[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2350-2354]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           HOLLOW IDEOLOGIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
King) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, it's always my honor to be 
recognized to speak here on the floor of the United States House of 
Representatives, and I'm privileged to hear from the ``Dr. Phil Show'' 
that we've just listened to over this past 60 minutes.
  I have a few things on my mind that I'd like to inform you of, Madam 
Speaker. And I'd start with this: that sometimes we need to take a look 
at the bigger, broader direction that this Congress is going and this 
country is going.
  And one of the things that I've learned, being involved in the 
legislative process, in fact, back in the Iowa

[[Page 2351]]

State Senate some years ago, one of my colleagues said we're so busy 
doing that which is urgent that we're not addressing those things that 
are important. And that should frame all the things that we do.
  We should have a long-term plan. We should have a big picture plan, 
and the things that we do should fit into that. We should be putting 
the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together under that broader view.
  And how does that broader view fit?
  Our Founding Fathers understood it. They understood the perspective 
of history. They knew where they stood in history, and they acted 
accordingly. They understood human nature. They understood human 
universals.
  They watched the continuum of history to get up to their point, and 
they made deep, long-term, broad, deliberative decisions that were 
difficult and debated, they were hard-fought out, and they put those 
pieces in place for us. It's clear to me when I read through the 
documents of our Founding Fathers that they understood history and 
human nature.
  It's not as clear to me, Madam Speaker, when I serve here in this 
Congress and engage in debates here on the floor and in committee and 
in subcommittee and around in the places where we're often called upon 
to comment or listen to the comment of others, that we're looking at 
this from the big picture.
  So something that brought this home for me was on a trip that I was 
involved in dealing with negotiations with the Europeans, and one of 
the speakers who was an expert on the Middle East made a presentation 
about the Muslim Brotherhood. And I'm not here to speak about the 
Muslim Brotherhood except this: that part of his presentation was that 
the Muslim Brotherhood is, according to the speaker, a hollow ideology. 
I put that in quotes, ``a hollow ideology.''
  Now he said that they can't sustain themselves over the long term 
because their belief system isn't anchored in those things that are 
timeless and real, those things like the core--now, I'm going to expand 
a little bit--the core of faith, the core of human nature, but a hollow 
ideology.
  So when he used that term and professed that hollow ideologies cannot 
continue, that they will eventually expire because they're sunk by 
their own weight, rather than buoyed by a belief system, then I began 
to look at our Western civilization.
  And we are, here in the United States, Madam Speaker, the leaders of 
Western civilization.

