
decisions to manage the nationalized economy? Are we the kind of people 
that should be nationalizing even more of our economy? And I have gone 
through this list so many times I can almost recite it by rote in my 
sleep.
  This Federal Government, albeit started under President Bush, with 
the support of Barack Obama all the way through and most of it picked 
up by him, has nationalized--and when I say ``nationalized,'' I mean 
owned, managed, or controlled--sectors of the economy that have to do 
with three large investment banks, and that's Citigroup, Bank of 
America, and Bear Stearns. Those three have been taken over by the 
Federal Government. AIG nationalized by the Federal Government, the 
insurance company. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The entities that the 
chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, said he 
would never support a Federal bailout of Fannie and Freddie. No, he 
supported the takeover, the Federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie 
Mac.
  We have also watched General Motors and Chrysler be taken over by the 
Federal Government, and a bankruptcy proposal pitched by the 
administration to the chapter 11 bankruptcy court that dictated the 
terms of bankruptcy, and among those terms were: Hand over shares of 
the automakers to the automakers union. And while that was going on, 
the only bidder before the chapter 11 bankruptcy court with the case of 
Chrysler, where I actually have the data and probably have it in my 
hand here, the only bidder was the Federal Government. The structure of 
it going into chapter 11 was the Federal Government, set up for a 
bidder. The only bidder was the Federal Government. It was the Federal 
Government on both sides of that equation. Unprecedented.
  A Federal takeover dictating to the bankruptcy court the terms of the 
resolution of Chrysler and handing over, in the case of General Motors, 
17.5 percent of the shares in General Motors over to the automakers 
union, to the United Auto Workers. That's all taken place, including 
the takeover of the student loan program in the United States by the 
Federal Government.
  Now, if we add this up, three large investment banks, AIG, Fannie 
Mae, Freddie Mac, General Motors, and Chrysler, according to Professor 
Boyle of Arizona State University, that's one-third of the private-
sector activity of America swallowed up over the ownership, management, 
or control of the Federal Government.
  Then you add to that the student loan program, and then you add to 
that the financial services that are being regulated right now that are 
being negotiated in the conference committee that's been named between 
the House and the Senate, that would put the Federal Government in the 
position to regulate every single credit transaction in America.
  Now, I don't just mean one of the large bailed out, federally owned 
investment banks is doing business with one of the other large 
federally owned investment banks, that the Federal Government regulates 
that. I don't just mean that when a small community bank is doing 
transactions with people that are coming in to borrow money for 
operating capital or for a mortgage that the Federal Government 
regulates that. I will take it right on down to this question that was 
posed by the dentists. Would their transactions that are set up where 
they set up monthly payments for the parents to pay for the braces on 
the teeth of their children be regulated by the Federal Government and 
by the White House? Answer, yes.
  Under this bill that's coming at us under the language we are dealing 
with, yes, the Federal Government would regulate the transaction, the 
credit transaction between the dentist and the parents who would want 
to finance the braces on their children's teeth. Uncle Sam injects 
himself into that equation.
  Do you think that's to the point, Mr. Speaker, where we can't 
tolerate Federal intrusion any deeper? I think it's

[[Page 10751]]

gone beyond where we can tolerate Federal intrusion any deeper. But it 
goes deeper yet. Not just into the cavities into our children's teeth 
or the braces on them, but right down into a neighborhood, friendly 
poker game.
  And I had them analyze the language for this purpose. I just asked 
the question: Where does this stop? What are the restraints? What are 
the constraints on the legislation that would give the Federal 
Government the authority to regulate every credit transaction in 
America? And I asked specifically: Will you analyze the language in the 
bill and tell me could the Federal Government, if they chose to do so, 
regulate the credit transaction that's embodied in an IOU that could be 
put in the middle of the pot in a poker game in a neighborhood or a 
friendly or a family poker game? It might even be an IOU for 
toothpicks. Yes, the language allows the Federal Government to inject 
themselves into every credit transaction in America.
  So we have the nationalization of one-third of the private-sector 
activity in the form of three large investment banks taken over by the 
Federal Government, AIG, the insurance company taken over by the 
Federal Government, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and General Motors and 
Chrysler. That's eight. That's one-third of the private sector activity 
according to the Arizona State professor, Boyle. One-third. And you add 
to that student loans, which I don't know what percentage of the 
overall economy that that is, and I don't want to speculate without 
some basis of knowledge on that.
  But we have got 33 percent of the former private sector activity 
nationalized, taken over by the Federal Government, by the Obama 
administration now in control and the management or ownership or 
control of these private sector entities. And now we are at 33 percent. 
ObamaCare has passed. That's, by a consensus of accounts, right at 17.5 
percent of the overall economy that goes into health care under the 
ownership, management, or control of the Federal Government; 17.5 
percent. Where do you round that to, anybody in sixth grade math? Up to 
18. Eighteen percent plus 33 percent is 51 percent of the former 
private sector activity under the ownership, management, or control of 
the Federal Government; 51 percent.
  And what did Alexander Tytler tell us out of Scotland back as a 
contemporary of Adam Smith? And in summary terms, when the public 
understands that they can vote themselves benefits from the public 
treasury, on that day democracy ceases to exist. That was Alexander 
Tytler in about the year 1776, a long time back.
  Here we are. We are seeing data that shows that only 47 percent of 
the households don't pay taxes; 47 percent. We don't have a number that 
shows us the percentage of individuals. But if 47 percent of the 
households don't pay income tax, and that means Federal income tax, 
that tells us that we are only 3.0001 percent away from the majority of 
American households that don't pay income tax. Now, we are within the 
margin of error.
  Who could think that the public hasn't figured out, with the tutelage 
of President Obama, that they should game the system? Because if you 
are a marginal employee individual, are you better off to game the 
system and put yourself on the public dole and tap into a myriad of the 
72 different Federal welfare programs that are out there or are you 
better off to go to work every day?
  If we default back to the statement made by Jimmy Carter back in 1976 
in Iowa as he campaigned for President of the United States, impressed 
me--I didn't support him, Mr. Speaker; I want that to be clear in the 
Congressional Record--but he did impress me with a statement that he 
made. He said the people that work should live better than those that 
don't. I don't think Jimmy Carter lived by that, but he said that. And 
that impressed me that it was a simple, clear logic, the logic of 
clarity that should be delivered in this floor more often than it 
actually is.
  Of course the people that work should live better than those that 
don't. But Jimmy Carter had a lot of trouble following through on that. 
But by today's standards, no, he wasn't. He was a piker by today's 
standards. Anybody that doesn't live up to an average standard of 
living can go to the public welfare rolls and expect that they are 
going to have their rent subsidized, their heat subsidized. They are 
going to have food stamps. They are going to have 69 other Federal 
programs that they can have access to.
  We have become a welfare state. And that works pretty good for the 
people that want to create a dependency class in America. And that is 
clearly what's going on with the Obama administration, establishing and 
expanding the dependency class in America, because they understand that 
people who are dependent want to make sure that they go vote for the 
people who require them to be dependent before they will send more 
benefits their way.
  Independent people say, I want less government. I want less taxes. I 
want a smaller role in our Federal Government. I want the States to 
have their constitutional right to all the powers that are not 
enumerated to the Federal Government devolve back to the States or the 
people, respectively. That's what I want.
  Because I know that when people are responsible for their own 
activities and they are rewarded for positive behavior and the markets 
and the conditions of a just society provide disincentives for people 
who are lazy, who are not industrious, who don't take care of their 
families, who are dishonest, who might be indulging in substance abuse, 
those negative indicators for a society are punished in a just society, 
and positive behavior is rewarded in a just society.

