[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6721-6728]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                IMPORTANT POINTS FOR AMERICA TO CONSIDER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bucshon). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor and privilege to 
address you here on the floor of the United States House of 
Representatives and to have an hour to invest in laying out some points 
here that I think are important for you to consider. And as America 
listens on, hopefully it will stimulate some of the thought process and 
help bring people to some conclusions.
  The first thing that I think that any one of us wants to speak of and 
to is the President's announcement which took place very late on Sunday 
night that the Special Forces team had been successful in taking out 
Osama bin Laden.
  Our first response to that news, that happy news for all of America, 
I think, is to congratulate the team that fast-roped down into that 
compound, those who put their lives on the line to put an end to the 
life of perhaps the most evil man on the planet, Osama bin Laden. And I 
congratulate the President of the United States for issuing the order 
and making the decision to go into that compound in the fashion that 
they did.

                              {time}  1410

  He had a number of options. As the news has reported, and I accept 
this to be fact, that the President sat in and led five different 
discussions to evaluate the quality of the intelligence that was 
available and the tactics that might be used in that compound and that 
he gave the order.
  Some have said it was the most courageous order a President had given 
in their memory or lifetime. They were all from the administration. It 
was a good order, there's no question. I don't think it was the most 
courageous. It didn't lack courage. But there are a number of other big 
decisions that stand up there, I think, in a higher profile than this 
one. But it was the right decision, it was a good decision, and the 
President had to take a chance.
  He could have ordered a massive bombing raid on that compound and, as 
some have said, turned it into a glass parking lot, which would have 
raised the level of the degree of success but firmly eliminated the 
chance to show that Osama bin Laden was in that compound. He could have 
dropped a single bomb, a one-ton-plus bomb from a Predator, that would 
have had a reasonable chance of succeeding in taking out the most evil 
man on the planet. Or he could have just done nothing. Or he could have 
ordered the Special Forces in to fast-rope inside that compound and do 
what they did. Of those options, I believe the President chose the 
right one, and I congratulate him for that decision.
  Yet in sitting here and listening to the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Lungren) talk about the situation with the intelligence that we 
had, it is clear to me, and it has been clear to me for a long time, 
that one of the essential links in the intelligence that led us to 
Osama bin Laden in the compound in Pakistan was information that was 
given up in part by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in enhanced interrogation 
encounters that he had, probably before he went to Gitmo. That 
information then was worked, it was matched up with other information, 
and the thread was followed. In fact, the courier was followed to the 
compound in Pakistan.
  It's ironic that the President of the United States campaigned 
against such enhanced interrogation tactics. It's ironic that many whom 
I serve with on the Judiciary Committee lined up against George W. Bush 
and accused him of ordering torture against people who had been 
attacking and killing Americans, terrorists of the like of Khalid 
Sheikh Mohammed and a very small number of others.
  I agree with the gentleman from California. Waterboarding is not 
torture. If it were torture, we would be torturing our own Special 
Forces troops. I would be willing to wager--and this I can't verify not 
knowing the identities of the individuals who did fast-rope down into 
that compound--that a number of those very same forces that went into 
the compound that took out Osama bin Laden in their training were 
likely waterboarded as a part of their training. I've sat in my office 
and I've gone out in the field and I've talked to those Special Forces 
personnel who were waterboarded as part of their training. It is not a 
painful procedure, but it is one that gives one the sensation that they 
are drowning. It's easy enough to go on the Internet and read the 
material there, Mr. Speaker. It's an enhanced and effective 
interrogation technique, and in all of the research that I did--and I 
read back in story after story of this and had others dig down in it--I 
found one case where there was a fatality that was nearly a century ago 
that was because of the brutal tactics that they used in conjunction 
with the waterboarding. In any case, there are many Americans that are 
alive today because of the information that our people were able to 
acquire because of enhanced interrogation techniques, and it's ironic 
that President Bush approved the methods that acquired the thread, the 
significant thread of information, without which no one can explain to 
me how we would have found Osama bin Laden in that compound.
  And so the very President who campaigned against the tactics that 
George Bush was employing is the one that was able to take the 
information from those tactics and make the right decision to take out 
OBL. I'm glad that George Bush made the decisions that he made. I'm 
glad that he was strong and courageous and defended America's ability 
to gain information in the fashion that they did, because anyone will 
tell you that was involved with the interrogations, especially of 
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, that once he understood what waterboarding was, 
he sang like a canary. If he had not warbled in the fashion that he 
did, I don't think we would be celebrating in the fashion that we are 
the end of the life of the most evil man on the planet.
  So, I agree with the gentleman from California that the cloud of 
investigation around the American interrogators who are being 
investigated for the tactics that they were assured by the Justice 
Department were constitutional and were legal and now we have a Justice 
Department with a different opinion, it's putting some of our 
interrogators through an investigation with the cloud of an eventual 
indictment hanging over their head for doing the same type of tactics 
that were used with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a very few others to 
gather the information that allowed us to take out Osama bin Laden. 
This paradox needs to be resolved, Mr. Speaker, and I am hopeful

