[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 16340-16344]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            AMERICAN BEDROCK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hanna). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for 30 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  It's always my privilege and an honor to be recognized to address you 
here on the floor. As is often the case, I come here and hear the end 
of the debate that has gone on before me and feel compelled to address 
it from a bit of a different perspective.
  As I listen to the gentlemen and the gentleladies talk about the 
right to vote, I think it would be important for us to remind the body 
that there has to be a qualified voter. It isn't that everybody has a 
right to vote. You have to be old enough for one thing, and you need to 
be an American citizen for another. As I've watched things change over 
my adult lifetime, the integrity of the vote has been damaged.
  The gentleman from Maryland made the statement that there is no 
evidence of any widespread voter fraud. I know that it's difficult to 
put this into the Congressional Record, Mr. Speaker, but I would hold 
this up as, let me just call this, evidence number one:
  This is an acorn. It's an acorn that I carry in my pocket every day. 
I carry it there every day to remind me of what that organization ACORN 
has done to the integrity of the vote in the United States of America. 
How much more widespread would you have to be than operations going on 
in nearly all, if not all, of the 50 States--the major cities--and 
millions of dollars spent to pay people to go out and fraudulently 
register voters? There are over 400,000 fraudulent voter registrations 
that this acorn symbolizes that they have admitted to going out and 
purchasing on a commission basis: We're going to pay you to get these 
fraudulent voter registrations. Oh, they can be legitimate, but they 
can also be fraudulent, and ACORN didn't differentiate between the two. 
They just paid out in commissions. They violated the laws of the State 
of Nevada, and they violated the laws of the State of New York.
  This Congress shut down the funding to ACORN, and the national 
organization of ACORN collapsed. So for the gentleman to say--and I 
quote--there is no evidence of any widespread voter fraud, I think 
there is massive evidence of widespread voter registration fraud, and 
from that flowed fraudulent votes as well.
  We have watched the integrity of the voter registration and the 
election system be undermined over the last generation in almost a 
calculated way. Issue after issue has eroded the integrity of the 
qualified voter in these ways: motor voter during the Clinton years. If 
you show up for a driver's license--and we know how well that works. 
How many of the--I think it's 15 of the 19--September 11 hijackers had 
driver's licenses, that breeder document for false identification? You 
show up for a driver's license, and they say to you in their native 
language, Do you want to register to vote? If you answer in the 
affirmative in any language, they put you down and register you to 
vote.
  People don't understand that they're bound by perjury laws. We don't 
know about the prosecutions that may or may not be taking place. It's 
not considered to be as serious an offense by, let me just say, the 
Department of Justice as it should be. After all, they have their 
prosecutorial discretion. They have testified before the Judiciary 
Committee, where I serve, that they select which laws they want to 
enforce and which ones they do not want to enforce.
  With regard to voting rights in the civil rights division of the 
Department of Justice, we know how that works. They have a policy that 
has been testified to under oath under several different scenarios that 
they will not move a voting rights case if it damages a minority. 
That's the policy of the Department of Justice, and it's the policy of 
the most recently departed Loretta King, who found that, in Kinston, 
North Carolina, that voted like 70 percent of the communities in 
America to have nonpartisan local elections for

[[Page 16341]]

