[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2892-2899]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    CONFLICT BETWEEN IRAN AND ISRAEL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Griffin of Arkansas). 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 privilege and honor to 
address you here on the floor of the United States House of 
Representatives in this world's great deliberative body. And taking it 
from the top, as I listened to the statements that were made tonight in 
the 1-minutes, I think of the gentlelady from Texas and her statement 
about Syria.
  Now I'm not here, Mr. Speaker, to defend President Assad and Syria. 
In fact, I think he needs to go. And I believe that all people of the 
world have a right to a self-determination, and they should not live 
under tyranny and they should not live under despotism.
  I just think back to when some of us objected that the former Speaker 
of the House, Mr. Speaker, and that was Nancy Pelosi, as she took over 
the big gavel, she set up a diplomatic tour and mission, and one of 
those places was Syria. And I remember the President of the United 
States, whom, according to the Constitution, is in control of--and I'll 
say according to the interpretation of the Constitution, he's 
Commander-in-Chief but also controls the foreign policy. It's implicit, 
and it's more than a two-century practice that you have to have the 
President of the United States as conducting foreign policy.
  The President of the United States was George W. Bush who asked the 
then-Speaker of the House, please, do not go to Syria. Do not seek to 
negotiate with President Assad. Do not upset the diplomacy that's 
taking place between the United States and Syria, or the lack of that 
diplomacy.
  And I think about that time when Nancy Pelosi, as Speaker, crossed 
that line, even though it was requested by the President of the United 
States, the Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces, and the individual 
who was in command of all of our foreign policy, had asked her not to 
go.
  Now we see what's going on in Syria. And I listened to the comments, 
and I just think that if the gentlelady from Texas had spoken up at 
that time when I did, it might be a little bit easier to hear tonight 
than this particularly was.

                              {time}  1910

  Mr. Speaker, there are many things in front of us in this Congress. 
Among them, of course, are economics and national defense, and our 
national security.
  Right now, as I listened to the gentleman from Texas talk about the 
Israelis, and there's an event going on tonight that brings together 
about 12,000 people that are some Israelis, many people of Jewish 
origin here in the United States, and all who will be sitting there at 
the AIPAC dinner will be strongly supporting an independent Israel that 
is in control of defending themselves, the sovereignty of Israel.
  I'm a strong supporter of Israel. I look at the country of Israel 
surrounded by its enemies, formed in 1948, and for most of my life, 
I've watched Israel develop and defend herself, and I've watched how 
they are the most stable and reliable democracy in the Middle East, and 
for a long time they were the only democracy in the Middle East. It 
would be the only place for a long time where an Arab could get a fair 
trial out of all of the Middle East.
  Today, we're seeing the dialogue take place from Iran, not with Iran, 
and Israel is the stated target of Ahmadinejad. They've been working in 
Iran, as you know, Mr. Speaker, urgently and feverishly to develop a 
nuclear weapon and a means to deliver it.
  When I came into this Congress and was sworn in in 2003, I sat down 
then with the ambassadors to the United States from Germany, France, 
and Great Britain, who were seeking to convince us here in the Congress 
that we should encourage our President to open up dialogue with the 
Iranians and perhaps be able to talk them out of their nuclear 
endeavor.
  Now, that was in September of 2003 that that meeting took place over 
in the Rayburn building, Mr. Speaker. As I sat in on that meeting and 
weighed in on that meeting, I kept hearing the message come back about 
``open up dialogue.'' They wanted to open up dialogue.
  So when it came around to the opportunity where I had the floor, I 
asked those three ambassadors from each nation, the United Kingdom, 
France, and Germany, What is your long-term agenda here? What do you 
propose to do? They said, We want to open up dialogue. My answer was, 
If we open up dialogue with Iran, what is the next step? They said, 
We're only here to talk about opening up dialogue.
  But if you open up dialogue with Iran, there are other steps along 
the way. If we just talk with them, and they refuse then to shut down 
their nuclear development within Iran, what are you prepared to do?''

[[Page 2893]]