[[Page 6722]]

that the President will give the order for the Justice Department to 
accept the conclusions that were drawn by the Bush administration and 
adopt that policy so that Americans can continue to be protected and 
safe in the face of this threat that we have from without, this threat 
that comes from radical Islam.
  We are fighting radical Islam. Radical Islamists are seeking to kill 
Americans on a regular basis because they disagree with western 
civilization and our philosophy. It's why they attacked us on September 
11. That's why they attacked the Khobar Towers. That's why they 
attacked the Twin Towers the first time in the early nineties. That's 
why they attacked the USS Cole, the Marine barracks, the list goes on 
and on, the times that we have been attacked by people who reject our 
free society. They feel threatened by the liberty and the freedom that 
is America. They're threatened by the free enterprise that we are. 
They're threatened by the robust nature of our culture and our economy 
and our innovativeness where we lead the world in patents and 
trademarks. Because of that, we need to stand strong and hold ourselves 
confident.
  I point out, also, that the probability that the intelligence was 
correct and that Osama bin Laden was inside the compound where the 
attack came from our Special Forces on Sunday, the probability that he 
was there was a probability that was probably less than 50 percent 
chance. The President took the chance. If they had gone in and attacked 
the compound and Osama bin Laden had not been there, I would like to 
think we would have never heard about it, Mr. Speaker. I don't have any 
information that says that they tried any other compounds or tried any 
other locations, although I suspect that we have checked a few more 
places. I'd like to think we checked a lot of caves up there in the 
mountains in Pakistan. It's where a lot of us thought he was. That's 
where our intelligence was telling us that he was. So I would like to 
think that we were going into some of those locations. But if they had 
gone into that compound in Pakistan and Osama bin Laden had not been 
there, we would have never heard about it, which is appropriate and 
proper, because the odds of this kind of intelligence being spot-on are 
always less than 100 percent, and in this case I believe it was less 
than 50 percent. In fact, if you compare the value of the intelligence 
that said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before we went 
in there, when you had a universal intelligence conclusion that was 
drawn by the Israelis, the French, the Americans, as the universal 
global intelligence said, Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass 
destruction. The probability of those weapons being there in Iraq if 
you analyzed it from the intelligence we had at the time made that 
probability for WMD in Iraq greater than the probability that Osama bin 
Laden was even in the compound last Sunday when the attack came.
  I make these points, Mr. Speaker, so that we can look back across 
this continuum of history and understand that intelligence isn't an 
exact science. It's a series of judgment calls. It's a series of 
connecting different threads of information together and following 
hunches and then coming to that and following the hunch and making the 
decision. President Obama made the right decision. The value of the 
intelligence we had, it wasn't a 100 percent piece of information that 
he had to work with, so whatever was the hunch, whatever was the 
conviction that caused him to make that decision, there's times you're 
going to be right and there's times you're going to be wrong. He was 
right this time. I'm glad he made the decision. I'm glad the world has 
seen the end of Osama bin Laden.
  With regard to whether a photograph should be published of Osama bin 
Laden to give the world a higher measure of proof, I will give some 
deference to the opinion that came from the chairman of the Select 
Committee on Intelligence, Mike Rogers of Michigan, who said his 
measure is, does it make it harder for American military to work with, 
say, the Afghan people for intelligence and information on the ground 
in Afghanistan?

                              {time}  1420

  Does it make it harder or does it make it easier? Are the chances 
better or worse that our troops on the ground in Afghanistan will have 
a more successful time if the picture comes out or if it doesn't?
  In addition to that position, I would say this, Mr. Speaker, that if 
the rumors that it's a hoax grow so great that they're able to use 
those rumors to recruit more al Qaeda, and if the rumors that it's a 
hoax strengthen the recruitment of the Taliban, then we should release 
the picture or the pictures or enough information that people can be 
completely convinced. I don't have any doubt Osama bin Laden was in 
that compound; Osama bin Laden is in the bottom of the Arabian Sea. And 
I don't have any doubt.
  But we may have to get to the point where we have to erase the 
doubts, and I suspect it will be very hard to keep the pictures of this 
operation completely with a lid on them, although if anybody can do it, 
our Special Forces can. If that's their order, I expect that they will. 
I just don't know that the Pakistanis aren't sitting on something now 
that would get released.
  Just another little irony I would point out as I transition, Mr. 
Speaker, into a little bit different subject matter. The compound is 
reported to have had 12- to 18-foot walls around it with barbed wire on 
top. It's pretty interesting that the Secretary of Homeland Security 
made a trip over to that part of the world to advise Afghanistan on 
border security and compared the Afghanistan-Pakistan border with the 
U.S.-Mexican border. It's interesting that the Secretary of Homeland 
Security has long said: You show me a 50-foot wall; I'll show you a 51-
foot ladder.
  It's interesting that the 12- and 18-foot walls weren't scaled by 
Special Forces personnel with 13- and 19-foot ladders. They put 
helicopters over the top of the compound and fast-roped down inside. 
The wall was effective and the wire on top of it was effective. That's 
why they put them there. They don't build all of these walls with wire 
on top all around the world if they're not effective. It isn't like 
ladders aren't available in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
  My point is, and I often facetiously respond to this idea, that if 
you show me a 20-foot wall, I'll show you a 20-foot ladder, as if that 
just makes fun of anybody that thinks we can protect our borders with a 
wall. If anybody has been to a military compound, you will know there 
are fences and walls around the military compound. Why is that? It's to 
keep out enemy infiltrators. No, they don't keep out everybody. You 
have got to still guard it. People come along with wire cutters and 
they come along and dig underneath and they will detonate and blow a 
hole in a concrete wall. They did that in the wall around the Embassy 
in Saigon, if you remember. So it isn't that they're the only solution.
  And when I say we need to build a fence, a wall and a fence on our 
southern border, Mr. Speaker, I'm not advocating that we build that and 
walk away and let somebody come up to the other side with a 21-foot 
ladder. I'm suggesting that, first of all, we don't have to build 2,000 
miles of fence, wall, and fence, that we just build a fence, a wall, 
and a fence with a patrol road in between in those locations and build 
it until they stop going around the end.
  If anybody has been down to the border, you will see the beaten path 
that goes through, sometimes right through what they're declaring to be 
fence, the 600-some miles of fence that they declare that we have. 646 
I think is the last number that I saw. And when you go down and look at 
the real fence that's there, some of it is triple fencing that they 
call tertiary fencing. That's a little too sophisticated for me. If you 
go to the San Luis area in southwest Arizona, you can see 24-foot-high 
fences, triple fences. When I was down there last, I asked them 
directly, Has anyone defeated this triple fencing? Their answer, after 
several evasive responses and me point-blanking the question several 
times, was, No, they go around the end. Of course they do.