                              {time}  1550

  And so when the allegation of a hollow ideology is placed upon the 
Muslim Brotherhood, I have to wonder: can I make the argument that our 
ideology is full and wholesome and identifies our values that are 
timeless? And are the pillars of American exceptionalism restored with 
the ideology we carry here? And do we strengthen this Nation so that 
the next generation has the opportunities we had or do we just 
ignorantly wallow through the day-to-day urgent decisions of Congress 
without dealing with the broader picture of who we are and, 
particularly, how we got here?
  I look back to the time when I first ran for office. I was putting 
together a document that I wanted to hand out to my, hopefully, future 
constituents. I believed that I should put a quote in there that 
sounded wise, and hopefully was wise.
  As I sat in my construction office about 1:30 in the morning, I wrote 
up this little quote. Part of it is naive; another part of it, I think, 
is appropriate. And the quote was this: that human nature doesn't 
change; that if we ever get the fundamental structure of government 
correct, the only reason we need to reconvene our legislative bodies 
are to make appropriations for coming years or adjustments for new 
technology.
  Madam Speaker, when you think about what that means, if we ever get 
government right, if we ever get our laws in place, our regulations in 
place so that they reflect and bring about the best of human nature, 
since human nature doesn't change and it hasn't changed throughout the 
generations, then just make the adjustments for appropriations in new 
technology, that is a correct statement, I believe. But it is pretty 
naive about the reality of coming to a consensus on getting the 
fundamental structure of law correct, let alone the fundamental 
structure of regulations correct, without regard to the changing 
technology that always is thrust upon us here.
  We are continually going to be in an argument, in a debate, about the 
fundamental human nature, how people react to public policy and about 
where we would like to see society go. Those of us on my side of the 
aisle believe that we have values that are timeless. Whatever was true 
2,000 years ago is true today, and whatever was sin 2,000 years ago is 
sin today.
  There are those on the other side of the aisle, many of them would 
advocate that society isn't going in the right direction unless you are 
constantly changing things, without regard to the values we are 
changing, without having to grasp for a higher ideal, just grasping for 
change. If change is the mission and they are launched upon that 
mission, they believe they are doing good because they are eliminating 
the things that we have had and adopting something different, not 
necessarily something better. And they don't even argue that it is 
better, but they argue for change.
  I would say this, Madam Speaker: that we have fundamental values, 
that these fundamental values have been clear to our Founding Fathers. 
They are rooted in human history. They go back to the time of Adam and 
Eve. But the things that we should keep track of here are those things 
that our Founding Fathers looked at as well, that being the rule of law 
is one of the essential pillars of American exceptionalism. Without it, 
we can't be a great country. Most of the pillars of American 
exceptionalism are listed in the Bill of Rights.
  Our Founding Fathers got it right. When they guaranteed us, in the 
First Amendment, the freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and the 
press, all of that rolled up in one amendment, think what that means.
  And I would argue, especially to our young people, Madam Speaker, 
that if we don't exercise these rights--and our Founding Fathers made 
it very clear, these are God-given rights. Thomas Jefferson wrote it in 
the Declaration, as signed by the hands of those Founding Fathers that 
pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, that these 
rights come from God. And it is the first time that concept had been 
argued, established, and put down as a foundation of this Republic. It 
is not the beginning of these God-given rights; it is the most 
defensible version of it.
  I would take us back to the origins of the rule of law, which seems 
to be getting eroded here in this Congress--in the House and in the 
Senate and in the White House. I don't have that same charge to the 
Supreme Court these days, but I would test them in a couple of places, 
perhaps in a different venue, Madam Speaker.
  The rule of law, the foundation of the rule of law, I will say that 
was handed down by Moses, Mosaic Law. And as that law was handed down 
and we went through those times after the birth of Christ--and we saw 
during that period of time of Christ that the Greeks and the Romans had 
embraced Mosaic Law, even though they sometimes good-naturedly teased 
each other about borrowing their ideas about the rule of law from 
Moses--it is true, Mosaic Law flowed into Greek law and Roman law.
  If you look at history, the Romans flowed across Western Europe all 
the way up into England up into Ireland. They established themselves in 
a big way because of the rule of law.
  That rule of law was torn asunder about the time that the Dark Ages 
began, around 406 AD to around 410 AD, when Rome was sacked and we saw 
ourselves go into the Dark Ages. And, I will say, the uncivilized began 
to destroy anything that they saw that was evidence of the 
civilizations of the Greeks and the Romans. They tore down the 
buildings. They tore down the symbols, those things that reminded them 
of the former civilization.

[[Page 2352]]