  I watched these diplomats start to get nervous. When you talk to 
diplomats about action, they start to get nervous. So what are you 
prepared to do? What do you mean? We all, I think, knew what was 
coming.
  Well, are you prepared to go to the United Nations with us and ask 
for a resolution rejecting Iran's nuclear endeavor? Are you prepared to 
bring about sanctions? If the sanctions don't work, are you prepared to 
bring about a blockade? If the blockade doesn't work and there's a line 
in the sand that says if you violate the blockade, and if you continue 
on your nuclear endeavor, are you prepared then to go to the desert and 
enforce the very things that are being started in this dialogue here?
  Of course they weren't prepared to do that. They weren't even 
prepared to talk about that.
  Mr. Speaker, when you start down the path of diplomacy and you think 
that the only tool you have is diplomacy, there is nobody out here 
operating as a sovereign nation in the world that's just kind of dumb 
or duped that doesn't understand that there has to be a force, there 
has to be some kind of threat, there has to be a consequence and an 
``or what,'' or otherwise we would go to the Iranians with our hat in 
our hand and say, Why don't you be some nice guys for a change and shut 
down your nuclear development, your nuclear endeavor? What kind of luck 
will we have with that?
  If they believe, as they seem to, that they're called upon by the 
entity that they worship to annihilate Israel, the miniature Satan, and 
then turn around and annihilate the Great Satan, the United States of 
America, that's their stated purpose, Mr. Speaker. And their stated 
purpose is target one, Tel Aviv, because it's the city that was created 
after the origins of Israel, and its predominantly of Jewish 
population. So they would target Tel Aviv.
  Now, any nation that would take that position, we would think that 
somehow we would say to them, Even though your goals are to annihilate 
Israel and to annihilate the Great Satan, the United States, would you 
just please be a nice guy and stop developing your nuclear weapons? I 
mean, how naive could we be to go to Ahmadinejad and make that kind of 
a request under the guise of dialogue and think somehow that that's 
going to get the job done?
  We should have known then--I'll tell you, Mr. Speaker, I knew then--
that dialogue was not going to solve the problem. You never win on 
dialogue alone. You always have to have a leverage point, so they will 
look at that, they'll look you in the eye and decide, they mean what 
they say. It isn't worth it any longer. The juice is not worth the 
squeeze. I'm going to back off and stop developing the nuclear. But of 
course that didn't happen. The three countries that were here asking us 
to engage in dialogue, good people and good friends, very respectable 
ambassadors each. I have personal admiration and respect for them. But 
when you start down the path of dialogue, you must also understand 
there has to be a consequence at the other end. That consequence, in 
sequence, was to go to the United Nations for a resolution of rejection 
and disapproval, make it clear in the international world that the 
Iranians were violating the nuclear nonproliferation agreements that 
were established, make it clear that there would be sanctions, and if 
that's the case, there would be then an embargo and there would be a 
blockade, and on the other side of that, that there would be action to 
take out their nuclear capability.
  Now, our current President has said that he takes nothing off the 
table. But when you say you take nothing off the table, that doesn't 
mean that everything is on the table. It's a little bit of that 
language that we've learned we have to look at pretty carefully and 
understand that there's a loophole in that. If you didn't put it on the 
table in the first place and you take nothing off the table, he may 
have already in his own mind taken military action off the table, and 
we don't know.
  Mr. Speaker, I was watching the news on Friday morning, and on ``Fox 
and Friends,'' I heard Gretchen Carlson release the story that Israel 
and the United States, and that would be President Obama and President 
Netanyahu, had reached an agreement that Israel would not strike Iran's 
nuclear capability before the election.
  Now, I'm a little amazed that that isn't all over the newspapers and 
all over the floor of Congress, Mr. Speaker. I'm a little amazed that 
that story has not been picked up and pasted throughout the blogs and 
Americans up in arms, Israelis up in arms. I'm a little amazed that 
that's not going to be the central discussion taking place in the AIPAC 
dinner with 12,000 people there tonight, and I'm amazed that the 
President of the United States can give his address to AIPAC, as he did 
last night, to such a great applause and support, as was reported in 
the news. I'm amazed.
  First of all, was the Fox story true? My experience has been you 
don't see news come out of there that's unbased or unfounded. It's 
based on something. It's founded upon something. I haven't chased it 
down to look at the original sources that are there, but I know what I 
heard. It disappeared from the media.
  But if the President of the United States is even thinking in terms 
that he would play nuclear showdown with Iran by calculating an 
election date as part of that equation, it is an appalling concept to 
think that it could even be reported in the news as fact that the 
President of the United States would conduct his negotiations and 
manipulate his foreign policy, especially when it comes down to an 
Armageddon-type of a policy based upon an election date for his 
reelection.
  I can understand the motive, Mr. Speaker. But to think in terms of if 
something bad happens between Israel and Iran that might risk the 
President's reelection, that at least it's reported in the news that he 
would have had the incentive to negotiate with Israel to say, Do not 
mount a military strike to knock out Iran's nuclear capability before 
the election.
  I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, I don't believe we have that much time. 
I think we count this time in weeks, perhaps 2 or 3 months. But I don't 
think we count this time until after the November election.

                              {time}  1920

  Furthermore, when you get to the point where you have these kinds of 
crises coming forward and when we have the President, who has announced 
that the Iraq war is going to be finished on such and such a date and 
that the Afghanistan war is going to be finished in 2014 and that by 
the way, oh, time out, Iran, on your nuclear endeavor here until after 
my reelection because then it will be a lot more comfortable time to 
deal with this crisis as I take nothing off the table, I don't remember 
the President saying he has put military strikes on the table. I just 
remember him saying, I take nothing off the table.
  So here is what needs to be done, and I don't know that the 
credibility exists at this point in the White House for this to be 
done; but a President who was a credible individual could look at the 
camera and look across the ocean into the eyes, through video, of 
Ahmadinejad and the mullahs and say:
  I have put an X on the calendar, and that marks the date beyond which 
you will not be allowed to continue your nuclear endeavor. I know that 
date, but you do not. I will work with you so that you can save face in 
Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad and the mullahs. I'll work with you to accelerate 
the demolition of your nuclear capability to the satisfaction of 
American inspectors, and we'll do all of that so you look as good as 
you can and can save as much face as possible, but you will never know 
what that date is on the calendar unless you push it too far.
  By the way, if you're one day from having it all demolished and 
you're not done, sorry. The date is the date. You'll not be able to 
develop your nuclear endeavor beyond that date on the calendar, which 
you don't know and I do.
  That's how you negotiate with terrorists, with cold-eyed people who 
believe that the United States is the Great Satan; that they're somehow 
called by the entity they worship to

[[Page 2894]]