mayor and city council, they voted to abolish the partisanship and go 
to nonpartisan elections. So that would be a common practice, and 70 
percent of the cities and municipalities have done that. But in 
Kinston, North Carolina, they were forbidden by the Department of 
Justice because, if you read the Department of Justice's agent's letter 
on that--and that was Loretta King--African Americans--no, she said 
``blacks''--wouldn't know who to vote for if they didn't have a ``D'' 
beside their names. Therefore, she forbid them from abolishing partisan 
elections in a city council and mayor's race in Kinston, North 
Carolina. That's one example.
  There is another example of the intimidation that took place with the 
New Black Panthers of Philadelphia, who were standing out there, 
calling people ``crackers,'' smacking their billy clubs in their hands, 
taking an offensive posture in paramilitary uniforms. That's all on 
videotape--most of America has seen that--and we saw this Justice 
Department write off the case. The case was made. The convictions were 
there. This Justice Department canceled those convictions and released 
everyone except for the one individual, the most egregious violator, 
who got the tiniest little message. He got an injunction: Don't do this 
again right here in this city at least for the short term. That was the 
injunction.
  Tom Perez, the Assistant U.S. Attorney, testified under oath that 
that was the most severe penalty that they could have under law. Not 
true. Under oath, he uttered words that were not true, and we should 
bring him back before the committee and call him to account for this.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I want every American citizen who is qualified to 
vote. I don't want anybody slowed up at the polls and intimidated 
because of any reason. But to imply that people are denied their right 
to vote in this country as if this were 1960 all over again really is a 
false premise to establish this on. We're all about legitimate voters, 
and I'm all against illegitimate voters that erode the vote and dilute 
the vote of the legitimate voters.

                              {time}  2120

  I just mentioned motor voter. Absentee ballots themselves have been 
stretched out, and they can pass through numerous hands, and the 
various States have different policies. And whenever a ballot goes from 
one hand to another hand to another hand, it opens up the opportunity 
for fraud. I can remember a case in Iowa where near the end of the 
election, they found 444 ballots, absentee ballots that had not been 
turned in yet that were--where did they find them? Oh, Democrat 
campaign headquarters; 444 absentee ballots. So, Mr. Speaker, there is 
an example of the election fraud. I would call it widespread voter 
fraud that is taking place. There are convictions in Troy, New York, 
for example.
  I also listened to testimony before the Judiciary Committee by the 
Secretary of State of the State of New Mexico who had to admit under 
oath that if I were working the election board and am a resident of New 
Mexico in good standing and am registered to vote, if I went in to work 
and figured that I would vote at the end of my shift, and somebody 
walked in, and they said that they are Steve King--me--and they lived 
at my address, whatever it might happen to be in New Mexico, even if 
they alleged that they were me, and I am working the board, I can't 
challenge them by law in New Mexico. That's a law that encourages voter 
fraud.
  So what happens when they call up an hour before the polls close and 
they say, Sally, we know that you voted, but your husband, Joe, is 
registered to vote, and he's not been in to vote yet. Can you send him 
down? And Sally says, Well, no. Joe is in a truck in Maine. He isn't 
going to be voting. And 15 minutes later, somebody shows up and says, 
I'm Joe, and he votes as Joe. How do you catch that? How do you police 
that? I suggest you do so with a picture ID, a government-issued 
picture ID.
  We need to have a number of things go on. We have people voting on 
the rolls that--dead people are voting. People are voting in New York 
and voting in Florida; that happened in the year 2000. We know about 
those cases. When you have fraud within the States and that fraud flows 
over State lines, and when people get in buses and take a ride across a 
State line and go into the polls, and they vote same-day registration 
in voting, it opens up the door again for fraud. And the people that 
want to game it and invest money in it are marginally winning those 
close elections.
  So this acorn that I carry in my pocket every day, it isn't because I 
have such an abiding dislike for ACORN, as an entity. But it's because 
I understand--and I want the American people to understand--what 
happens to the United States of America if the people that are 
perpetrating widespread voter fraud get their way. And it's this, Mr. 
Speaker: the Constitution of the United States is the foundation of 
this country. It is the foundation of our law. It is the supreme law of 
the land, coupled with Federal law that's written within the guidelines 
of the United States Constitution.
  We often look at it, if we hold on to the Constitution--because if we 
fail, our Republic will fail and collapse as well. And I embrace the 
Constitution. I hold on to it. I have one in my pocket every day, and I 
refer to it on a regular basis. But there's something underneath that 
Constitution.
  When you think of the edifice of a building, and you go down and you 
build a foundation, a foundation on sand, for example, or a foundation 
on something unstable, no matter how good your foundation is--the 
Constitution--no matter how good that foundation is, if it's on 
unstable soil, it will collapse. No foundation can be sustained just by 
the strength of the foundation itself. And the underpinnings, the 
bedrock upon which this foundation of our Republic, called the 
Constitution, sits is free elections, honest elections, legitimate 
elections, elections where qualified voters, American citizens go forth 
and redirect the destiny of the United States of America.
  But they have to be free elections. They have to be open elections. 
They have to be legitimate. They have to be fair. And we cannot have 
noncitizens voting. We cannot have fraudulent votes. We can't have dead 
people voting. We can't have transients that are not American citizens 
voting. If that happens--and it is happening--and if America loses 
confidence in the election system that we have, this bedrock that 
upholds our Constitution collapses. That bedrock of legitimate 
elections collapses. And if it does, the Constitution itself falls with 
it, Mr. Speaker. That's why it's important that we have voter 
registration lists that are free of duplicates.
  And where the States have laws prohibiting the voting of felons--like 
Iowa, for example--free of felons, free of deceased--free of deceased, 
duplicates, and felons, we require a picture ID, and we need to require 
that the Secretary of State certify that the registered voters are 
citizens, and we need to enforce it, and we need to police it. And we 
need to say to the Department of Justice and the attorneys general 
within the States that have jurisdiction to bring these cases, that you 
must set this as a high priority.
  Prosecutorial discretion, when there's an assault on the bedrock that 
is the underpinning for the foundation of the United States, the 
Constitution, when that assault comes, it must be enforced to the 
fullest extent of the law. And this society and this culture and this 
Congress should rise up and demand that we have legitimate elections in 
this country.
  When you think, Mr. Speaker, that a single State and a handful of 
votes, 537 votes in the State of Florida in the year 2000, determined 
the President of the United States--it may well have been for the next 
8 years rather than the next 4 years--and each recount of those votes 
in Florida came back to the same or a very similar total--there's not a 
legitimate argument any longer that Al Gore really won that race. He 
did not. History cannot write that. Even the recount down by The Miami 
Herald comes back to George