[[Page 6723]]

It's a short fence. It doesn't go far enough. And so people go around 
the end.
  So we just keep building a fence, a wall, and a fence until people 
stop going around the end. If we end up with 2,000 miles of fence, 
wall, and fence, we must have needed it because they were continuing to 
go around the end.
  We can do this, and we can do this for a lot less money than we're 
spending today to chase people across the desert 70 and 100 miles north 
of our border.
  Here's how the math works out, Mr. Speaker. We're spending about $12 
billion protecting our southern border. That's 2,000 miles. Already, 
smart people have done this calculus and taken $12 billion and divided 
by 2,000 miles and come up with a unit price conclusion that we're 
spending $6 million a mile to defend our southern border--$6 million.
  Now, imagine this. For me, I'm an Iowa guy and I live out in the 
country on a gravel road, and it's a mile to concrete from where I live 
in any direction. So my west road, no one lives on it. It's a full mile 
of gravel.
  If Janet Napolitano came to me and said, Congressman, I've got a 
proposal for you. I need you to guard this mile. Will you guard this 
mile and see to it that the people that go across it--you can let 75 
percent of them through. No problem. Let 75 percent go through. And the 
25 percent that you're required to stop, or you should be stopping, you 
just have to turn them around and send them back south again. And, by 
the way, I'm going to pay you, Congressman, $6 million a mile to defend 
this mile of your gravel road. I'd look at that and say, Could you give 
me a 10-year contract? That's what we do here in this Congress. We 
budget out for 10 years. That's $6 million a mile for 10 years. It's 
$60 million for the budget window of 10 years to guard a single mile.
  The population that's going across that, 75 percent of those that try 
are getting through; 25 percent are being interdicted. This is a little 
bit dated information, but it's testimony before the Immigration 
Committee.
  And so if they were going to pay me $60 million to guard this mile 
and I didn't have any kind of efficiency standard except turn 25 
percent of them back, or so, first, I'm going to want an efficiency 
standard. I want a 100 percent efficiency standard. We ought to be 
developing infrastructure that gets us to that point. And so it 
wouldn't take me $60 million to build a fence, a wall, and a fence on 
that mile, that mile that runs from my house west. That's $6 million a 
year for 10 years, $60 million.
  I would tap into the first year's annual budget and take one-third of 
it, $2 million, and I would build a fence, a wall, and a fence for the 
full mile. So it's 3 miles of structure. I would put a concrete wall in 
the middle of it. It would have a concrete foundation that made it 
difficult to dig underneath.
  And one thing you know about concrete is you don't get through it 
with wire cutters. You don't get through it in a simple fashion like 
you might with a wire fence.
  I would put a concrete wall in the middle. I'd have a fence down near 
the border. I'd move in about 60 or 100 feet and put a concrete wall in 
that's about 14 feet tall with wire on top, and I'd put another fence 
inside that. So if they got over my concrete wall, there's another 
corral. I would then hire fewer Border Patrol, and with needing less 
equipment, less pension plans, less benefit packages, I would put the 
first front money up in the infrastructure. You know that by the time 
they get through the fence, the wall, and the fence, you'll have a 
chance to catch them. We would put the sensory devices in, put the 
cameras up, put the vibration sensors in. Maybe we could get Boeing to 
perfect their system and add that to the fence, the wall, and the 
fence.
  But it is foolish for us to think that we can just keep hiring more 
and more Border Patrol--we've more than doubled our Border Patrol--and 
then back off into the desert 70 or 100 miles and begin chasing people 
around in the sagebrush. That's not the way to do this. We need to shut 
off the bleeding at the border. This is not a recreational sport to be 
defending our border and chasing people down in the desert. If we can 
stop them before they get into the United States, that is the preferred 
way to go.
  I have gone across the English Channel from England over to Calais, 
France, where the Brits have leased a chunk of ground because they want 
to stop the illegals before they get across the channel. They have 
leased this piece of ground from the French and they've set up a high 
security system there, and the trucks that come through go on ferries, 
and the ferries haul them across the English Channel, cars and trucks, 
just a constant rotation of ferries going back and forth across the 
English Channel.
  The British have leased this piece of ground. They raised their 
technology and their manpower there to preempt access into the United 
Kingdom because they would rather deal with them on French soil than 
they would on British soil, because the British laws get a little 
sloppy like ours do. Once you pick somebody up inside the interior of 
the United States, they've got an opportunity to appeal, be 
adjudicated. It can cost us a lot of money.