annihilate Israel, to annihilate the United States and to negotiate 
with them--to think that you can open up dialogue and go through all of 
the resolutions and sanctions and embargoes and knock the blockade and 
let some of the rest of the world violate those agreements, by the way, 
and profit from it.
  We saw it happen in Iraq. It didn't work. We're watching it happen in 
Iran. It's not working. Now we're dangerously walking very close to 
that line of Iran having the capability of having developed a nuclear 
weapon and a means to deliver it.
  By the way, when I say ``a means to deliver it,'' Mr. Speaker, it 
isn't just a nuclear-tipped missile that can strike Tel Aviv from Iran 
at 750-or-so miles from the sovereign territory of Iran to Tel Aviv, 
itself. It is the ability to put that anywhere in a suitcase. It could 
be delivered aboard ship; it could be delivered aboard a little boat; 
it could come about any way over land. Once they have that capability 
and it's proliferated, there is no stopping the proliferation. We must 
end their capability before they have that capability--not after. After 
is too late. That nuclear horse is out of the barn as soon as they are 
able to produce that weapon; and when it is, they will terrorize the 
world. We don't know where it is.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I urge the support of the American people in the 
United States Congress for the autonomy, the sovereignty, and the self-
protection of Israel. Should Israel decide that they need to take out 
Iran's nuclear capability tonight, tomorrow, at any moment, I stand 
prepared to stand with Israel. Even though this administration might 
send the message that military support and global political support 
would no longer be forthcoming from this administration, I believe we 
have a new administration around the corner.
  If we can tell the Iranians to wait with their nuclear development 
and if we can tell the Israelis to wait with a military strike to take 
out the nuclear capability that's growing now in Iran, then I can say 
that the American people look forward to an administration that will 
treat Israel right, an administration that will support and encourage 
that Israel defend herself, and a United States of America that will 
step up and protect and defend Israel as we are pledged to do both 
philosophically and spiritually and by the obligation that we have from 
history.
  That is just what comes to mind, Mr. Speaker.
  Then, as I listened to the speakers here tonight, Syria is a very 
dangerous place. I am for a regime change, and I don't think that we 
should have negotiated with nor sent a delegation to President Assad. 
He is slaughtering and murdering his own people. So to that extent, I 
agree with the gentlelady from Texas.
  But I came here tonight, Mr. Speaker, to address a number of subject 
matters. On this subject matter, I'm looking out at tomorrow as Super 
Tuesday, Super Tuesday with 10 States having primary elections. Perhaps 
out of that comes a direction, the likelihood that there will be one 
Presidential candidate who will emerge and become the likely nominee, 
the apparent nominee. I think the odds are a little less than even that 
that can happen, but it's close.
  What we have is a longer, drawn-out nomination process than was 
anticipated, which started back in Iowa more than a year ago as we 
worked with the Presidential candidates through that time. Some of them 
were just putting their toes in the water. They were looking. They came 
to Iowa and decided they didn't really want to do it, and they stepped 
back out again. Others hadn't quite emerged. Rick Perry came on a 
little bit later in August of last year and made a credible run. For a 
while, he was at the top of the polls. In piece after piece of this 
race, we've watched as some candidates took a look and stepped out 
while other candidates stepped in and stepped out.
  Now we're at this point where there are four Republican candidates 
for President who are in the race, and we're watching as the polls are 
starting to separate. I don't want to make this prediction, Mr. 
Speaker, but I'll say this: if I look across the platforms of the 
Republican likely nominees, potential nominees for the Presidency, I 
begin to say: we don't have a Republican agenda that's a national 
agenda. We don't have a consensus on that national agenda.
  This Congress has been moving pieces of legislation, almost all of 
them tied to jobs, jobs, jobs. It seems to me I can think back about 4 
years, and I can hear our current Speaker ask the previous Speaker: 
Madam Speaker, where are the jobs? Jobs, jobs, jobs. Well, I've heard 
``jobs, jobs, jobs'' for a long time. It's nice that we're about jobs. 
I haven't heard a lot about profit, profit, profit, which is required 
to pay for the payroll to create jobs, jobs, jobs. Yet profit isn't 
something that comes from a government job, Mr. Speaker. That would be 
something I hope the President would have overheard. Profit is not 
something that comes from a government job. Government jobs consume the 
profits of the private sector.
  There are two sectors in the economy here, the public and the 
private. The public sector is the regulatory sector, but not 
exclusively. When the public sector provides law enforcement, for 
example, that gives us security so that the private sector can 
operate--so you can open up your shop and do business, so you can open 
up your factory and do business. You have to have some security. You 
have to be able to have a judicial branch of government, more limited 
than the one we have, I might say, so that you can enforce the laws. 
You need some functions of government. You need people to build the 
roads, and you need people to sometimes reach out and do for the people 
that which they cannot do for themselves. Leave us otherwise alone, I 
would say, Mr. Speaker.
  But the drain on the private sector, on the productive sector of the 
economy, comes from the public sector. The public sector generally 
consumes the energy and the resources and the product of the private 
sector. The private sector invests capital; it produces goods and 
services that have a marketable value both here and abroad; and the 
economy dynamically grows. The Federal Government reaches in and takes 
out 22, 23, 24 percent of the gross domestic product, most of which 
needs to be on the private sector side because they're the only ones 
generating wealth; they're the only ones taking capital and reinvesting 
capital.
  Historically, for the last 40 to 50 years, the Federal Government has 
consumed about 18 percent of GDP. Now that has grown up, roughly, to 
the neighborhood of 23 percent of our gross domestic product; but it 
saps the vitality of an economy to have a government that grows and 
consumes more, and it saps the vitality to tax and spend it on the 
government entity side. The endeavor of the President's economic plan 
should be to roll people out of public employment and into the private 
sector because the private sector is producing goods and services with 
a marketable value both here and abroad.
  I don't see that coming out of this White House today. I pray it 
comes out of the White House in less than a year from now when a new 
President, Mr. Speaker, is elected who understands the principles of 
free market economics. I can go deeply into that, but I'm hopeful that 
I can express to you tonight the need for this Congress to move on a 
series of issues that are very important to the American people.