[[Page 16342]]

Bush winning marginally by very nearly the same number that the 
Secretary of State certified by 537 votes.
  But how many votes in Florida were fraudulent votes altogether? How 
much closer was that election because of election fraud? How many 
people voted in Florida that also voted in the State of New York? How 
many deceased voted? How many felons voted? We've got some records of 
those. And even though the felons that are voting that we know of are 
not in great numbers, this could have come down to a handful of votes. 
This could have come down to one vote. And if a State doesn't have a 
legitimate election process, and that State's electoral votes determine 
the President of the United States, and we would stand here and argue 
that anybody that came into the polls should be allowed to vote 
because, if not, their vote might be disenfranchised even though they 
took no responsibility to register themselves to vote, to go to the 
right polling place to vote, that they should be motor votered and 
same-day registration votered and walk into any precinct and vote, and 
that can be sorted out after the fact.
  That happened in my State. My former Secretary of State, Chet Culver, 
who later became Governor, amazingly gave the order that anybody could 
vote in any precinct at any time, and they would sort that out 
afterwards. So the election that he presided over--where Iowa is the 
first-in-the-Nation caucus, we were the last in the Nation to certify 
the vote. And he is the one that also supported an executive order to 
grant the felons the right to vote, even though a State statute 
specifically prohibited such a thing.
  I came to talk about a different matter, Mr. Speaker, and I will 
endeavor to do that. But legitimate elections with integrity in our 
voter registration rolls, requiring citizenship, and devoid of 
duplicates, deceased and felons, where the law applies and a picture ID 
where the people that maybe can't figure out how to vote under the 
rules that every other citizen can meet, such as a picture ID, will pop 
out their picture ID to rent a movie, for example, or to get on an 
airplane is another example. They can have their picture ID, but they 
can't be bothered to show up with that.
  When we're choosing sometimes by a handful of votes the next leader 
of the free world within the jurisdiction of the States, that if one 
single State has a corrupt election process, even one that isn't as 
clean as it can be, even one that's just sloppy where illegitimate, 
illegal voters cancel out the votes of the legitimate voters and, 
thereby, by a marginal vote--like we saw in Florida, perhaps--change 
the results in that State and by doing so shift the electoral votes 
over to one side or the other for the Presidency, and America gets a 
President that we really didn't vote for because we didn't have 
integrity in the voting process.