  Out of that, the Roman church collected and protected many of those 
documents of the classics and the Irish monks collected and protected 
many of the classics of the era of the Greeks and the Romans. And we 
went through those hundreds of years of the Dark Ages when people 
forgot how to think about the age of reason, how to apply deductive and 
inductive reasoning, rational thought. That disappeared, and it became 
the rule of emotion rather than the rule of law, the society driven by 
instinct and emotion rather than a society that was ordered by rational 
thought.
  And how did this come back together? We think we couldn't lose this 
again today, Madam Speaker. It was lost at one time, and it was 
reconstructed again after hundreds of years.
  I think about how that was bridged. There are a number of symbols of 
the bridging of the classical period of the Greeks and the Romans 
through the Dark Ages into the Middle Ages and into today.
  One of those symbols would be the Cologne Cathedral dome in Germany. 
Now, if I have my history right--and I am going to speak generally, 
Madam Speaker, because I didn't commit this to precise memory for the 
purposes of delivering it, but conceptually I will--the origins of that 
cathedral and that church and that diocese there began about 330 AD or 
so.
  Can you imagine, before the fall of the Roman Empire, the Christian 
faith was building gothic edifices in Western Europe as monuments and 
symbols of the deep core of their belief system, not a hollow ideology, 
but a full ideology driven by a Christian faith and followed along by 
individual rights.
  The foundation of the Cologne Cathedral dome began to be laid around 
330 AD. The architectural plans, as I recall them, for the church that 
exists today was about 832 AD. Then they began to build for a few 
hundred years. Around about 1100 AD or so, they ran out of money.
  Now, we haven't yet emerged from the Dark Ages, but it is beginning. 
Hundreds of years of Dark Ages and the construction of this church had 
stopped. They ran out of money. The Dark Ages had suppressed it, and 
the image and the vision of this not hollow but full ideology had to 
weather through centuries.
  Then coming out of the Dark Ages in 1100 AD or so, they began their 
fundraising drive again. For 600 years they raised money to finish the 
cathedral that was planned. Architectural drawings were put down on 
parchment about 832 AD.
  They picked up those plans 600 years later, the same plans, to 
complete the church that was completed in the late part of the 19th 
century and exists today.
  That is an idea of the length of time that a vision can sustain 
itself. A not hollow but a full ideology can drive itself through the 
collapse of the Roman Empire, through the Dark Ages, through the 
reconstruction period, into the modern era and survive, in fact, 
survive all the allied bombers that went over it in World War II. That 
is a vision of not a hollow ideology but a full ideology that is driven 
by culture, by civilization, by faith.
  Here we are today. As I listen to that presentation about the hollow 
ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, I thought: what is our agenda here 
in Congress? Does this agenda reflect our value system? Does it anchor 
in these core beliefs that go back in a timeless way? Does it recognize 
that there are human universals that never will change? And does it 
recognize that we are motivated by those human universals and that it 
is anchored in our value system?
  I don't know that our agenda reflects that these days. It seems as 
though we are running herky-jerky from one economic issue to another 
economic issue, not with a long view picture, but with the idea that we 
are going to get past this crisis and then somehow we are going to put 
this back together on the other side of the crisis.

                              {time}  1600

  That's the case with the fiscal cliff. That's the case with 
reordering the issues of sequestration, continuing resolution, and, 
later on, the debt ceiling. These are the urgencies that are being 
addressed, sometimes at the expense of the bigger picture.
  It would be different if we were dealing with urgencies that were 
fitting the jigsaw puzzle pieces into the big picture, but I don't 
believe that we are. I think that we are starting to lose sight of who 
we are as a people and we're starting to lose our grip on those 
fundamentals.
  There is a big difference going on in this country that we have not 
seen in the history of the United States of America, Madam Speaker, and 
the difference is this: those of us who believe that we have timeless 
values and that we need to be reconstructing and refurbishing the 
pillars of American exceptionalism competing against those who believe 
that chiselling those pillars of American exceptionalism down and 
replacing them with something or nothing is preferable to restoring 
them. I think that that is being driven out of the White House and the 
people that share common cause, Madam Speaker, with the President of 
the United States.
  This movement that he is driving, it divides people against each 
other. When you see this concept of multiculturalism--which is 
something that I embraced when it emerged on the public scene because I 
believed it was a good tool for us to respect all people of all races 
and all ethnicities, whatever their behaviors might be in life. But I 
began to see that the people on the other side were using it as a tool 
to divide, not to unite, a tool to pit people against each other rather 
than to draw them together. I've seen the President use that in his 
politics repeatedly to the extent that I've never seen in the history 
of this country. I did, though, recognize it.
  When Bill Clinton was elected President, I wrote an op-ed about the 
method that he used to appoint his Cabinet. That method was: I'm going 
to put together a multicultural formula and I am going to--and he said 
this: I'm going to appoint a Cabinet that looks like America. That 
would be the quote from Bill Clinton after he was elected, before he 
was inaugurated, as he put the Cabinet together.
  I thought at that time, the President of the United States should be 
putting together a Cabinet that best serves America, regardless of what 
they look like. But that wasn't what happened under the Clinton 
administration, and I'm not convinced that's what's happened under any 
subsequent administration, Republican or Democrat, since then. But this 
President has pitted us against each other along the lines of race, 
along the lines of ethnicity, with sometimes little comments that are 
made that aren't so subtle. These things divide us as a people rather 
than unite us as a people.
  When you hear the promise out there that people won't have to worry 
about their rent check or won't have to worry about their car payment, 
that somebody will take care of you--this idea that government is going 
to step in and lift the burden off people and take away individual 
responsibility is something that was pervasive in the last two 
Presidential races, particularly in the last one, and it undermines the 
efficiency of the American people.
  We should be thinking, Madam Speaker, about a Nation of over 300 
million people that has some of the longest and the highest and most 
sustained unemployment rates in the history of this country--the Great 
Depression would be the exception--and a Nation with around 313 million 
people in it, a little over 13 million people who have signed up for 
unemployment, another number of people that approaches that of about 20 
million people that are definably underemployed, and that's just a 
piece of those who are not engaged.
  When we look at the Department of Labor's Web site and we start to 
add up those unemployed to those who are of working age simply not in 
the workforce, we come to a number of over 100 million Americans, Madam 
Speaker, that are not contributing to the gross domestic product, that 
are of the age group that one would think we would get some work out of 
some of them. Now, I recognize in that group of over 100 million there 
are some that are retired, some are early retired, some are