                              {time}  1930

  It is unclear who the apparent nominee, and in the end the nominee, 
for President is. So, therefore, we can't go to that individual and say 
will you please write up for me the platform that you are going to run 
on when you are nominated as President of the United States. That's 
unclear.
  To me what is clear is there are a series of issues that are 
universal across the contending Presidential candidates. These are the 
issues that we should move through this Congress, planks in the 
platform of the next President of the United States. We are in a 
perfect opportunity to do this.
  We are here with a not particularly intense legislative agenda. It's 
kind of

[[Page 2895]]

hard to have a lot of things to do when you send them down there and 
stack them up like cord wood on the desk of Harry Reid. Let's send some 
things down there that the American people can see are the planks in 
the platform of the next President.
  We know what this President will do. He gave us ObamaCare. He tried 
to give us cap-and-tax. He gave us Dodd-Frank. Those are the big 
egregious pieces. He gave us TARP; he gave us the economic stimulus 
plan, all of that out of President Obama. He blocked the Keystone XL 
pipeline because apparently he had concluded that it wasn't a national 
security issue and he needed a little more time to study. I'll come 
back to that in a little bit, Mr. Speaker. That's the agenda of the 
current President of the United States.
  The next President of the United States needs to have a clear 
platform to run for office on. They have been articulating that, but 
the American people don't know what it is because they don't know who 
the apparent nominee will be.
  Well, I can help out with that, Mr. Speaker, because I have sorted 
through the platforms of each of the viable Presidential candidates and 
come down with a list of those issues that would be universal across 
the campaigns of the likely or potential nominees of the Republican 
Party for President of the United States. And I would suggest, Mr. 
Speaker, that the leadership in this Congress move the legislation 
that's universal to any of the potential nominees so that we can lay 
out that platform for the next President. The planks are there. If it's 
something that's popular with the American people, and it's in the 
agenda of each of the Presidential candidates, bring it to the floor of 
this Congress.
  Bring it through committee first. Let's go through regular order. 
Let's mark it up in committee, bring it to the floor, and let's have a 
debate and a vote on it and send it over to Harry Reid and see how well 
he does rejecting the agenda that the American people support.
  Let me start off the list, and this is off of a bit of a research 
list that I put together about 2 weeks ago. It comes this way: every 
Presidential candidate that is a viable candidate and with a reasonable 
potential to be nominated for President of the United States on a 
Republican ticket supports a fence.
  I have stood on this floor over and over again and said go down to 
the southern border, those 2,000 miles, build a fence, a wall, and a 
fence. We can't just think that four strands of barbed wire is good 
enough or that a vehicle barrier is good enough or that a single fence, 
where the other day they showed a video of the panels in the fence 
where they went in with a post jack, is what I call it, and jacked the 
panel up. Then the drug smugglers and the illegals poured underneath 
that, and then they dropped the panel back down again and walked away 
with their jack kind of laughing or whatever the south of the border 
version is for high fives was taking place.
  Now, we need to build a fence, a wall, and a fence, Mr. Speaker. I 
have stood here on this floor and demonstrated how you do that. We need 
to go down to the border and build first the barrier fence that defines 
our border, and that says don't come across this, it's U.S. territory, 
you can only come here legally.
  Next, we need to come north of there, a reasonable span, 40 to 50 
feet, perhaps, and put in another fence. I would make that out of 
concrete, precast panels with a slip form trench foundation in it, and 
I would drop those panels in and affix that in such a way that it would 
be a strong barrier so that humanity is not pouring through across the 
border.
  I would come again further up another 50 feet or so and build another 
fence. That can be steel, that can be chain link, it needs to be tall 
so that you end up with a fence, a wall, and a fence, two zones of no-
man's land that it can be enforced. Yes, we need to use all the virtual 
that we can, all of the cameras and the sensory devices that technology 
will provide, so that we know to deploy our Border Patrol to the place 
where there has been a breach or a violation in that fence and enforce 
that 100 percent.
  We can't just let people come into the United States, shrug our 
shoulders and say, well, we'll catch somebody later on or somebody 
tomorrow. We have to ensure that if you're going to sneak into America, 
we're going to catch you, and we're going to enforce the law. In the 
end, if you violate that law, we are going to need to punish you and 
put you back into the condition you were in before you broke the law.
  Now, I don't understand why that somehow seems to be cruel and 
unusual punishment to encounter someone who is unlawfully in the United 
States, who has violated our laws if they crept into the United States 
across the border and entered into the United States illegally. That is 
a crime, Mr. Speaker. It's not a civil violation. It's not. It is a 
crime. That makes the people who sneak into the United States 
illegally, people who commit crimes, by definition, are criminals.
  I suggest that we build a fence, a wall, and a fence. Some will say 
we can't build 2,000 miles. My answer is, have you ever seen the Great 
Wall of China? The Great Wall of China is 5,500 miles long and armies 
marched on top of that.
  The first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, back in 245 BC connected 
the existing sections of the Great Wall of China so that it is one 
continuous 5,500-mile longwall. They did that, not with huge machines 
and excavators and cement plants; they did it with stoop labor, putting 
it together piece by piece by piece. If the Chinese could build a 
5,500-mile long great wall, and it's one of the wonders of the world, 
it would be a wonder to me why we have such difficulty building 
something that approaches 2,000 miles in length, a simple solution to a 
complex problem.
  Our little old construction company could get tooled up to build a 
mile a day. I'm not suggesting that our people go do that; but if our 
little company has that capabilities, think what the big companies have 
for a capability.
  By the way, I'm not suggesting that we build 2,000 miles of fence. I 
just say this, build it according to the Secure Fence Act. That's the 
law we passed. That's what Duncan Hunter was for; that's what I was 
for. Let's just build a fence, a wall, and a fence, and just build it 
till they stop going around the end. It doesn't have to be 2,000 miles 
long if they stop going around the end sooner than that. They leave 
tracks, by the way.
  You go out there and you take a look. Well, okay, they went around 
the end of this fence. Well, let's add another 20 miles, and now I'll 
see how that works, and we'll just keep building fence until they 
either quit crossing the line or we have 2,000 miles of it.
  The math on that, Mr. Speaker, is not that hard to figure out, 
although the question doesn't get asked often enough. So we did the 
math on this a little while back, and I have got to adjust it by a 
mental calculation to get it into contemporary, and now it's probably 
even a year old.
  We're spending about $12 billion enforcing our southern border, $12 
billion a year. Now if I take 12 billion, divide it by 2,000, that's $6 
million a mile. If you are spending $6 million a mile to defend the 
border, the Border Patrol comes before the Judiciary Committee, the 
immigration committee, under oath and testifies we think we interdict 
about 25 percent of those who attempt to cross the border.
  I go down to the border and I ask those enforcing it, so you're 
stopping about one in four? They laugh at me. Oh, no, we're not 
stopping one in four, maybe 10 percent. Some say 2 to 3 percent, but 
the most consistent answer I get from the enforcers on the border is 10 
percent. But I'm willing to go back to the 25 percent number and use 
that, even though I think it's probably high.
  I do the calculation. I think, let me see, if Janet Napolitano, 
Secretary of Homeland Security, came to me and said, Congressman, I 
want to hire you to guard the west mile from your house across rural 
Iowa, that mile gravel road for that mile. For that mile I'm going to 
pay you the same amount that we're paying to protect our southern 
border, $6 million a year--oh, and by the way, if that's not enough 
incentive,