                              {time}  1430

  The important thing is to keep them out of the United States. Let's 
build a fence, a wall, and a fence. We can do the whole thing for about 
$2 million a mile, and that leaves $4 million the first year left over 
to hire Border Patrol and to pay them wages and salary benefits and 
retirement packages and to give them some equipment with. Then the next 
year, there's another $6 million available every year--a little 
maintenance on that wall but not a lot. So that's a $60 million 
contract, Mr. Speaker, for a decade on a single mile. You put $2 
million up front, and now you've got $58 million to play with.
  I'll submit that we can do a better job by building infrastructure 
and using it to protect our border than we can by hiring a lot more 
personnel and chasing people around in the desert. It is a simple 
business equation. This political arena doesn't lend itself very well 
to simple business equations, but that is one, Mr. Speaker, and I'm 
going to continue to push to build a fence, a wall, and a fence; and 
yes, we need to put something on top of that. I don't care if it looks 
a little bit bad. If they don't want to see wire on top of the wall at 
the border, why do the Mexicans build walls at the U.S. border with 
concertina wire on top? They're not offended when they put up it up. 
Why would they be offended if we put it up, Mr. Speaker?
  It's part of our immigration situation that we need to address, and 
I'll continue with that in that ``stop the bleeding at the border.'' 
That is the way to do it. We can force all traffic through our ports of 
entry, and we should beef up our ports of entry, widen them out, and 
invest in infrastructure there. We should put personnel there so that 
we can use surveillance techniques that are state of the art so that we 
can efficiently move through the traffic that is relatively safe and 
that is unlikely to have contraband in it. Then we can even better 
scrutinize those pieces of traffic that are likely to have illegal 
persons or illegal contraband in them. That would stop the bleeding at 
the border in a significant way.
  We forget that 90 percent of the illegal drugs consumed in America 
comes from or through Mexico--90 percent. The drug enforcement people 
tell me that, of every illegal drug distribution chain in this country, 
at least one link in that distribution chain is someone who is here in 
the United States unlawfully. Many times, the whole chain is a chain of 
custody of illegal drugs going from Mexico through and up into the 
United States--pick Chicago--and all the way to the end user, and the 
drugs never go into any hand except of somebody who's here illegally in 
the United States. Imagine, 90 percent of the illegal drugs in America 
come from or through Mexico.
  Headless corpses are showing up by the dozens in Mexico, and they're 
starting to show up here in the United States. I went to a meeting in 
Columbus, New Mexico, a town hall meeting.

[[Page 6724]]

There were people there who, on their way to church, drive parallel to 
the border. On their way to church on a Sunday morning, four heads were 
on display for them to see, which was a warning to, apparently, the 
other drug cartel. This is spilling over into the United States. Those 
heads were on the Mexican side, I'll point out, Mr. Speaker, for the 
point of accuracy, but they're showing up on the U.S. side of the 
border.
  The drug trade here in the United States is extremely lucrative. I've 
been trying to get these numbers from the drug enforcement personnel, 
and they've been very hard to get. Yet Fox News reported that the 
illegal drug trade in America is a $40 billion industry--$40 billion. 
It has been reported that at least $60 billion is wired from the United 
States into points south. A lot of that may come from the wages of 
people who are working here in the United States--and a lot of them 
working here illegally. There are around 8 million illegals working in 
America, taking jobs that legal immigrants or American citizens should 
be doing. But there is $60 billion a year wired south. Half of it, $30 
billion, goes into Mexico, and the other $30 billion goes into the 
Caribbean, Central America and some into South America--$30 billion 
into Mexico, the other $30 billion scattered around in the rest of the 
southern part, south of us, in the Western Hemisphere.
  We don't know and they don't speculate on how much of the $60 billion 
is just laundering illegal drug money. I don't know the basis of the 
$40 billion number that Fox News reported on the value of illegal drugs 
that are consumed in America. That's just the only number that's out 
there that I can find. I don't think we have the basis of enough 
intelligence to be able to bring a real solution to this.
  I don't think our people at the top have done enough work to quantify 
the problem. They're not talking about the problem. Instead, I see an 
emphasis on our southern border, a shift that took place under the 
Obama administration, that causes some of our Border Patrol to pivot. 
Instead of looking south to say, Hold it. Don't come into the United 
States illegally, they started to turn around and look north and try to 
interdict cash and guns that are coming from the United States and 
going into Mexico. A lot of these guns, by the way, are perfectly legal 
in the United States but not legal in Mexico.
  So do we have the personnel to filter that at the Mexican border?
  It's fine to interdict the cash, because that raises the transaction 
costs of those who are smuggling drugs into the United States, and it's 
fine to work and cooperate with the Mexicans if they need a little help 
on guns that become illegal when they get across the border; but we 
need to focus on people who are smuggling illegal drugs into the United 
States. We need to focus on illegal people who are being smuggled into 
the United States. The value of this has not quantified the loss in 
American lives. Quantifying the loss in treasure is one thing: $60 
billion wired south, $40 billion worth of illegal drugs consumed in the 
United States, violence in Mexico, and headless corpses by the dozen.
  I began to ask these questions some years ago, have finally had some 
response, Mr. Speaker. It's as a result of two studies that I've 
commissioned over the years by the Government Accountability Office, 
GAO studies. One came out in April of 2005, and the other one came out 
just this past month--released within the past few weeks, actually, but 
it's dated March of 2011.
  We've had witnesses come before the Immigration Subcommittee. First, 
they'll say America is a Nation of immigrants, as if that's the be all-
end all of the conclusion we should draw and that we shouldn't try to 
limit illegal immigration into America, let alone eliminate it, because 
America is a Nation of immigrants.
  My response to that, Mr. Speaker, is: Yes, sure enough. Could you 
point out for me a nation on the planet that is not a nation of 
immigrants? I asked that question of witness Ms. Hernandez some few 
years ago. I asked if she would care to tell me of a nation that is not 
a nation of immigrants.
  She sat there at the witness table--under oath, mind you--and 
presented as an expert witness. Her eyes kind of rolled a little bit 
back in the back of her head; and she said, Well, that would be the 
Incas and the Aztecs.
  So I said, Who, according to an anthropologist, came across the 
Bering Straits about 12,000 years ago. Would you like to try again, Ms. 
Hernandez?
  Of course, she didn't want to try again, and no one has succeeded in 
pointing out a nation that is not a nation of immigrants. The closest 
you could come is with the Japanese, and there are two ethnic groups in 
Japan that are identified by their locales and by the accents and the 
languages that they have. They believe that both of them came from 
Polynesian origins centuries and centuries ago.
  Every nation, Mr. Speaker, is a nation of immigrants. People have 
migrated around this planet since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, 
and they always will. So we don't carry a certain responsibility 
towards setting aside the rule of law in America because we are a 
Nation of immigrants. We have a responsibility to preserve, protect and 
defend the pillars of American exceptionalism--and of course, the rule 
of law is an essential pillar of American exceptionalism.
  So that question of, first, are we a Nation of immigrants, yes, we 
are; but we are a Nation of laws, and we must adhere to and protect the 
rule of law.
  When we look at the policies that we have, it's important for us to 
shut off the jobs magnet here in the United States, not only control/
stop the bleeding at the border, but we have to shut off the jobs 
magnet here in America. One of the ways that we do that is to enforce 
our laws, of course. E-Verify is an important tool. It's a Web site-
based software program that allows an employer to run, I call it, the 
name, rank and serial number--the Social Security number--of an 
employee through that database. It will go back, and it will search the 
Department of Homeland Security's database, the Social Security 
database, NCIC, and come back and tell you if that information 
represents that that individual can lawfully work in the United States. 
We use it. I've tried to fool it and I've tried to scramble it, and the 
longest delay I can get out of it is 6 seconds.