[[Page 2353]]

in school, some are homemakers. It's difficult for me to complete the 
list of reasons why people would not be contributing to our economy.
  But we seem to think that 100 million Americans not in the workforce 
doesn't seem to trouble very many people in this Congress, but it's 
okay for us to be looking at 11 or 12 or 20 million people that are in 
this country unlawfully, who are working unlawfully, and who are, at 
least theoretically, taking jobs that Americans might take.
  At one point, Madam Speaker, I wrote an op-ed that laid out an 
analogy. It described the United States as analogous to a huge cruise 
ship--it would also be a sailing cruise ship--with 300 million people 
on it. You need some people that will pull on the oars and swab the 
deck and trim the sails and work in the galley and clean out the cabins 
and do those kind of things up in steerage and in first class and 
wherever else, and somebody there to man the navigation and take care 
of the captain. That's all jobs that happen on a cruise ship. And our 
whole economy and our society is tied together, 50 States and 300 
million people.
  What kind of people, if they needed somebody else to pull on the oars 
or swab the deck or trim the sails or calculate the navigation, what 
kind of people would say, We've got 300 million people on this ship and 
we've got 100 million of them that are sitting up in steerage, but we 
need somebody else to do the work that those people in steerage won't 
do, so let's pull off on this continent and load another 10 or 20 
million more people on to do the work that people on this cruise ship 
won't do? No captain in his right mind would sail that ship over there 
and load a bunch more people on to do work if he had 100 million people 
up in steerage that had opted out because somebody is taking care of 
delivering the food, cleaning their cabin, and making sure they have a 
place where they can stay. That's what happens to human nature when you 
have a domestic policy that makes it easy to turn the safety net into a 
hammock.
  That's something that Phil Gramm used to discuss about how it's one 
thing to create a safety net--and we're for a safety net in here almost 
universally--but to turn the safety net into a hammock and then ask 
somebody else to come do work that Americans aren't willing to do is a 
reach that I'm not willing to accept.
  Neither do I accept the idea that there's work that Americans won't 
do. Every single job category has Americans working in it in a majority 
of that job category. We saw some of that data today, Madam Speaker.
  So I'd say this instead. We are a country that is richer than any 
country ever in the history of the world. We have more technology than 
ever in the history of the world. We have more capital created. We have 
more human capital, more know-how, more can-do people out there to pull 
on the oars and trim the sails and navigate the ship and do all of the 
things that need to happen. This country has all of those assets and 
all of those resources in greater number and supply by any measure than 
any civilization in the history of the world, and Madam Speaker, we 
can't live within our means? We have to run a deficit of $1 to $1.2 
trillion and borrow money from the Chinese and the Saudis--and, by the 
way, about half of this debt is held by domestic debt, the American 
people that are buying bonds and T-bills.
  But a Nation that's the richest Nation, the richest culture, the 
richest economy, the richest civilization in the history of the world 
has to borrow over $1 trillion a year just to sustain this lifestyle 
that we have, while we have 100 million--a third of our population--
that is of working age that is not contributing to the gross domestic 
product. Think of what that means. Think how posterity will judge us if 
we don't step up to our responsibilities, get our spending under 
control, bring more of the people into the workforce that are, I will 
say, living off of public benefits.
  I would be willing to submit that you won't find someone on the 
streets of America that can name for you all of the means-tested 
welfare programs--Federal programs that are means tested--that we have. 
That number used to be 72. Then it went to 80. This is a number that 
has been calculated and pulled together by Robert Rector of the 
Heritage Foundation. I asked him, you know, I used to quote you at 72, 
now you say 80. What happened? He said, I found some more. I said, Is 
80 the finite number, 80 different means-tested Federal welfare 
programs? He said, Well, there are at least 80; why don't you say a 
minimum of 80.
  So 80, a minimum of 80 different means-tested Federal welfare 
programs, some of them competing with each other, and no one can list 
them from memory, and no one has the capability of understanding how 
they interrelate with each other nor how they motivate or demotivate 
the people that they are designed to help. What kind of a country would 
do that?
  And why would we have 100 million people of working age not in our 
workforce while we're running up a debt of $1.2 trillion a year? We've 
seen that the per capita national debt now for a baby born in the 
United States--babies born today, their share of the national debt is 
$53,000. It went over $53,000 just the other day. So, welcome to the 
world. You're an American citizen born here by birthright citizenship, 
but you don't have a right not to contribute to paying off the national 
debt, and your share is $53,000.