                              {time}  2130

  And we could watch, not so much just the fraud, but if America loses 
confidence in the electoral system, if we don't have faith that the 
decisions of the American people emerge through the election process, 
then we lose confidence in our Republic altogether, and that's when the 
United States, our Constitution, could collapse, Mr. Speaker.
  So this is a high and important goal that we have. And ACORN was cut 
off from Federal funding by a massive outpouring of votes in the House 
and the Senate. When they saw what was going on inside ACORN, even some 
of the strongest left wing Democrats that sit over here voted to cut 
off the funding to ACORN.
  I had introduced the first amendment to cut off ACORN about 4 years 
earlier, but I'm going to carry this in my pocket because they're 
reforming. They're reforming in localities and cities and States across 
the country again. They're coming back, some of the same faces with a 
little bit different names. They're organizing, by the way, in the 
Occupy Wall Street effort in New York. Should've known. You know, we 
could have called that shot early from the beginning.
  But, Mr. Speaker, I want to make a couple of comments in a 
transitional discussion here. I didn't set myself up with a segue, and 
so I'll just jump right into it, that is, I have the privilege to 
represent a good part of Iowa here in the United States Congress. And 
I've had the privilege to be involved in and engaged in the first-in-
the-Nation caucus process for quite a long time now.
  It came about somewhat in this way, and that would be an Iowa 
legislature from years gone by decided to establish the first-in-the-
nation caucus. A lot of the rest of the country didn't pay much 
attention to it. It didn't attract the Presidential candidates in the 
fashion that they would have envisioned early on.
  But in 1976, a little-known candidate and low-profile candidate for 
President who was the Governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, came to Iowa. 
He saw that opportunity that the first-in-the-Nation caucus provided 
and Jimmy Carter spent a lot of time in Iowa. He traveled the State and 
got to know people. He built a network and organization and friendships 
within the State. By the time the caucus rolled around in 1976, Jimmy 
Carter won the caucus in Iowa, which was a surprise win. People didn't 
see it coming. The polling didn't show it. And that surprise win was a 
springboard that launched Jimmy Carter on to the nomination of the 
Presidency out of this little-known, first-in-the-Nation caucus we have 
in Iowa.
  And the State law that was introduced says that we shall be the first 
competition in the Nation, and it automatically moves the State of Iowa 
forward if any other State moves their date. This year it will be on 
January 3. So it's earlier than usual, earlier than I would like; but 
it will be a significant competition that evening that will give the 
country the first look at what Iowa activists think about who should be 
the next President of the United States.
  Taking us back in history also, something to reflect on, and that 
would be Jimmy Carter in 1976 won the nomination because of the 
springboard of the Iowa caucus. If he had lost the Iowa caucus, I don't 
think we would have heard of Jimmy Carter after that. His campaign very 
likely would have died. That was 1976. That was the year, by the way, 
that Ronald Reagan challenged unsuccessfully Gerald Ford for the 
nomination of the Presidency.
  Well, 4 years later, Ronald Reagan was a player in the Iowa caucus, 
but he didn't work Iowa very hard. George H.W. Bush did work Iowa very 
hard, and Bush won the caucus in Iowa. Reagan expected to, but he took 
Iowa for granted and George Herbert Walker Bush won the caucus in Iowa 
in 1980, and then Ronald Reagan had the pressure on him when they went 
to New Hampshire. And there in New Hampshire Ronald Reagan had the 
famous line: I'm paying for this microphone, and he pulled the 
microphone forward, and that was the shot. That was the vignette that 
went around the country and around the world, and it exemplified the 
authority with which Ronald Reagan came to the debate and the authority 
with which he had governed as Governor of California and the authority 
with which he would later on become the best President of the 20th 
century. But that moment in New Hampshire was a moment for Ronald 
Reagan that launched him out of New Hampshire and on to the nomination 
and on to the Presidency.
  But if you'll remember, Mr. Speaker, Gerald Ford was under serious 
consideration for the nomination as Vice President of the United 
States. And I'm actually glad they didn't make that decision. A former 
President as a Vice President would be too much friction, too much 
conflict, and not enough room for the new President to operate. But 
George Herbert Walker Bush was nominated and became the Vice President 
under Ronald Reagan, for two terms, 1980 through 1988, or 1981 through 
1989 would be another way to describe that. And was, of course, the 
nominee and was elected to become the President of the United States.
  So I would just speculate, Mr. Speaker, that had it not been for the 
Iowa caucus victory of George H.W. Bush, he very likely would not have 
been named the Vice Presidential candidate since