[[Page 2896]]

it's a 10-year contract. She would lay, in theory under this formula, 
$60 million on my kitchen table, and my job is to guard that mile of 
road and see to it that no more than 75 percent of those that try get 
across?

                              {time}  1940

  I'm going to snap that up, Mr. Speaker. And I'll tell you, I'm not 
going to go out there and hire myself a multitude of people that are 
boots on the ground. I'm going to hire some, but I'm going to be very 
well aware that you have a benefits package that goes along with it, 
health insurance, retirement benefits and all of the pieces that have 
to do with supporting an officer, including a vehicle for him to drive, 
multiple vehicles in some cases. I'm going to recognize that. And I'm 
going to look at the capital investment for the long term all of the 
way through retirement of hiring boots on the ground. And, yes, we need 
them; and those that are there do a good job, and they want to do a 
good job.
  But I'm going to look at it and think: I could invest some of this 
$60 million in this contract a little more effectively. I think I'll 
just build a fence, a wall, and a fence. Then I'll have myself a few 
Border Patrol officers there to rotate the shifts and monitor the 
sensors and watch the cameras, and maybe man a guard tower here and 
there. And we'd make sure that no one would get across that.
  And, by the way, as I brought up Israel a little bit earlier, they 
built a fence. They designed that fence so that it would be as reliable 
and as tight as possible. It has some wire there. It has got towers and 
they monitor it, and it has been 99-point-something percent effective. 
So we can learn something from the Israelis. Why do they build fences 
if fences don't work?
  We look at the Mexicans. They have barriers down there between Mexico 
and Guatemala.
  There's a fence that was being built between Saudi Arabia and Iraq so 
they could interdict the refugees that they anticipated would be coming 
into Saudi Arabia, to keep them out.
  There is a fence that's being built right now in that bankrupt 
country of Greece, between Greece and Turkey, to keep the illegals that 
are pouring into Greece from Turkey out of Greece. Even though the 
Greeks can't afford it, they are building the fence to keep the illegal 
Turks from pouring into Greece.
  Now, some will say there is something inherently immoral about a 
fence--a fence, a wall, and a fence, in my case, Mr. Speaker--and I 
would argue there's a difference between that, those who would say, 
Haven't you ever heard the Berlin Wall? Well, of course I have heard of 
the Berlin Wall. I've walked almost every foot of the Berlin Wall. I 
have a piece of the Berlin Wall in my office over at 1131 Longworth, 
and it's framed. It is framed with a wood frame and it has a red cloth 
behind it and a piece of the Berlin Wall about that big. It was chopped 
out on September 12, 1990. It represents the single-most significant 
historical event in my lifetime, the end of the Cold War when the Iron 
Curtain, the Berlin Wall itself, literally the Iron Curtain came 
crashing down.
  But the Berlin Wall was designed to do something entirely different 
than all of the fences that I've described, Mr. Speaker, and that is it 
was designed to keep people in, not out. And that's the difference. A 
wall that's designed to keep people in because you don't want them to 
achieve and access freedom and liberty and our God-given liberty 
rights, that's what the Berlin Wall did. It trapped people; it fenced 
them in.
  The other fences that I've talked about are designed to keep people 
out who are trying to come into the United States, and other places, in 
violation of existing law.
  And others will say--and some are clergy that will say: Well, you 
were a stranger. You were an alien in a foreign land, and I took care 
of you.
  There are a lot of quotes in the Bible that remind people that we 
should reach out to the less fortunate among us. But I happen to have 
stood on Mars Hill in Athens where St. Paul gave his famous speech, his 
famous sermon in Act 17, when he said: And the Lord made all nations on 
Earth, and he decided when and where each nation would be.
  That was St. Paul's statement on Mars Hill in his famous sermon in 
Act 17. Each nation has its sovereignty. The Lord decided each nation 
on Earth and when and where those nations would be, and we should not 
shrink from that responsibility, that sovereign responsibility, to 
protect our borders and to protect the rule of law.
  And the borders of the United States are what define the sovereignty 
of the United States. If we should accept the idea that there aren't 
borders, that people have always migrated and somehow it is immoral for 
us to define those borders or tell people you can't come across, then I 
would ask those who advocate a policy like that, and I believe it is an 
illogical policy, but those who advocate for such a policy, I would say 
to them, then: How many people do you believe should be allowed to live 
in the United States? What should the population of the United States 
of America be? Six billion people on the planet. We're the third 
largest population country on the planet, 300-plus million of us. How 
many should live here?
  If you asked the rest of the world: Would you like to live in the 
United States of America and we'll buy you a plane ticket to go and 
we'll give you an unlimited supply--well, how about the current access 
of welfare benefits that are there? Seventy-two different means-tested 
Federal welfare programs; and, by the way, refundable tax credits for 
illegals working in America under an employer ID number, a 42-dash 
number instead of a Social Security number.
  I congratulate Congressman Sam Johnson of Texas for bringing his 
legislation that prohibits any tax credits from going to, any refunds 
from going to those who are filing their taxes without a Social 
Security number.
  But they could tap into all of these benefits, 72 different means-
tested welfare programs and the refundable tax credits that are there, 
and we'd say to them: You can live by an implied guarantee in the 
United States of America at a middle-income level, middle class without 
working, and we're going to see to it that it's all available to you. 
Come to America and we'll give that to you. I would predict, Mr. 
Speaker, that more than half of the 6 billion people on the planet 
would opt to come to the United States.
  So how many people do those who advocate for open borders, what do 
they think the population of the United States should be? Should it be 
3 billion? Am I right on that? Should it be 2 billion? Should it be 4 
billion? I'll suggest it would surpass 3 billion under that kind of an 
offer, except many of those on the tail end of that great transshipment 
of humanity would realize that our system here would collapse long 
before you could ever load 3 billion people into America, or 2 billion, 
or maybe even 1 billion.
  So what is the number? What is it that those who advocate for open 
borders and suspending the rule of law, what is it that they believe 
should be the future population of the United States of America? How 
many would they let in?
  And I constantly hear the lamentation that it takes too long to come 
into the United States legally. It takes too long. Well, I suppose if 
we just opened it up and we accelerated the process and everybody that 
was in line, if we let them in right away, inside of a year, maybe 
that's not too long. I'm constantly hearing candidates, Presidential 
candidates even, some in the past, not so much now, argue that we need 
to speed up our immigration process and that those who are here in the 
United States illegally need to get right with the law and that they 
need to go to the back of the line.
  So if they need to go to the back of the line, do they really 
understand that the lines don't start in the United States? The lines 
for legal immigration into the United States start in foreign countries 
where people have an aspiration to come here, and they apply for a visa 
and eventually a green card to come here; and that line, those lines, 
when you add up all of the lines of the