                              {time}  1440

  It's very fast. It's very accurate. The software package is only as 
accurate as the data behind it, and when we find a mistake in E-Verify, 
it's almost always because someone got married and forgot to change 
their name or some piece of information like that that needs to be 
upgraded. Easily fixed. The only way you make E-Verify even better is 
to use it and use it and use it so that database gets cleaned up, and 
it's set up to do that with a 72-hour notice of cure.
  So using E-Verify is a good tool. I have a better tool out there that 
I will soon be introducing, Mr. Speaker, and I have introduced it in 
previous Congresses. I've been waiting for the right time, and we will 
set up a press conference and roll out a bill called the New IDEA Act. 
Now, they say there are no new ideas in this Congress, that it's a just 
repackaging of old ideas. This one I think actually is a relatively new 
idea, and it comes from this concept that, well, who enjoys enforcing 
the law? Who's effective in it? Who do the American people believe will 
come forward and enforce the law?
  And as I was thinking that through, it occurred to me that the IRS 
probably has the maximum respect of all of the law enforcers in 
America. They have better tools to work with than many of the other 
agencies out there, and we expect they will come in and they will 
conduct an audit, and they're going to look to see if they can find 
something wrong with your tax return. Anybody that's been through an 
audit doesn't want to go through another audit. Frank Luntz put out 
some numbers that showed that a majority of Americans would rather be 
mugged than go through an IRS audit; 58 percent would rather have a 
root canal than go through an IRS audit. I'd like to have the IRS 
helping us with immigration law.
  So I drafted legislation called the New IDEA Act. It's the New, and 
the

[[Page 6725]]

acronym IDEA stands for Illegal Deduction Elimination Act. What it does 
is it clarifies that wages and benefits paid to illegals are not tax 
deductible, and then it gives the employer safe harbor if they use E-
Verify. So, if the employer in good faith runs their employees through 
E-Verify, it will give the employer that credit that he used E-Verify, 
and he can deduct the wages if E-Verify should happen to be wrong, for 
example, and it won't be.
  But otherwise, if the IRS then comes in during a normal audit--we 
don't accelerate audits, we don't initiate any more audits than we'd 
normally have--but if the IRS comes in during a normal audit, they 
would run the Social Security numbers and information of all the 
employees through E-Verify, and if any of those employees were kicked 
back at them as not lawful to work in the United States, the IRS then 
would take a look. They'd give the employer an opportunity to cure, but 
they would look at that data and say, all right, I'm sorry, the wages 
that you paid this illegal are not going to be a business expense for 
you, so they come off the Schedule C and they go over into the profit 
column in your tax form.
  Imagine if you're an employer and you paid $1 million to illegals and 
the IRS came in to do the audit and they said, I'm sorry, that $1 
million that you had as a business expense is not an expense. You can't 
expense wages and benefits paid to illegals. So now that $1 million 
goes over into the profit side, and the IRS looks at that and says, you 
know, you're going to have to pay interest on that. You had a tax 
liability that you unlawfully claimed. You're going to have to pay 
interest on that tax liability, and you're going to have to pay a 
penalty, and you have to pay the principal, which is a tax liability.
  So if it rolls it over to a 36 percent tax rate, plus the interest, 
plus the penalty, the net result is that turns your $10 an hour illegal 
into about a $16 an hour illegal, which means that there will be 
Americans out there that will be taking those jobs at $12, $13, $14, 
and $15 an hour that didn't have an opportunity to do that before 
because illegals were in there working for $10. This will open up jobs 
for Americans.
  We saw a big number of new jobless reports pop up today. This 
unemployment number is not getting better. It is just zigzagging and 
stagnating at a number that hangs in there close to 9 percent. This is 
a very, very slow recovery. One of the things we can do to help recover 
is to pass the New IDEA Act, let the IRS come in and do their normal 
audits, and employers will decide that they don't want to wait for the 
IRS to get there. They will want to clean up their workforce as soon as 
they practically can.
  That's part of the beauty of this. This isn't a hard and fast piece 
of legislation that requires employers to fire all their illegals at 
once. They can make their decision on when they will take the risk, but 
what it does do is accumulates a 6-year statute of limitations. So that 
if an employer gets by this year without an audit and he keeps illegals 
on the payroll the next year without an audit, he has to go a full 6 
years before that first illegal year drops off, and he's still liable 
for the IRS to go back through the books a full 6 years, which means 
that employers are going to look at this, and they're going to think, 
I'm paying $1 million out to illegals; if I get to the end of a 6-year 
cycle and the IRS comes in and audits me, they're going to deny $6 
million that I have written off as business expenses, put that over 
into the profit side, and you could be looking at $6 million worth of 
income, and all of that with interest and penalty attached to it. And 
so your $6 million probably becomes something greater than $3 million 
in penalties out of the $6 million that were formerly a writeoff.
  That's how this liability accumulates with a 6-year statute of 
limitations. That's why employers, even though they may not be able to 
transition their workforce into a 100 percent legal workforce the first 
year, the pressure to do so every year will be so great because getting 
through 6 years without an IRS audit and knowing that you're going to 
carry with you a full 6 years of risk will cause employers to clean up 
their workforce on their own.
  One of the problems we have is trying to get the administration to 
enforce immigration law. We can pass a law. We can make it mandatory 
that everybody use E-Verify. I will probably have an opportunity to 
vote for that, and I will. But we cannot require the executive branch 
to enforce the law. The President of the United States takes an oath to 
take care that the laws are faithfully enforced. That's part of the 
Constitution, and it's true for the executive branch employees, 
including Eric Holder, the Attorney General; including Janet 
Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security. But we can't make them 
enforce the law.
  I've been in the business of seeking to embarrass the administration 
into enforcing the law now into my ninth year here because we don't 
have the tools. We can call them forward now that Republicans have the 
majority. We can have hearings, bring the press into the hearings 
because the press helps us a lot. They convey that message back to the 
American people, and the American people understand that there are 
things they should be outraged about. But we have no tool other than to 
cut their budget or embarrass them, or I guess there's more Draconian 
methods that would not be used, and I won't mention those for fear that 
they will start an unnecessary rumor.
  But all of that said, Mr. Speaker, the IRS will come in and do this 
work, and it won't be about us trying to embarrass them into enforcing 
the law. It will be about the IRS coming in to turn it into a revenue 
generator. It will be. The New IDEA Act, Mr. Speaker, is a tool that 
can do the most to bring our immigration laws in this country under 
enforcement and to reduce the numbers of illegals that are in the 
United States the most dramatically with the least amount of cost. In 
fact, it's a plus-up because it will generate more revenue for the 
Internal Revenue Service.
  Another point on the border, to roll back down to the southern 
border, Mr. Speaker, and to make this point is that we have a tourism 
industry that has to do with anchor babies. Anchor babies are babies 
that are born in the United States to an illegal mother, and the 
practice over the years has been to grant automatic citizenship to 
babies born on U.S. soil. It is not a law. It is not a constitutional 
requirement. It's just a sloppy practice that began that's getting 
worse and worse and worse.
  We have now in this country somewhere between 340,000 and 750,000 
babies born to illegal mothers in America that get automatic 
citizenship. They're anchor babies. They sneak into the United States, 
many of them, for the purposes of having the baby. They get the little 
birth certificate with their little footprints on there. Then they 
either stay here or they go back to their home country and wait until 
that child comes of age, and they use that child to apply to bring in 
the family, the nuclear family, then the extended family, and it's out 
of control--340,000 to 750,000 a year automatic citizens to America 
that have essentially unlimited ability to bring their families into 
the United States.