                              {time}  2045

  You don't have to rule or regulate a just society if you have the 
financial structures in place, the moral foundation in place and if 
you're not afraid to stigmatize negative behavior.
  But this administration has capped off the effort so far of previous, 
shall I be nice and call them progressives, their effort, their effort 
to expand the dependency class in America. And whenever that happens, 
if this Congress expands the dependency class, it is the equivalent of 
taking a jackhammer and chiseling away at those beautiful marble 
pillars of American exceptionalism, chiseling them away, breaking down 
the very foundation that created American exceptionalism.
  We're not a Nation that's created for greatness built upon 
dependency. The dependency class is anathema to the American people and 
the American spirit.
  Independence is our spirit. Self-reliance is our spirit. Our vigor, 
our unique vigor is our spirit. Our liberty, our freedom is our spirit. 
That's who we are.
  And how do we get to be in this great Nation? What are these pillars 
of American exceptionalism that are under assault by the active left in 
this Congress every single day, jackhammering away at those beautiful 
marble pillars of American exceptionalism? What are they?
  Well, they're easy to find. You look in the Constitution of the 
United States, take a look into the Bill of Rights. Go right down 
through the list: freedom of speech, religion, and the press; the 
freedom of assembly; to petition the government for redress of 
grievances. Boy, that is beautiful.
  Are those marble pillars, Mr. Speaker? Of course, they are.
  Freedom of speech, to speak outward and openly of the things that we 
believe in without restraint or punishment, knowing that the State 
can't come in and crush us for our opinions, the freedom with a full-
throated objection to our government if they're going down a path that 
we object to or a full-throated support for a President or a Congress 
or a judiciary branch of government or any of the agencies within the 
government that's serving our people in a Constitution and a just 
fashion. That's freedom of speech.
  Freedom of religion. Freedom of religion, to worship in the church of 
our choice or not to worship or worship in our home or under a tree or 
out in the pasture or while we're in the traffic jam and any way we 
choose. Freedom of religion. Freedom for a pastor or

[[Page 10752]]