[[Page 16343]]

he ran a competitive nomination competition against Ronald Reagan. 
Gerald Ford was not named Vice President; George H.W. Bush was. He 
became Vice President for 8 years, and then President for 4 years. And 
would we have had a President George W. Bush? Had we never had Bush 41, 
we maybe would never have had Bush 43.
  So the continuum of history has shifted itself dramatically on the 
results of what was prior to that time a very low-profile, not-very-
significant caucus in Iowa. Now since that period of time, it has been 
leveraged up again and again and again. And in the last caucus, we saw 
what happened with Barack Obama emerging. His movement began in Iowa. 
Iowa gave him his launch to New Hampshire. It wasn't my choice, 
obviously, Mr. Speaker; but there's a legacy that will play itself out 
again January 3 of this year.
  I'm watching all of the Presidential candidates, and I'm watching how 
they perform and how they resonate with the voters. I have said since 
January, concluded that it was a slow start on the Presidential race. 
You know, most people weren't yet clamoring for a Presidential race. I 
thought we should start seeing and we should be seeing more activity, 
and so we did some things to initiate Presidential activity in the 
State, including hosting a Presidential event on March 26 at the 
Marriott Hotel in Des Moines. That seemed to galvanize and launch this 
caucus process.
  A number of the Presidential candidates came there and made their 
presentations, and we intermixed it with good thinkers on policy issues 
of the day. That was one of the things that took place. But even then, 
as I listened to the Presidential candidates, and as I have the 
privilege to talk with them and get to know them, and it is an 
extraordinary privilege to know these Presidential candidates in this 
way, I like them all. I respect them all. Mr. Speaker, every one of 
them, in my opinion, would make a better President than the one we 
have. I will have no hesitation about endorsing and campaigning for the 
eventual nominee.
  But there have been a couple of things missing. One of them is an 
economic policy plan. As I listened to the candidates, they would talk 
about what they would repeal, but I wasn't hearing very much about what 
they would do on the proactive side. So I even toyed with this idea, 
Mr. Speaker, and the idea of advancing some of those repeals in my own 
way. But as I watched the Presidential candidates, they want to tweak 
the tax policy some and they all want to repeal ObamaCare. I think that 
looks like plank number one in the platform of the nominee or any of 
the candidates as they compete for the nomination going forward. Plank 
number one, repeal ObamaCare.
  Then they have their tax cut plan and how they would structure the 
taxes. But I have not seen all year long a significant economic 
proposal. One of those that has emerged now that people can identify 
with is Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan. The 9-9-9 is a bumper sticker that 
does get people's attention. They can remember it. It has a unique ring 
to it, and it causes them to pay attention and look into it and 
understand each of the three components. Well, there's a marketing 
brilliance in the 9-9-9 plan. I'm going to try to avoid discussing the 
economic components of it, but there's a marketing brilliance.
  Then Mitt Romney had, prior to that, a 59-point plan. Mr. Speaker, 
I'm sorry, I can't get through 59 points. What I can't memorize, I 
can't defend and explain. But subsequent to Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan, 
then Rick Perry's 20/20 plan. Let's see: cut, balance and grow, or 
pretty close to that. I call it the 20/20 plan--that also caught 
people's attention--to go to a flat tax. Steve Forbes is one of the 
advisers on it. It looks like Art Laffer is one of the advisers on 
Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan. Both are very respected economists.