                              {time}  1450

  We have testimony before the Immigration Committee that shows us that 
if you look at immigrants, legal immigrants, and base it on merit, you 
would think a country would want to establish an immigration policy 
that was designed to enhance the economic, social, and cultural well-
being of the United States of America. Wouldn't any country have an 
immigration policy that was designed to help them? I mean, it is not 
selfish of America to want to have an immigration policy that's good 
for this country. We cannot be the relief valve for all the poverty in 
the world.
  For every some 6.3 billion or so people on the planet--maybe it's 
more than that--they can't all live in America. There are more than 5 
billion that have a lower standard of living than the average Mexican. 
So if we think we're going to be the relief valve of poverty in the 
world, and we bring into America 1 million to 1.5 million legally, and 
across the border comes--

[[Page 6726]]

there are numbers that I have seen testified to that show as many as 4 
million illegals in a year. Many go back and forth. They are carrying 
drugs on their back. Maybe they're visiting family. The net number I 
guess we don't know. It seems to shake out pretty odd that you can have 
that much border crossing, and the numbers don't accumulate.
  When I came to this Congress 8-plus years ago, the number was 12 
million illegals in America. Now they're giving us estimates that there 
are maybe 11 million illegals in America. How does that work? Did that 
many people die? Did we give that many people citizenship that came in 
here illegally? So I think that number is significantly higher than 11 
million or 12 million. I think it's been growing every year for a 
generation. I think it continues to grow.
  Anchor babies, babies that are born to illegal mothers in the United 
States that get automatic citizenship, cause people to sneak into the 
United States to have the baby because they see citizenship in America 
as cashing in to the giant ATM, the giant ATM which is America's 
welfare cash machine.
  Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has done a lot of research 
on welfare benefits--he has broken it up in a number of different 
ways--that go to households where there is at least one illegal that's 
in it.
  I need to come back at a later date, Mr. Speaker, and take up the 
cost to the American taxpayer of benefits that go to households that 
are oftentimes headed up by an illegal. When we look at what has 
happened on the floor of this Congress in the last 4 to 5 years, when 
the SCHIP legislation passed this Congress, they weakened their 
requirements of proof of citizenship for Medicaid.
  So free medical care for people who are lower income is being 
provided to people that should actually be deported back to their home 
country because the standard that you had to show proof of citizenship 
that was written into the old Medicaid legislation was struck and 
replaced with a requirement that you attest to a nine-digit Social 
Security number. That's the standard. They lowered it that low because 
the people on that side of the aisle wanted to pay Medicaid benefits to 
illegals. They want to give them a path to citizenship. They want to 
give them an opportunity to vote.
  I look back at what Ronald Reagan said: What you tax, you get less 
of; but what you subsidize, you get more of. If you reward people for 
coming into the United States illegally, and you reward them with 
welfare packages and plans, you are going to get more people in the 
United States illegally, and you are going to get more people that are 
signing up for more welfare.
  We have in this country 77 different means-tested welfare programs in 
the United States of America. There isn't one person in this United 
States Congress that could stand down here on the floor without a cheat 
sheet and name every one of them. And there isn't one person in this 
United States Congress that can actually understand how each one of 
these 77 means-tested welfare programs interrelates with each other, 
let alone how it affects the decisions of individuals on whether they 
are going to get a job or sit at home. If you are on rent subsidy and 
heat subsidy and food stamps, and list all the other Federal programs 
that are there, why would you work when you are rewarded for not 
working?
  I look at the labor situation in America. There are 8 million working 
illegals in America. There are a number of others out there that we 
probably didn't find in the data that we have. So here we are with the 
unemployment numbers of about 15 million Americans who are registered 
as unemployed. There is another 6 to 8 million that are past the data. 
They've quit trying, so they're no longer technically called 
unemployed. They just quit looking for a job. There is another 6 to 8 
million of those. You are up to over 20 million Americans that are on 