anyone in the congregation whom he might accept to come up and step 
behind the podium to preach to the Word and preach the law of God and 
do so without fear, without fear that the IRS might come in and rule 
that these words were somehow political or partisan and to take away 
the 501(c)(3) not-for-profit status that exists for our churches within 
this country.
  The IRS has intimidated pastor after pastor, congregation after 
congregation. The core of our faith in this country has been eroded 
because of IRS intimidation of our preaches and our pastors. Even 
though that speech is guaranteed in the Constitution, it doesn't 
guarantee that you get a tax deduction if you speak out too openly. So 
I tell my pastors, preach the Word, preach the law, preach your 
convictions and your faith to your congregation in a full-throated way, 
and if the IRS comes in and threatens to take away your 501(c)(3) 
status, tell them Steve King stands with you. I stand with you 
figuratively. If you need me to stand next to you literally, I will do 
so, and if you still don't have the courage to preach the Word and 
stand next to me, then I will come and I will preach the Word.
  And if that doesn't give you enough conviction, remember this: Not in 
the history of this country has any church lost its 501(c)(3) status 
because a pastor spoke from his faithful religious heart and preached 
the Word, the gospel of the Lord to the congregation that has gathered 
together to hear that message. Not once, not ever, not in the history 
of America has a church lost its 501(c)(3) not-for-profit status 
because of preaching the Word from the pulpit.
  The threat goes out continually, and when a conservative Christian 
takes a position that has impact, then you hear from the people like, 
well, let me see--to avoid controversy, let me just say liberal United 
States Senators who would like to use the IRS to intimidate their 
opposition. They aren't all alive today, but there's a history of these 
liberal United States Senators who have done so. None have been 
successful in removing the 501(c)(3) status. But the truth needs to be 
preached.
  That's just the First Amendment. Freedom of speech, religion, and the 
press; freedom to peaceably assemble; and petition the government for 
redress of grievances, first amendment.
  Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to own 
and control our guns and not have the Federal Government take them away 
or confiscate our guns. Now, I've been a Second Amendment defender for 
a long time, and I will be for as long as the Lord grants me breath in 
this life, but Mr. Speaker, many of the people that defend the Second 
Amendment seem to think that it's about owning and keeping firearms so 
we can target shoot, recreational shooting, hunt, or for self-defense. 
And I will take the position here, Mr. Speaker, that those three things 
that I've talked about, hunting, self-defense, target shooting, are all 
residual benefits, kind of like extra benefits that come with the 
Second Amendment.
  We would have the Second Amendment whether or not there was target 
shooting, whether or not there ever was hunting, and whether or not 
there was self-defense because our Founding Fathers understood that we 
needed to have an armed populace to defend against tyranny. They 
understood that a tyrant would come and confiscate our guns and 
subjugate us to his armed forces, and we would have to knuckle under, 
and thereby would go our freedom. That was understood by our Founding 
Fathers, and they put the Second Amendment in so we could defend our 
freedom and our liberty and be an armed populace to defend against the 
tyrant.
  And the good stuff that comes from that is we get to also hunt, 
target shoot and defend ourselves. Pretty simple concept. But you look 
around the world, I don't know of a country or a civilization that has 
registered firearms that has not confiscated them. When a Nation has 
confiscated firearms, that suppresses our freedom of speech, that 
suppresses our freedom of religion, that suppresses our ability to 
assemble and peaceably petition our government for redress of 
grievances because we would be intimidated by an all-powerful state. We 
need a state intimidated by the people.
  That's what this country is about. The power in our government comes 
from God. Our rights come from God. They're vested in the people, and 
the people confer that authority into their elected Representatives. 
That is the very definition of a constitutional republic.
  And so we have these rights: freedom of speech, religion, and the 
press; freedom of assembly; and Second Amendment, right to keep and 
bear arms, because that is a deterrent for tyrants that might want to 
subjugate us as a people, that might want to take away our God-given 
rights that we have vested in our elected Representatives. That's just 
the First and Second Amendment.
  Those are all pillars of American exceptionalism. No other country 
has these kind of rights. They have politically correct laws in places 
like Canada and Great Britain, and those places are freer than many 
other places in the world, but we provide a full-throated defense of 
whatever our particular position happens to be.
  We're American. We aren't people that cower. We don't shrink from 
conflict. We don't shrink from disagreement. I had a lady approach me 
on the street a couple of months ago, about the time when ObamaCare 
passed, and she said to me, you have to find a way to get along. It's 
kind of a Rodney King statement: Can't we all get along? Can't we 
compromise? Can't we get away from all of this friction and this 
tension that's going on here over ObamaCare?
  And I listened to her. I'd seen the lady on the Hill for several 
years, actually, and I'd never had a conversation with her. And she 
impressed me with her deep conviction and commitment to following what 
was honest, especially in Judiciary Committee. I don't know her name. 
Only time I ever talked to her.
  But I said to her, you know, we have these arguments here, we have 
this tension, we have this disagreement, and I think we do so because 
we're called to come to Washington to have these debates, to have these 
arguments, to have the disagreements so we don't have to come to blows 
in the streets of America, so we don't have to clash with each other. 
All the way across from sea to sea, we bring our conflict here. We have 
these debates here. We test each other in this battle of ideas here, 
and it's even more effective, and I will say significantly more 
effective, than it was in the era of the Founding Fathers because we 
have real-time communications.
  Mr. Speaker, we have C-SPAN. We have live radio. We have Internet. We 
have podcasts. We can have real-time interactive town hall meetings 
that interact all the way across America. We can carry this message all 
across this country. This constitutional republic is more effective 
today from a communications standpoint than it was in the era of our 
Founding Fathers, and we should be grateful for that. It's our job to 
use it and utilize it and to continue to build upon this.
  So let's have the debate. Let's have a nationwide debate. Let's get 
after this, and we're doing it, and come November, the American people 
will decide whether this path of the Federal takeover of first one-
third of the former private sector activity of our economy; then adding 
ObamaCare to this, another 18 percent of our economy going to 51 
percent; then, sitting in conference committee right now being 
deliberated and debated by the conferee, another 15 percent of our 
economy, the financial sector of our economy, roughly 15 percent by 
some estimates, you add that onto the 51 percent, and we get up there 
to 66 percent of our economy; and then we have the cap-and-trade 
argument, roughly around 8 or 9 percent of our economy.
  Now, if cap-and-trade is 8 percent of our economy, then that means, 
in case anybody wonders, cap-and-trade is about this: It's about 
capping carbon emissions and trading the carbon credits that you get. 
So if you are an electrical generating plant and you're burning coal 
like crazy in 2005, that's the measure, capping at 2005 levels of

[[Page 10753]]