                              {time}  2140

  I'm one who goes for a fair tax, so it's hard to move me on these 
other policies. But we're starting to see now the Presidential 
candidates differentiate themselves on their economic policies.
  But, Mr. Speaker, what I bring this up for is that I'm looking yet 
for a candidate for the Presidency who can articulate a vision for 
America on what their view is, what their vision is on how to take 
America to the next level of our destiny. What does America look like 
in a generation if they're able to bring their policies into play and 
lead with the bully pulpit of the Presidency of the United States? What 
does America look like? What are our fundamental principles that can be 
inspired by a President with that kind of vision? And how does that 
mesh in, how does that couple with the policies that they would 
advocate?
  I take you back, Mr. Speaker, to Ronald Reagan, again, who for his 
entire political career talked about America as the shining city on the 
hill. He didn't talk about the shining city on the hill that he 
promised we were necessarily going to have. He said, America is a 
shining city on a hill and standing strong and true on a granite ridge. 
That is pretty close to a Reagan quote. It may not be exactly right, 
Mr. Speaker, but this gives you the concept. All of his political life, 
he had the vision for America as a shining city on the hill. He 
articulated it. When we heard it from him, maybe we didn't see it with 
the clarity that Reagan did, but we knew he saw it with the clarity. 
That was the vision thing. That is what inspired America to come behind 
Ronald Reagan, and that's what inspired America to become, again, this 
resurgent Nation where the malaise speech was put behind us and the 
imagination, the hope and the robust future for America unfolded from 
the Reagan administration. That's the biggest reason why we see him as 
the greatest President of the 20th century.
  The next President of the United States needs to articulate a vision, 
needs to tell us what America looks like, what are our foundational 
principles, how they will refurbish those pillars of American 
exceptionalism, how they can strengthen the measures of life and 
marriage, how they can strengthen the family, that basic building block 
of our civilization, and how they can restrengthen the constitutional 
understanding. I want to hear from Presidential candidates how they 
would make appointments to the Supreme Court of Justices who will read 
and interpret the Constitution, the text of the Constitution, to mean 
what it was understood to mean at the time of ratification.
  We have a President who is intentionally nominating activists to the 
Federal courts. It's a tragedy that those kinds of judges would remove 
the understanding of the Constitution from the American people. And so 
far we've kind of moved forward accepting the idea that the people in 
the black robes understand more about what's written and what is meant 
in this Constitution than other people.
  All of us in here took an oath to this Constitution. Our Federal 
workers take an oath to this Constitution in the executive branch. Our 
troops all do the same thing, and many of our State officers do the 
same thing. You can't take an oath to a Constitution that is living and 
breathing. You can only take an oath to a Constitution that means what 
it says. And some of them take the oath and set about seeking to amend 
it de facto, amending the Constitution by redefining it.
  I want a President who understands the pillars of American 
exceptionalism, who can articulate them and can transfer them into the 
future as the timeless values that have gotten us to the present; one 
who can articulate the great, great difficulty of moving to a balanced 
budget, how we get a balanced budget amendment that will guide this 
Congress so we can be bound by our obligation to our constituencies; 
one who has an understanding of foreign policy; and one who has a full 
and complete tax plan that transforms America.
  All of those things are things that fit within the vision. And the 
vision, right now, is what I've tuned my ear for. And I'm hopeful, Mr. 
Speaker, that we will be able to hear this vision come from the 
Presidential candidates and, before we get into January, that we'll 
understand or hear with that clarity from the next President what their 
shining city on the hill speech is for us.

[[Page 16344]]

  Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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