[[Page 2897]]

various visas that are out there--H-1Bs, H-2Bs, the visa lottery 
program, the list goes on and on--you add up all of that, the lines to 
get in, waiting to come into the United States legally are 50 million 
long--50 million. Fifty million people are waiting in foreign countries 
to come to the United States legally, and I hear constantly the wait's 
too long. We need to accelerate coming into the United States.
  So we bring 1.2 million people into this country legally, kind of on 
average each year, 1.2 million. We're the most generous country on 
Earth by far. And some data shows that we bring more people legally 
into the United States than all other countries combined. I can't 
anchor that in a data point, so I want to put that caveat in the 
Record, Mr. Speaker. But it's in that category, someplace pretty close, 
1.2 million legals coming into America, drawing from a pool of about 50 
million that are waiting in line. And in all of that, we only have 
about 7 to 11 percent of those legal immigrants that we even score 
their ability to contribute to the United States. The rest of it is all 
about how they can benefit from the taxpayers and the workers here, how 
they can benefit.

                              {time}  1950

  No nation other than the United States would allow for the, what 
should I call it, the evolution of an immigration policy that just 
simply grants this to people because they want to be here and gives 
them the authority to accelerate the legal immigration of the family 
reunification plan so that beyond that first individual they can start 
bringing in people outside that extended family tree.
  We sat down and did a spreadsheet calculation and wondered how many 
people could one individual bring in to the United States under family 
reunification. We built it on a spreadsheet. We got out to 357 
individuals brought in by one single individual, and then we ran out of 
room on the spreadsheet and realized you really can't calculate it. But 
you can calculate the visas, the means by which we are legalizing 
people in America.
  It depends on whether you look at one study or another. There are 
competing studies, and that is between 89 and 93 percent of the legal 
immigration into the United States is not based on merit whatsoever. 
There's no merit quality there whatsoever. And then the balance of 
that, between 7 and 11 percent, does come from some measures of merit 
such as H-1Bs, having a skill.
  I'm suggesting this, Mr. Speaker, that we develop an immigration 
policy here in the United States Congress, with the cooperation of our 
next President, that's designed to enhance the economic, the social and 
the cultural well-being of the United States of America. Any country 
worth its salt is going to have an immigration policy designed to 
benefit the country itself. We're not in the business of trying to 
alleviate--well, we'd like to, but we cannot be in the business of 
trying to alleviate all world poverty, all world hunger, and all world 
lack of liberty and freedom. It isn't just enough to bring people in 
here and let them understand and be inspired by American liberty--God-
given American liberty; but we need to promote and inspire it in other 
countries in the world instead of going there to bow before foreign 
leaders and apologize for being Americans.
  I'm astonished, Mr. Speaker, that we had a Secretary of State, 
Madeleine Albright, who told the world that she wouldn't wear a lapel 
pin with an American flag in foreign countries because she was afraid 
it offended people. My attitude about that is, go find a country that's 
offended that's not accepting foreign aid. And what are they offended 
about? American liberty? The way we've led in the world? Congressman 
Louie Gohmert of Texas has so well and famously said with regard to 
foreign aid that goes out to people who set themselves up as our 
enemies and that vote against us consistently in the United Nations, he 
says, You don't have to pay people to hate you. They'll hate you for 
free.
  So I want to configure immigration policy that's designed to enhance 
the economic, social, and cultural well-being of the United States. We 
should be scoring the applicants for legal immigration into the United 
States. We should be scoring them by their ability to contribute to 
this society, this economy, this culture, and this civilization. And 
one of the ways that we can do that is we can look to our English-
speaking allies for some guidance. Canada, United Kingdom, and 
Australia come to mind.
  Each of them either has a policy or has been developing a policy to 
set up a point system, a scoring system, so that they can evaluate the 
applicants for immigration into their countries. And here are some of 
the criteria: education, job skills, earning capacity, and age--you 
want young people to come in so they can pay taxes long enough so that 
you can justify paying for their retirement--and English-speaking 
abilities, because the ability to speak, write and understand English 
is the strongest indicator we have of the ability to assimilate into 
the broader overall culture.
  So there is nothing discriminatory about this other than if we're 
going to have a policy that's good for America, we have to do some 