CO2 emission, and you're burning all kinds of coal and 
you're belching this CO2 out into the atmosphere, which 
doesn't alarm me, by the way, Mr. Speaker--I still don't think there's 
a scientific foundation for their hypothesis--but that's going on; the 
measurement of the emissions of the CO2 will be capped at 
2005.
  Now, let's presume that that same electrical generator takes half of 
his coal consumption down, replaces it with a nuclear generating 
plant--actually a new plant that will come online in 2017 in South 
Carolina. It will be the first one in probably 30 years by then. So you 
get carbon credits for taking the coal generation, the burning of the 
coal off line, that CO2 that's not emitted, and replaced it 
with the nuclear, just the tool that reduced the CO2 
emissions. Now that coal-fired generating operation, which might be an 
entire utility network, will have half their CO2 emissions 
that have been cut now because of the replacement of nuclear become 
their carbon credits. Carbon credits that, what do they have now? They 
have something that has value.
  They can take their carbon credits, and they can sell them through an 
exchange on the board in Chicago--there are two exchanges that exist as 
far as I know right now--and any organization, any entity, any utility 
that has to burn let's say more coal or more natural gas or more diesel 
fuel and emit more CO2 than they did before to supply more 
demand for electricity would have to buy the carbon credits from the 
entity that had created them by replacing the CO2 emissions 
with say nuclear or wind or solar or some other source. So these 
exchanges go on.
  Carbon credits are expensive when they start, and as they dial this 
down, the idea is to reduce the CO2 emissions from the 
standard, the cap, that's the cap at 2005 emission levels, and trade 
the carbon credits, dial them down by 17 percent by a certain year, 
which seems to me is 2013, way too soon. And then from two thousand and 
whatever that year is, a 17 percent reduction, on out to 2050, reduce 
the CO2 emissions by 83 percent.
  The vision is, by the time we get to 2050, we'd only be emitting 17 
percent of the CO2 that we're doing today. I'm going to 
expect we're going to use the same amount of energy, and do you expect, 
Mr. Speaker, that these carbon credits are going to be worth more or 
less as the cap gets dialed down year by year, until the year 2050, 
where 83 percent of the CO2 emissions are shut down by the 
economics of this?

                              {time}  2100

  Now, it doesn't just shut down the CO2 emissions and give 
us the same amount of kilowatt hours, or some other type of energy for 
that matter, or consumption, that could be diesel fuel or gas or 
anything. No, Mr. Speaker, it doesn't do that. What it does is it shuts 
down some of the emissions, but the economics of it require that the 
cost of power goes up. As the cost of power goes up, the consumption of 
power goes down. That means we use less energy between now and 2013 or 
2017 and 2050.
  If we use less energy, why? Do we turn the air conditioner, set it on 
80 degrees--reminds me of Jimmy Carter when he said set your thermostat 
at 60. Remember? Dial the thermostat down to 60, buy a cardigan 
sweater, button that sweater up and sit in your living room and put a 
shawl over yourself and sit there and shiver because, after all, we 
have an American malaise, and we will never be the Nation that we were 
before, and we will never be the Nation again that we are today. That 
was Jimmy Carter's message. It also fits pretty close to Barack Obama's 
message, who, Mr. Speaker, has said that electricity costs would 
``necessarily skyrocket'' under his plan of cap-and-trade.
  So what are we doing? We have an administration, and the opportunists 
in the Senate and the House that are looking at the oil slick over the 
gulf coast, which is an environmental tragedy, and seeking to 
capitalize on that environmental tragedy by pushing cap-and-trade 
legislation which will cripple American industry. For example--and I 
don't think, Mr. Speaker, that I can give the data on this, but I would 
just suggest that those that are interested should take a look at the 
American kiln industry and understand that where we have kilns, it 
might be a really simple thing, it might be like a dryer where you heat 
up asphalt and you crank it through a barrel that's got heat in it and 
it brings it through the other side, kind of like a cement truck 
cylinder, and comes out the other side hot mix asphalt. It takes a lot 
of heat to do that, takes a lot of energy; there's a lot of 
CO2 emissions.
  There are a number of other processes that are far more energy-
intensive, including the production of aluminum. We have a lot of 
aluminum in America, but it takes a lot of energy and emits a lot of 
CO2. This would about take the aluminum industry out of 
America to look at the cap-and-trade proposals that are out there.
  Industry after industry in America would be crippled by cap-and-trade 
legislation. The cost of our electricity would ``necessarily 
skyrocket,'' to quote the President. The cost of our gas would go up, 
our diesel fuel, our kerosene, our jet fuel; I said our electricity. 
All energy gets more expensive. It just changes the proportionality of 
the cost per Btu from energy source to energy source. So we would, as a 
Nation, then make our energy more costly.
  Now, what the cap-and-trade legislation does is it taxes everything 
that moves. It takes energy to move anything. Just moving my hand back 
and forth, you can count that in calories how much energy is consumed 
by that--not a lot, but it's some. If you would take a 200-pound man 
and run him up the stairs to the top of the dome in the Capitol and 
back down again--we have people that could calculate how many calories 
would be consumed by that effort to go up and down--you could turn that 
into and calculate it back down through Btus of energy. How could you 
replace that energy with gasoline or electricity with a motor that 
would take them up and down? This is energy. Anything that moves takes 
energy. You can't get something done without energy.
  So this administration is for taxing everything that moves and a cap-
and-trade scheme that would cripple America's economy and put us at a 
significant disadvantage from the developing countries in the world, in 
particular India and China--other developing countries, but India and 
China in particular--it chases our industry over there. And then what 
would we do? They produce things in countries where they have cheaper 
energy and cheaper labor. They ship it back to us and we buy it. Well, 
what do we buy it with? Right now we're buying it with credit, and we 
are running up the debt against the Chinese. Their holdings of U.S. 
currency--or U.S. debt, excuse me--are approaching $1 trillion in U.S. 
debt today.
  We lament the cost when a young person finishes their college 
education, receiving their degree--and there's a number out there, this 
is not a survey number, it's a general ballpark number that has a 
consensus to it--roughly a $40,000 debt for a young adult that receives 
a college degree, $40,000 to move into adulthood to pay off that 
student loan. Now, whatever that real number is, I'm working with 40, 
which I think is in the ballpark, and we worry about that student loan 
being paid off by that young person that has a college degree and is 
entering into the job market.
  I'm not so worried about that $40,000 student loan, Mr. Speaker, 
because the baby born in America today owes Uncle Sam, the Federal 
Government, their share of the national debt, $44,000. You can go into 
the nursery and be there when they bring a new little baby out and put 
them in the nursery in the hospital. There might be one or two or six 
or 10 of these new little miracles laying there wrapped up in blue or 
pink, with their parents proudly looking through the glass or going in 
to hold their babies. These little babies, every one of them laying in 
the nursery today, their share of the national debt--not their student 
loan, which when they get a degree that helps them earn the money to 
retire that debt, but these little babies' share of the national debt, 
$44,000. $44,000, Mr. Speaker, for the privilege