unemployment, drawing it, or have given up applying for it.
  But when I start to add to that number of roughly 20 million, 22 to 
23 million Americans that are unemployed or have given up trying and 
aren't working, and I go to the Department of Labor's statistics, their 
own statistics that come from the Department of Labor, and I begin to 
add up the American workforce--that workforce number is a little foggy 
in my memory--it's 140-some million people in America's workforce. If 
you start adding those who are not currently working--and I start at 
age 16 because that's a legitimate age.
  You can collect unemployment at age 16 if you have earned enough that 
they paid in on your behalf--the teenagers between age 16 and 19, there 
are 9.7 million that aren't in the workforce at all, not even a part-
time job of any kind. Yes, they may be students; but there's nothing 
wrong with working and going to school. That's what a lot of people 
did, and it builds character. You add to that those that are from 20 to 
25 years old, and you go on up the line in different age categories. I 
went up to age 74 because we pay unemployment at age 74, and Wal-Mart 
hires at age 74 and so do a lot of other employers. So the age of the 
workforce I am using is 16 to 74. It's a legitimate bracket. We could 
narrow that in a little bit, and we would have fewer numbers.
  But here's the point: Of the 8 million working illegals in America, 
there are 80 million Americans of working age that are not in the 
workforce; 80 million people of working age that are simply not in the 
workforce. They might have checked out. They are sitting back on some 
of the 77 means-tested welfare programs. They might be independently 
wealthy and decided to retire. If so, good on them. But they are not in 
the workforce for one reason or another, or they are working in the 
black market. It might be that some of those people are selling drugs 
who are not in the workforce. But if people say there are jobs out 
there Americans won't do, name one. Name one job that Americans won't 
do. I can take you and show you an American that's doing every single 
job definition that there is in this country.
  The reason that you see people here illegally and they're out-
competing Americans is because they'll work for less. They'll pile up 
in a house with many more people living in the same dwelling. They are 
not a threat to the employer to file workmen's comp or an unemployment 
claim.
  So they are a lower liability for the employer. The employer can 
bring in a crew of illegals, get a job done, dispatch them down the 
line; and once they leave that job, they are no longer a liability to 
them. So it's like being able to lease a machine to come do a job. You 
say, take the machine back, and park it in the lot, and you are done. 
You don't have to worry about the depreciation or the maintenance. 
That's what has happened. In a way, it's a bit inhuman to see this 
going on.
  If we enforced our immigration law, it opens up at least 8 million 
jobs for Americans or legal immigrants; and if people say there aren't 
enough Americans to do those jobs, nuts. We have to hire one out of 
every 10 that's sitting now on the couch and put them to work. Why 
wouldn't you want to increase and enhance the average annual 
productivity of our people? Why would you not?
  What if we were on a big cruise ship, but it was powered by sails and 
oars? So many people have to be trimming the sails. So many people have 
to be pulling on the oars. Somebody has got to be in the kitchen 
cooking. Somebody has got to be swabbing the deck. Somebody has got to 
be up there in the wheelhouse navigating, and somebody has got to be 
steering. With all of that going on, if you didn't have enough people 
at the oars to pull the load, would you pull that cruise ship off on an 
island somewhere and load on a bunch more people to pull on the oars? 
Or would you go after the 80 million people that are sitting on the 
couch now and have some of those people get up off the couch and grab 
an oar and pull?
  I want to increase the production of America. I want to increase the 
average annual productivity of Americans. If we do that, we increase 
our standard of living. If not, if more of us sit back and don't go to 
work and don't produce

[[Page 6727]]

anything, and we bring others in to do the work that we say we are now 
too good to do, then our broader standard of living goes down, and you 
need more and more welfare programs to pay the people that are not 
working, and you still have to carry the social costs for the people 
that are working underneath the market value.
  You can't sustain a household for some of the wages that are being 
paid to illegals. That's why they are tapping into welfare benefits. 
That's why they use their child that has been born in America as an 
anchor baby as a means to get access to the welfare program.