discrimination in favor of those who can do the most to help our 
country. I'd like to bring in and continue to bring in bright, 
energetic people, especially young people. And if they are preeducated 
by the taxpayers of a foreign country, that's fine. I'm happy with 
that. Come on in here and help America's economy grow and raise your 
family, but embrace our American traditions, our American culture, and 
our American civilization. After all, that's why you came. And to the 
extent that you bring some of your culture along with you and there are 
certain traditions that you follow, that adds to the flavor and it adds 
to the zest of life here in America.
  But, Mr. Speaker, when they come and reject American liberty and the 
American way of life, and they try to recreate in an enclave the life 
that they left instead of embrace the life that's offered to them here 
in America, I would ask, why are you here? Why would you come to 
America if you're going to reject Americanism and seek to recreate the 
place you left? Why didn't you just stay there? And that's some of the 
foundation of the immigration concept that we have, Mr. Speaker.
  By the way, as I get to item number two on this long list of 
universal items that I think all Presidential candidates should embrace 
and this Congress should pass, I would add that we've got E-Verify 
legislation before this Congress, and I am not satisfied that it is 
written in a way that it will work in the way it's intended. I am very 
concerned, Mr. Speaker, about the preemption that's written into it 
that prohibits the political subdivisions from supporting and enforcing 
immigration laws that mirror those of the Federal Government.
  Aside from that, I have proposed an offer that actually solves this 
problem without having to go there and preempt the States and the 
political subdivisions, and it is called the New IDEA Act. New IDEA 
stands for the new and the acronym is the New Illegal Deduction 
Elimination Act. The Illegal Deduction Elimination Act clarifies that 
wages and benefits paid to illegals are not tax deductible, and we know 
that. But the practice is to write off wages and benefits paid to 
illegals because they know that nobody is going to come along and 
enforce. And this has been a practice since the Amnesty Act of 1986.
  Under the New IDEA Act, then, the IRS, coming in to do a normal audit 
of an employer's company, would run the Social Security number and 
other pertinent data through E-Verify. So let's just say I have 100 
employees. The IRS would come in, the Internal Revenue Service would 
come in to do an audit of my company. They would look at my receipts 
and my expenditures; they would look for anomalies in that calculation 
that might indicate that there would be money that was scooped out that 
tax wasn't paid on, or a tax avoidance. And in the process of doing 
that, they would run those Social Security numbers of the employees 
through E-Verify, the Internet-based system that

[[Page 2898]]

can verify whether the data identifies someone who can legally work in 
the United States.
  As they run those 100 Social Security numbers through E-Verify, then 
E-Verify would either come back and affirm that they could lawfully 
work in America; or if there's no answer, there's no response, then 
it's implied that they can't work legally in the United States. So 
therefore the IRS could deny that business deduction of the wages and 
benefits paid to that illegal.
  And they would give a period of time for the employer and the 
employee to cure any data that is there and give the employer safe 
harbor if he uses E-Verify so that for another means of lack of 
verification, they can't come in and enforce against him for hiring 
illegals. Safe harbor for using E-Verify, not a mandate that they use 
E-Verify, the IRS would make the determination by using E-Verify and 
that result is this: if out of those 100 employees, let's just say I 
had 10 that were illegal, the IRS would say, I'm sorry, but you paid 
$50,000 a year to each one of these employees, and that's no longer a 
business expense because they were unlawfully working in the United 
States and you had the tool to verify.
  And so that $50,000 times 10 is $500,000. That $500,000 that you 
wrote off of the gross receipts number--just say I grossed $10 million 
and that 500,000 would be one of my expenses that's there--they would 
deny the expense of $500,000, $50,000 paid to 10 illegals, and that 
$500,000 then goes out of my expense column on Schedule C, goes over 
into the gross receipts side and shows up down on the bottom line as 
net income, taxable net income. That means that your $10-an-hour 
illegal, by the time you pay the interest, the penalty and the tax 
liability, becomes about a $16-an-hour illegal.
  So the employer can draw a choice. Does he really want to take a 
chance on being audited every year and seeing his expenses of his 
illegals move from $10 an hour up to $16 an hour, or would he maybe go 
offer an American a job at $13 or $14 an hour? I think that's what 
happens, Mr. Speaker. And it provides an incentive so an employer 
doesn't have to switch it all overnight. They can calculate the risk, 
and they can clean up their workforce incrementally if that's what it 
takes.