[[Page 10754]]

of being born in the United States of America.
  Well, I guess it's probably not the case for an anchor baby that gets 
citizenship along with it, at least that's an extra bargain that goes 
along--and I disagree with that. But that same little baby that's born 
today and owes the Federal Government $44,000, by the time that little 
baby goes on and learns to tie their shoes and goes off to 
kindergarten, works their way up through elementary school and walks 
into their fifth grade class--now, I pick that because that's 10 years, 
we have 10-year budgets here and we have 10-year budget windows and we 
calculate our costs over a 10-year period of time.
  $44,000 in debt, welcome to America. This is the gift of life for 
being born in America, and you owe $44,000. A lot of them aren't going 
to pay their share, so if it's half of them, those other babies are 
going to owe $88,000. But the share for everyone who walks into fifth 
grade, according to this President's budget, by the time those $44,000 
indebted children start fifth grade, they will owe Uncle Sam $88,000. 
That's the number, Mr. Speaker.
  We should be very worried about a country that can't pass a budget, 
that for the first time since there have been budget requirements put 
into the rules here in the Congress itself, since 1974 when this began, 
this Congress doesn't have the will or the conviction to pass a budget 
because it is so abysmal, because the overspending is so atrocious, 
because the spending that they are conducting cannot be defended and 
they can't defend and vote against the amendments that would surely be 
attempted to be brought against a budget.
  Now, there is a legitimate debate going on in this Congress and there 
is a legitimate amendment process going on in this Congress, but we 
don't have a budget and we're not going to have a budget. This Congress 
doesn't want to take responsibility for a budget.
  We're going to see them package up a continuing resolution of some 
kind, a modified continuing resolution that pays off the political 
favoritism that they will need in order to go on in November, and we're 
going to get to the other side of the elections in November, kick the 
can down the road, and we'll be here on the floor of Congress sometime 
after election day in November; and this Congress will, by order of the 
Speaker, bring a huge omnibus spending bill to the floor.
  If it's like the last one, 3,600 pages, several hundred billion 
dollars issued the night before, dropped on the floor with roughly 60 
minutes to debate the issue, no amendments, voted up or down, and the 
government shuts down if we voted down. I will vote ``no.'' I would 
love to shut the government down for that kind of irresponsibility. 
It's unlikely that that will happen, however, because the Speaker has 
the votes and can do what she will.
  So here we are, Mr. Speaker. This is a country that is built upon the 
rights that come from God, our liberty and our freedom. It's built upon 
this foundation that I declare to be the pillars of American 
exceptionalism. We are the unchallenged greatest Nation in the world, 
and we derive our strength from these pillars of exceptionalism, from 
free enterprise capitalism, from the rights that come from God, from 
our religious faith and foundation, this core of Judeo-Christianity 
that is America, and yet we're afraid to say so. We shy away and we 
shrink away from basic, simple utter truths.
  I happen to have just heard a speech from, in town, the president of 
the NRA, Wayne LaPierre. He doesn't know I'm coming here to say this, 
but I was listening as he delivered his speech, and I wrote this down. 
He said, If you know the truth is on your side, say it and shout it as 
long as you can--excuse me. It might be say it and shout it as loud as 
you can. Stand up, shout them down, and don't you back down. Wayne 
LaPierre, president of the NRA, a man who has for a lifetime defended 
our Second Amendment and many of our other rights and freedoms, 
impressed me with the depth of his conviction and the clarity of his 
delivery tonight.
  And now I take us to a subject matter that is on my mind to some 
degree, Mr. Speaker, and it has to do with what's going on from the 
White House and the Presidency through the Justice Department.
  Now, the Attorney General, Eric Holder, came before the Judiciary 
Committee sometime in late May, right before we broke for the Memorial 
Day period of time, and he testified under oath that the Justice 
Department is not a partisan agency, that they don't operate on a 
partisan basis, that they are driven by the law. Well, I look at the 
President and the Attorney General and a number of the other 
representatives of this administration, it's hard for me to accept that 
statement on face value as being truthful because here's what I see and 
what I know: the President of the United States spoke out openly and 
plainly about the Arizona immigration law and made a case that in his 
view there was a built-in prejudice or bias or profile in the Arizona 
law because he said that if a mother were taking her daughter out to 
get some ice cream, they could find themselves having to produce their 
papers because of, presumably, their race. Arizona law forbids such a 
thing, but the President alleged such a thing.
  Now, either the President misinformed the American people knowingly 
and willfully, or, Mr. Speaker, he hadn't read the bill. I'll opt to 
the side of he hadn't read the bill. I hope that's the case, and 
actually I believe that's the case.
  Then we had Eric Holder, the Attorney General, who also alleged that 
there could be a profile take place under Arizona's immigration law 
that would bring about discrimination against people. It turns out that 
even though I asked Eric Holder before the Judiciary Committee, you 
have been charged by the President of the United States to use the 
force of the Justice Department to go against the Arizona law and seek 
to invalidate Arizona's immigration law, S. 1070, that bill that was 
drafted and put together by the fine and stellar State Senator, Russell 
Pearce of Arizona, that legislation--that has been signed into law and 
was enacted on the last day of July of this year--Eric Holder contends 
could bring about profiling.
  Now, when someone says profiling in American Society today, they 
don't mean profiling according to, oh, let me say, whether you're a 
member of MENSA or whether you're a member of the Sierra Club. This is 
racial profiling whenever they say--when I say ``they,'' I mean the 
administration, people on the left, the self-professed progressives. 
They mean racial profiling. So the President implies, if not alleges, 
racial profiling, empowered by Arizona's immigration law, S. 1070. The 
Attorney General does the same thing. The Attorney General concedes 
that the President has ordered the Justice Department to seek to 
invalidate Arizona's immigration law.