                              {time}  1610

  What kind of a country would do that and not tighten its belt and not 
put some of its people to work? And then I end up with these economic 
discussions, Madam Speaker. They come from smart people who will say, 
well, the labor force should be determined by supply and demand. Why 
don't we let human migration follow where the jobs are? Well, Milton 
Friedman had the answer to that. He said that you cannot have open 
borders and a welfare system, especially one that is as generous as our 
welfare system is.
  So which one can you fix? Can you fix the border problem? Can you fix 
the welfare problem? I'd like to fix them both, Madam Speaker. One of 
them is a little easier than the other. We can control the borders and 
shut off the jobs magnet easier than we can make the case that we 
should be tightening down the welfare system in this country. But we 
need to do both. We need to bring the country back within its means. 
The entitlement system that's out there that fits within those 80 
different means-tested welfare programs needs to be completely 
reexamined.
  I think Congressman Louis Gohmert is correct when he said we need to 
put all of the welfare into a single committee so they're responsible 
for all of the programs that we have. It's the only way we can begin to 
get a handle on it. The committee jurisdiction is scattered out through 
multiple committees, and he knows that better than I.
  The big picture that I started to talk about in the beginning, Madam 
Speaker, is that we need to identify the pillars of American 
exceptionalism and we need to refurbish those pillars. The 
identification of them become the things that we've inherited from far 
back in the origins of Western Civilization. Mosaic law flowed through 
Greek and Roman law, and the Magna Carta that was signed in 1215 
established individual freedom from the monarch or the despot that no 
subject could be--let's say no one other than a serf at that time--
could be punished arbitrarily. They had to have the right and the 
protection of the rule of law.
  We have these guarantees in our Constitution, freedom of speech, and 
I'm exercising it now, Madam Speaker, and I encourage all to do so. If 
we stopped exercising freedom of speech, we would eventually lose it 
because it would be defined away from us. Freedom of religion fits the 
same category. If we don't exercise our freedom of religion, it becomes 
redefined away from us. How about freedom of the press? I would submit, 
Madam Speaker, that those who abuse freedom of the press, those who do 
not have journalistic integrity, are undermining our First Amendment 
right. If every newspaper out there printed things that they knew were 
dishonest, if they just drove purely a