                              {time}  2000

  Furthermore, in my bill, the New IDEA Act, it requires that there be 
a cooperative team put together between the IRS, the Social Security 
Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security so the right 
hand, the left hand, and the middle hand know what each other are 
doing. We get Social Security No-Match Letters that used to come out--
they stopped sending them out a while back because nobody was doing 
anything with them. They would just send them out saying: We did our 
job; these Social Security numbers didn't match that you're sending in. 
A letter would go out; nobody shows up; that's the end of it.
  You've got Homeland Security that is operating at the direction of 
the White House, that has decided they're going to provide 
administrative amnesty. Three hundred thousand illegals in the United 
States already adjudicated for deportation, and the President and Janet 
Napolitano and Eric Holder set up a policy--primarily Janet 
Napolitano--set up a policy to take staff time and scour through the 
300,000 already adjudicated for deportation illegals that are there and 
see if they can find a means and a way to justify allowing them to stay 
in the United States. Administrative amnesty.
  My bill, New IDEA, puts the three of them together so the IRS sends 
the information to Homeland Security and to the Social Security 
Administration; No-Match Letters from Social Security Administration go 
to the IRS and to Homeland Security, and it says: Put your heads 
together; figure out how to enforce America's immigration law.
  That's what we need to be doing, Mr. Speaker.
  By the way, the President of the United States, who has disrespected 
the rule of law, has a couple of family members who have received some 
type of administrative amnesty asylum--Auntie Onyango, whom I hope I 
don't have to spell that. But in any case, she has been in the United 
States for a long time illegally, since the 1990s--President Obama's 
aunt--living in public housing, reportedly, was finally adjudicated 
again for deportation. And the Obama administration declared her to be 
at too much of a risk if now, after all these years since the nineties, 
if she were sent back to Kenya. Because his aunt is now too high a 
profile public figure to be sent to Kenya, someone might kidnap her and 
hold her for ransom, and so it's a great risk; therefore, we should 
give her asylum in the United States where surely no one would kidnap 
her living in public housing and hold her for a ransom here. They just 
would do it in Kenya.
  So, Homeland Security--I presume the State Department may have had a 
voice in this--granted, according to news reports, asylum for Barack 
Obama's aunt.
  Now, if you can get asylum for the President's aunt, and you think in 
terms of the rule of law as applied the same to everyone, then who 
would it not apply to? Well, the rule of law surely didn't apply to 
Barack Obama's drunken Uncle Omar, who had also been processed and 
adjudicated for deportation and also didn't honor the court order to be 
deported. So drunken Uncle Omar nearly ran into a police car, found 
himself afoul with the law with a blood alcohol content of nearly twice 
the legal limit--it was 1.4--nearly twice the legal limit, and drunken 
Uncle Omar disappeared from the scene. And I'm confident that he went 
the way of Barack Obama's aunt, an administrative amnesty manufactured 
by the administration, not deported, not shipped off back to Kenya.
  So if we won't deport the President's aunt, if we won't deport the 
President's uncle no matter what his blood alcohol content, and we've 
got 300,000 that are in the United States illegally who have already 
been adjudicated for deportation, and even though we're shorthanded and 
we're having trouble processing all of this and the President has 
said--well, at least Janet Napolitano has said that we don't have the 
resources to enforce all of the laws, why are we using our staff 
resources to go try to give people an exemption from the law that's 
already been enforced? That's administrative amnesty. So they've been 
scouring the books to give people a pass on a rule of law.
  I raised the issue, and I asked dozens of people across the spectrum 
in my district and around the country: What's the most important 
component of immigration law? Mr. Speaker, what I hear is the rule of 
law. The rule of law. Not the idea that some people are needy and it 
hurts our hearts to enforce a law--it does. But in the end, if we don't 
respect the rule of law, if we don't refurbish the rule of law, we have 
then desecrated one of the essential pillars of American 
exceptionalism.
  We cannot be a great country if we don't have the rule of law. We 
must be a country, a sovereign nation. Sovereign nations must have 
borders. Borders must be defended. Those borders must be controlled in 
a way where we decide who comes in and decide when people go out, if 
they don't decide on their own. And we must preserve and protect and 
refurbish and enhance the rule of law.
  That's what the New IDEA Act does. It has the support of all 
Presidential candidates--formally, not attested to yet by Governor 
Romney, but I believe philosophically he would tell you that he sees 
the logic in it. If we passed this off of the floor of the House of 
Representatives, I believe that Governor Mitt Romney would be 
supportive of such an initiative.
  Then, if you go on down the line of the planks and the platforms that 
are universal among the Presidential candidates, you would see the 
desire to repeal Dodd-Frank there universally among Republicans. Dodd-
Frank, that's set up such that the government would decide which 
lending institutions were too big to be allowed to fail. Then, once 
declared too big to fail, the three entities in the Federal Government 
would decide whether they were going bankrupt, and if they went into 
receivership, who and what entity would receive them.

[[Page 2899]]

  It's a horrible scenario to think that the Federal Government will 
decide winners and losers by a statute written by the very people that 
contributed so much to the financial problem that we had, Chris Dodd 
and Barney Frank, so I'm for a full 100 percent repeal ofDodd-Frank. If 
it has a couple of redeeming qualities--and I believe it does--let's 
restate them back into the law. Let's not make exceptions and leave 
pieces there.
  Dodd-Frank needs to be repealed. We need to pass the repeal of Dodd-
Frank here on the floor of the House. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota has 
been the lead on that. She drafted the legislation to repeal Dodd-
Frank. She's been a strong and vocal advocate for repealing Dodd-Frank. 
So have all the other Presidential candidates. We should do this for 
the American people, for the next President, and we should do it to 
honor the effort of Michele Bachmann, Mr. Speaker.
  Next piece is official English. Almost every country in the world has 
an official language, at least one official language. It's been so 
recognized throughout the ages that the single most powerful unifying 
force known throughout all history and humanity is having a common 
language. If we can talk to each other, we have an instantaneous bond 
with each other. Here in America, we're so fortunate that English is 
that language, and yet there seems to be an open effort to try to 
encourage language enclaves in America where the second and even third 
generations of Americans don't learn English; they just live within the 
enclave. They're trapped in that economic and that cultural cycle of 
the enclave, the silo of an ethnic minority instead of assimilating 
into the broader society.
  We need to establish English as the official language of government, 
not to disparage another language, but to unify the American people and 
hold us together as a people and strengthen our unity. The government 
does not need to be spending that kind of money on language.
  Then repeal ObamaCare and a number of other things.
  I appreciate your attention to this matter this evening, Mr. Speaker, 
and I would yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________