                              {time}  2115

  When I asked the Attorney General, under oath, before the Judiciary 
Committee, Point to me in the Constitution where you believe Arizona's 
immigration law has violated the United States Constitution, the 
Attorney General could not do so. In the alternative, I said, Then 
point to me to a Federal statute that you believe preempts Arizona's 
immigration law. The Attorney General could not do so. So, when I said, 
Point out then for me a case precedent, case law, that you believe is 
controlling, which would indicate that Arizona's immigration law might 
be unconstitutional or could be invalidated by a Federal court, the 
Attorney General could not point to a single case precedent either.
  So he failed to be able to point to the Constitution, to a Federal 
statute that could preempt or to case law that controls, the Attorney 
General of the United States, but he is still using the resources and 
the authority of the Attorney General's office and the entire Justice 
Department of the United States to seek to invalidate Arizona's 
immigration law, which, for the record, Mr. Speaker, mirrors Federal 
law and is at least as constitutional as Federal immigration law. The 
Attorney General can't point to any place where that might violate, but 
he is still willing to pour in the resources and testify

[[Page 10755]]

that his department is not political, and he admits that the President 
ordered him to use the department for what I believe to be political 
purposes.
  For each of them to essentially imply or to confess that they didn't 
bother to read the Arizona law--but they wanted to tell the American 
people what to think about it--is political. It is unjust, and it is 
not consistent with the Constitution, with Federal statute, or with 
case law. That, Mr. Speaker, is what is going on.
  In addition to this, on Arizona's law, we have other people who have 
weighed in on this. We have other people who have similar levels of, 
let me say, information to work with. The President doesn't read the 
bill, and he speaks out against it, and he seeks to drive a wedge based 
on race. The Attorney General is the one who is on the record saying 
the American people are cowards when it comes to race. Well, I'm not, 
but some are, and I understand why--because they turn their PC minyans 
against people who would speak out openly on these issues.
  I think we should talk about race. I think we should talk about 
people who use race for political benefit--people like the President of 
the United States when he was informed of the incident of Professor 
Gates and Officer Crowley, in Cambridge, when Officer Crowley conducted 
himself consistent with, let me say, the rules of engagement for a 
peace officer in that community. When there was a call for him to come 
because someone was breaking into a residence in the neighborhood, 
Officer Crowley came and applied himself to that task as he had, I'm 
sure, a dozen times before, but Professor Gates objected to having law 
enforcement there to help protect his property. That message got to the 
President, and what does the President do? He sides with Professor 
Gates.
  Barack Obama was wrong on the Gates issue, and all of the American 
people know it, and he could not bring himself to apologize to Officer 
Crowley or to clarify the issue. He was looking for a way out. That's 
why the President had the beer summit on the South Lawn. That's why 
Professor Gates and Officer Crowley came and sat down out on the South 
Lawn. It seemed odd to me that they brought one beer alone, on a single 
tray. They delivered it and went back and got another one. That seemed 
a little odd to me. That's what happened.
  But, in a just world, the person who conducts himself in a just 
fashion is the one who receives the apology from the people who did not 
conduct themselves in a just fashion. I will argue, Mr. Speaker, that 
the President and Professor Gates had an obligation to apologize to 
Officer Crowley because, first, the President had prejudged that 
situation. His knee-jerk reaction defaulted in favor of the African 
American professor and against the Irish cop. That's what happened. I 
don't think anybody who watched this incident could think otherwise.
  We have the President of the United States who defaulted in favor of 
alleging that there would be racial profiling taking place in Arizona 
because of their immigration law, and he perpetuated a flat-out 
misinterpretation, and it may well have been willful, of Arizona's 
immigration law to the rest of America.
  Now, we should be able to look up to the President of the United 
States and to trust that he is properly briefed and that he is factual 
when he presents a position to the American people. That is American 
executive branch policy. We should be able to trust the President for 
that. The President should have people around him whom he trusts, who 
would go back and read the law and would brief the President.
  Well, it's obvious to all of us who have watched this and who have 
read the law that the President spoke about Arizona's law and had not 
read it. If he were briefed, it was off of the MoveOn.org Web site. He 
is surrounded by people who read those Web sites, who believe them, and 
I'm not sure that the President has access to the objective truth given 
the people around him and given the way he has responded.
  So you have two cases where the President's default reaction falls in 
the favor of an individual because of skin color as opposed to 
individuals because of the rule of law--or let me just say truth, 
justice, and the American way. There is a default mechanism in place. 
He has an Attorney General who follows that same path, who lectures the 
American people and who says that the American people are cowards when 
it comes to race. Well, he has not been a coward when it comes to race.
  His administration, his agency--the Justice Department--has cancelled 
the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of 
America, which is the case of the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia, 
who much of America has seen on videotape--let me say YouTube. They are 
paramilitary uniformed individuals, the members of the New Black 
Panthers, who were standing there in berets, with big, old billy clubs, 
smacking them in their hands as white people came to vote, calling 
those people crackers and telling them, We're taking over this country. 
We're going to be in power after that.
  That's a generalization of their statements, but the accuracy of that 
record is out there on YouTube for all the world to see. That case was 
open and shut. The case was made by the Justice Department under 
President Bush. As the handoff took place and went over to the Eric 
Holder Justice Department under President Obama, what happened, Mr. 
Speaker? Loretta King, in the Justice Department, cancelled the most 
open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of America because 
it would have brought about convictions on those New Black Panther 
party members. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez came before the 
Judiciary Committee and testified that they got the highest punishment 
allowed under the law--negotiated.
  Mr. Speaker, it was not true. It's not true today. The statement that 
he made to the Judiciary Committee was false--he knew it the day he 
said it--and it was to misinform because he was under some pressure and 
needed to get off the hook. That's a matter of the Congressional 
Record. He was under oath. It is something that we should pursue. It's 
unlikely that we can get anywhere with it. That's Tom Perez. So the 
administration has cancelled the most open-and-shut voter intimidation 
case in the history of America. It was a done deal. They cancelled it.
  The administration and Loretta King in the Justice Department 
cancelled also the will of the people in Kinston, North Carolina. 
That's K-I-N-S-T-O-N. They dropped the ``G'' because they didn't want 
to be another Kingston, North Carolina. They voted by referendum the 
will of the people. The number that I remember--and it's generally 
memorized but not specifically accurate--is 70-30, a significant 
landslide majority. They voted to end the partisan local elections in 
Kinston, North Carolina, and to no longer label the candidates with an 
``R'' or a ``D'' for ``Republican'' or ``Democrat'' by their names. 
That was the will of the people.
  Though, because Kinston is a covered district, controlled by the 
Voting Rights Act, if they are going to move a voting booth 10 feet 
down the hallway, they have to get the permission of the Justice 
Department under Federal law. So, under the Justice Department, Loretta 
King, apparently, is the one who speaks for the Justice Department, who 
speaks for Eric Holder. She issued a letter that cancelled the election 
results of Kinston, North Carolina, and she declared that they would 
have partisan elections--and the city council and the mayor of Kinston, 
North Carolina--because African Americans wouldn't know who to vote for 
if a candidate didn't have a ``D'' beside his name.
  Mr. Speaker, that is fact. That is the letter that was written and 
issued by our Justice Department under the pen and the signature of 
Loretta King, under the guidance and control of Attorney General 
Holder. Now, when we talk about things that have a racist flavor to 
them, when presuming that African Americans can't figure out who to 
vote for unless they have a ``D'' beside their names, I guess you could 
make the argument that you would