[[Page 2354]]

political agenda on the front page, on the side where they're held 
accountable for journalism, or in their commentary when they print 
falsehoods as fact, it undermines all of our freedom, because when 
someone abuses a freedom, they diminish that freedom for all of us.
  Now, think in terms of this--if that's hard to understand for some 
folks, Madam Speaker, I'll put it this way: If everybody went out there 
and abused the Second Amendment right, it wouldn't be long before we 
wouldn't have the right to keep and bear arms, regardless of what the 
Constitution says. We have to utilize those rights, and we have to 
exercise them in a responsible way. The abuse of God-given rights, the 
abuse of these rights, especially in the Bill of Rights, undermines the 
rights that we have.
  But we do have freedom of speech, religion, and the press and 
assembly. If we stopped exercising them, we would lose them. We have 
the right to keep and bear arms, not for hunting, not for target, not 
for self-defense, and not for collection. All of those four reasons to 
keep and bear arms are--I'll say they are additional rights; it's just 
the bonus that comes along with it because our Founding Fathers 
understood that a well-armed populace was a protection against tyranny. 
I agree with that and defend the Second Amendment because that is what 
allows us to defend ourselves against tyrants.
  You can go on up through the Bill of Rights, the right to property in 
the Fifth Amendment--nor shall private property be taken for public use 
without just compensation. The Kelo decision took that phrase out of 
there, ``for public use.'' I think one day, a Supreme Court, if we 
raise an adequate objection, will have to go back and revisit the Kelo 
decision. It was an unjust decision that didn't reflect the language in 
the Fifth Amendment. Property rights is another core of American 
exceptionalism.
  Without these rights, freedom of speech, religion, and the press, and 
the Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms, without property 
rights, without being tried by a jury of our peers and the right to 
face our accusers, without the concepts of federalism and these 
enumerated powers in the Constitution, that being reserved for the 
Congress and the balance of them that revert to the States or the 
people respectively, without those components, we would not have 
emerged as the country that we are. We can't sustain ourselves as a 
country that we are to be if we don't protect those pillars of American 
exceptionalism.
  In the core of those pillars of American exceptionalism is, as I said 
earlier, the rule of law. When the rule of law is usurped by a king or 
a despot or a President of the United States, it diminishes us all, and 
it diminishes the potential destiny of the United States of America. 
We've seen, as the President of the United States has decided, that he 
will enforce the law that he sees fit, and he will not enforce the law 
that he doesn't agree with. And it's clear in a number of ways, Madam 
Speaker. The President suspended No Child Left Behind. He won't enforce 
that. He essentially has waived it off the books.
  Now, he took an oath to take care that the laws be faithfully 
executed. That is in the Constitution, and it's a requirement. He took 
the oath, he understands it, he taught constitutional law, but he 
simply set aside No Child Left Behind. It isn't the issue that I'm 
advocating here; it is that a President must take care that the laws be 
faithfully executed.
  Behind that, he suspended welfare to work. In the middle 1990s, there 
were three times that President Clinton vetoed the welfare reform law. 
He finally signed it and took credit for it--okay, that's politics--but 
one component of that was welfare to work. And only one of all of our 
more than 80 different means-tested welfare programs that we have, or a 
minimum of 80 different means-tested welfare programs that we have, of 
all of them, there's only one, Madam Speaker, that requires work. That 
one is the TANF program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. And 
it says in there that it specifically prohibits the President from 
suspending or waiving the work requirement. The President did so 
anyway.
  Sticking with this rule of law that has been so damaged by our 
President, it's also true with immigration law. The immigration law 
requires that people who are in violation of it be put into the process 
for deportation. The President has decided he won't do that. Now, it's 
one thing to have prosecutorial discretion. I agree that the executive 
branch has to be able to decide which highest priorities are there for 
the resources of law enforcement. But when the executive branch--the 
prosecutorial discretion is always on an individual basis, not on a 
group basis, not on a clear-the-board basis. But look what the 
President has done. He has issued a memorandum, actually a memorandum 
that was written by Secretary Napolitano of the Department of Homeland 
Security, that said that we're not going to enforce immigration law. So 
I'm here to endorse the rule of law and stand up and defend the 
Constitution. I appreciate your attention.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

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