                              {time}  1500

  And so here we have an America that's underemployed, 80 million 
people of working age that are not in the workforce. A lot of them are 
living off of the sweat of the brow of somebody else in the form of the 
77 means-tested welfare programs that are out there. They don't have an 
incentive to go to work, but we pay them with tax dollars if they'll 
just stay peaceful, stay in their houses, don't cause any trouble. 
Let's not have any violence in the streets. If you do all that, then 
we'll hire these other people that are in the United States illegally 
at substandard wages and subsidize them both.
  What sense does that make, Mr. Speaker, for a Nation to not be 
upgrading its standard of living by increasing the average productivity 
of our people?
  And why would we not be defending the rule of law? And why would we 
reward people that sneak into the United States to have a baby so they 
can tap into all this giant ATM?
  We've got to put an end to anchor babies. I have the legislation to 
do it, Mr. Speaker, and I have scores of cosponsors on the anchor baby 
legislation that I introduced very early in this session with some good 
gentlemen from Georgia, in particular. Rob Woodall came in and was 
ready to step up on that, and there are others. Tom Graves is part of 
that. I appreciate the work that they are doing, and I'm happy to join 
with them and work together on those issues.
  But we have to have a Nation of laws and a Nation that respects the 
rule of law. We have to shut off the bleeding at the border.
  We need to get more of our Americans to work. You notice I didn't say 
back to work, Mr. Speaker. We're sometimes into the third and fourth 
generation where they didn't work at all. They have learned how to game 
the system, and we've accepted it. We no longer require the welfare-to-
work part of this; that you get 5 years total and then you have to go 
to work. What we see happen is 77 means-tested welfare programs. Nobody 
can monitor all of that. And the will of the American people isn't such 
because now half the households don't pay income tax. But they go vote. 
And they vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. They vote 
themselves welfare benefits. There are people here that pander to that, 
and they understand that their political base is expanded when they 
expand the dependency class in America.
  So what did they do?
  They passed legislation in here under Speaker Pelosi over and over 
again that expanded the dependency class in America because it 
strengthened their political base. ObamaCare is a huge key of expanding 
the dependency class. It says we're going to promise you that every 
American has access to health care, every single one. It wasn't an 
issue. But they conflated the two terms, the term health care and 
health insurance.
  Anyone in America can show up in the emergency room and be treated. 
That's access to health care, and it's probably superior to most 
nations. I'm sure it's superior to most nations in the world. I don't 
know a nation that it's not superior to.
  But then it was the promise that, well, it's really not very good. 
It's expensive that you show up in the emergency room without 
insurance, so what we really want to do is give everybody their own 
insurance policy and insure another 30 million people.
  So I look at that, and I do the math and I ask the question, who's 
really not insured and doesn't have affordable options?
  These numbers came from the United States Senate, the Republican 
Senate Conference, the Senate staff, and it came down to this. You 
start with about 306 million Americans, and then you begin to subtract 
those that are insured, those that are on Medicare, those that qualify, 
those that are on Medicaid, those that are qualified for Medicaid but 
don't sign up, those that are covered under their employer, and those 
that are eligible under their employer and don't sign up, and you begin 
to reduce this number of 306 million Americans down. First you take the 
insured, subtract that from 306, and then you begin to identify the 
Americans that are uninsured. That was those that are here illegally. 
I'm not interested in funding their health insurance package. I think 
it's wrong and immoral for us to do that. They're not on my list.
  When you boil it down, Americans without affordable options numbered 
12.1 million. Now, that is a lot of people, but it's less than 4 
percent of our population. Yet ObamaCare sought to disrupt and 
transform and change and socialize the health insurance industry in 
America, 100 percent of it, the health care delivery system, 100 
percent of that, in order to reduce the number of uninsured Americans 
without affordable options from some number that's less than 4 percent 
down to some other lower number.
  At what cost?
  The cost of American liberty, cost of the United States Constitution. 
The cost of our freedom.
  ObamaCare is a malignant tumor, and it is metastasizing in the heart 
and soul of the spirit of the American people.
  We are a vigorous people. We are a people that have skimmed the cream 
of the crop off of every donor civilization on the planet, Mr. Speaker. 
The vigor that came from people that had a vision and a dream, that 
came here across the pond in one way or another because they wanted to 
access the liberty and the freedom that we have here is a different 
kind of a vigor than saying, well, we got good vigor from Great 
Britain, and we got it from France and Germany and Italy, wherever 
else, Eastern Europe and around the planet, Greece, name it. No, we got 
the best of every donor civilization. We got the vigor from every donor 
civilization. We got the dreamers from every country that sent legal 
immigrants here, that gives America a unique vigor. It's different than 
any other country in the world. That's the reason why we succeed. It's 
the reason why we can take free enterprise and do something with it. 
It's why America has risen to become the unchallenged greatest Nation 
on the planet.
  We have all of the rights that come from God that are defined so 
clearly and well, not just in the Declaration, but in the Constitution 
and especially in the Bill of Rights, and you add to that free 
enterprise, and you add to that this vigor that comes from legal 
immigrants from all over, from every civilization, and you have an 
America that has a spirit and an attitude that's unique on the planet.
  It is unsuitable to take a free people and tie the yoke of ObamaCare 
around their neck. I will draw the line. I want to see shutting off all 
funding to ObamaCare tied to the debt ceiling bill, Mr. Speaker. Before 
we even discuss the debt ceiling, I want a guarantee that all of our 
troops get paid on time. In the event of a debt ceiling limit or a 
shutdown of any kind, uniformed troops in the United States or anywhere 
in the world serving Uncle Sam need to know their paycheck is going to 
be wired into their account on time every time, no matter what is going 
on here in the United States Congress.
  Second point, Tom McClintock's full faith and credit bill that sets 
up the priority on how we would pay our debts in the event of a debt 
ceiling limit being reached. We can set those priorities, and it needs 
to be, pay the interest on those who have loaned money to America first 
and move our way on down the priority list.
  Do those two things, send them out of this House, send them over to 
Harry Reid in the Senate, and he can decide. Pick them up and send them 
to the

[[Page 6728]]

President of the United States and let him sign, let the President sign 
both of those bills, the Gohmert bill, the McClintock bill into law.
  That, Mr. Speaker, would be the qualifier before we'd even begin to 
discuss what we would do about the prospects of raising a debt ceiling.
  But for me, I'd put the cutting off of all funds to ObamaCare on that 
debt ceiling bill and say there can be no raising of the debt ceiling 
here by the House of Representatives unless we shut off all the funding 
that's going to implement or enforce ObamaCare, at least until such 
time as the Supreme Court should rule.
  The President is delaying the action of the Supreme Court. He could 
have asked for an expedited review of ObamaCare. We all know it's going 
to the Supreme Court. The President is delaying the decision in the 
Supreme Court the same way that he delayed bringing his birth 
certificate out.
  Mr. Speaker, it is so important that we not chase good money after 
bad, that the Supreme Court rule on ObamaCare. At least then, then let 
Congress decide when they might appropriate rather than these automatic 
appropriations.
  Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

                          ____________________