[[Page 10756]]

want to profile all the African Americans and declare that they're all 
Democrats. Therefore, it makes it simple if you just label the people 
they want to vote for with a ``D.''
  I think that has all kinds of racial implications. I don't think 
those implications have any place in the application of the laws or in 
the application of the Constitution of the United States. There should 
be equal justice before the law. This Lady Justice needs to be 
blindfolded and needs to stay blindfolded. Everybody should be 
subjected to the same level of law and enforcement without regard to 
race, creed, color, ethnicity, national origin, and a number of other 
indicators, but I've listed most of them that are in Title VII of the 
Civil Rights Act right now.
  Now, this goes on. This is a Justice Department that can't find a 
dollar or an individual to commit a minute, let alone a career or a 
team and a few million dollars, to investigate ACORN--ACORN, the 
corrupt, criminal enterprise that everybody knows today is a corrupt, 
criminal enterprise. It has been undermining the very foundation that 
sits underneath our Constitution, itself, which is, Mr. Speaker, 
legitimate elections. Legitimate elections, the faith in the legitimacy 
of our elections, is what keeps this constitutional Republic 
functioning and alive and gets us back to well. ACORN has damaged all 
of that. ACORN has threatened all of that. ACORN has diminished our 
liberty and our freedom, and it has undermined the very foundation for 
our Constitution.
  Any Justice Department worth its salt would investigate ACORN, but 
Eric Holder can't touch that--whether it's an order of the President, 
who used to work for ACORN, I don't know. We should remember that the 
President of the United States worked for ACORN. He represented them in 
court. He represented them pro bono in court. Can you imagine being an 
attorney and representing somebody in court pro bono and not agreeing 
to their agenda? He also worked for them in the form of Project Vote, 
which was when President Barack Obama made his reputation for 
organizing communities and politics in Chicago. Project Vote is, part 
and parcel, ACORN.
  The President of the United States is ACORN. He is identified with 
ACORN. He made his reputation with ACORN. He has worked for and with 
ACORN, and he has trained ACORN workers. When he said during the 
campaign to his supporters to ``get in their face,'' it is pretty 
consistent with the message that they train ACORN activists, which is 
to ``get in their face.'' Go intimidate some bankers while you're at it 
and see if you can get them to make more bad loans in bad 
neighborhoods. Let ACORN be positioned to judge whether lenders are 
making enough bad loans in bad neighborhoods.
  This became a big component of what has undermined our economy and 
what has caused this downward spiral. The President was involved and 
complicit in the effort that brought about the undermining of our 
financial institutions in America by his involvement of working with, 
for, and in promoting and representing ACORN.
  Then, when he was elected President of the United States, he sought 
to move the United States census from the Commerce Department into the 
White House. He could manage the census, the counting of the people--
real or imagined--from the White House. The public uproar over ACORN 
caused him to back away from that and to sever the relationship that he 
had that ACORN was to be working as a contractor with the Census 
Department. Now, it doesn't mean because they decided not to have a 
formal contract with ACORN that ACORN wasn't going to be involved in 
the census. We know that people are policy. We know that there are a 
lot of ACORN people involved in the census. How could there not be with 
nearly a half a million people working to count the 306 or so million 
people who we are?
  When we follow the money, when we track ACORN, the path leads us to 
the White House. ACORN should be investigated by any legitimate Justice 
Department. Kinston, North Carolina, didn't need to take place. The 
voice of the people said, We don't want partisan elections. We want to 
vote for the candidate. We don't want to vote for their political 
party. This was cancelled by Loretta King and the Justice Department.

                              {time}  2130

  We don't need to have voter intimidation with new Black Panthers out 
there with billy clubs and a Justice Department that would cancel the 
prosecution that was open and shut. We need no voter intimidation in 
America.
  And where could you better send the message than putting those people 
that are the new Black Panthers, that are clearly wide open guilty, 
under the heaviest penalty allowed by law?
  This is all part of the character and the makeup of this 
administration; this administration, who plays the race card; this 
administration, who defaults in favor of whichever minority they think 
might be the one that would most likely support their political party 
and their agenda. And I point to the new Black Panthers. I point to the 
President's remarks on the mother and the daughter going to get ice 
cream in Arizona. I point to the Justice Department canceling the 
prosecution, the open-and-shut case, by then almost closed case, of the 
new Black Panthers in Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia; of the city and 
their municipal referendum on no partisan elections in Kinston, North 
Carolina; the failure of the Justice Department to investigate ACORN; 
and the fact that the President spoke out--now this moves into a little 
bit different subject area, but it also ties, in my view, together--and 
the President demagoguing Arizona's immigration law, not having read 
it; the Attorney General doing the same thing, and finally admitting 
that he'd not read the bill. Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of 
Homeland Security, demagoguing Arizona's immigration law, not having 
read it, and having admitted that to Senator John McCain. And, let me 
see, the Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner taking Arizona's 
immigration law all the way to the Chinese and saying, Well, we brought 
it up early and often.
  Apparently, we're a sinful Nation because we believe in the rule of 
law, Mr. Speaker.
  And let me see, who's left out of this? Oh, yes. John Morton, the 
Assistant Secretary, who is the head of ICE, Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement, who remarked that he wasn't committed to handling all the 
people that might be picked up by Arizona immigration or by Arizona's 
law enforcement officers in enforcement of Federal immigration law.
  So this whole picture of this administration paints something that 
makes it really hard for government teachers to get this message down 
to their students. We have students that are juniors or seniors in high 
school, and you're teaching them government. They might be younger than 
that, but juniors and seniors in high school. They might read the paper 
and watch the news, and they sit in the classroom, and the teacher will 
say, We have a separation of powers. We have the legislative. We have 
the executive. And we have the judicial branches of government. These 
are three separate powers. Some teachers will teach they're separate 
but equal. That's another hour to talk about it. I don't believe 
they're equal. But they are separate.
  To argue that they're separate and having students watch the news and 
hear that the President doesn't want to enforce immigration law because 
he doesn't agree with it; that he wants to hold law enforcement hostage 
until the American people accept his form of amnesty. The President 
doesn't get that kind of discretion. The President's job is to enforce 
the law. The Attorney General's job is to enforce the law. John 
Morton's job as head of ICE is to enforce the law. And the Secretary of 
Homeland Security Janet Napolitano's job is to enforce the law. Because 
you disagree with the law means nothing. You enforce that law whether 
you agree with it or not because you're not a policy maker. You're a 
law enforcer.
  That's how our Constitution is set up. That's the power that's 
invested in them. If our Founding Fathers had

[[Page 10757]]

wanted them to be legislators, they would have written it into the 
Constitution. If the people of this country wanted them to be 
legislators, I can tell you what they would have done. They would have 
amended the Constitution and had the power to change Federal law over 
to John Morton, Janet Napolitano, Eric Holder, for the President of the 
United States, or maybe even Michael Posner, the Assistant Secretary of 
State. Who knows.
  That's not who we are. That's not the way it is. We must defend the 
rule of law. It is an essential pillar of American exceptionalism. We 
cannot sustain our greatness as a Nation if we're going to allow the 
discretionary--discretionary--enforcement of the law to come from 
executive branch people. And for a President of the United States, who 
taught constitutional law, albeit as an adjunct professor at the 
stellar University of Chicago School of Law, to think that that's the 
case, that he doesn't understand this any better, he thinks he can get 
away with it.
  Well, I am here to say, no, the American people know better. We can 
read the Constitution. We can read our history. And we have access to 
the information necessary to keep an educated populace, coupled with an 
armed populace, coupled with the people that have enough self-
confidence to be in a full-throated way to stand up and defend our 
liberty and defend our freedom. That's who we are, Mr. Speaker. That's 
who we must remain. That's the character that we must maintain. And we 
cannot allow ourselves to be diminished by a people who happen to find 
themselves right now sitting in controlling positions within this 
government that don't understand or willfully defy our values as a 
Nation or our Constitution.
  Mr. Speaker, I couldn't have picked a better moment to yield back the 
balance of my time.

                          ____________________