[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6223-6226]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM

  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. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the privilege 
of being recognized here on the floor of the United States House of 
Representatives and taking up the subject matter that I understand is 
going to begin this week with a markup in the United States Senate of a 
piece of legislation called Comprehensive Immigration Reform that has 
been advanced by the self-described Gang of Eight over in the Senate, 
four Democrats and four Republicans, a bill that they had dropped or 
introduced some couple of weeks ago, 844 pages all designed to solve 
the problem that we have here in the United States of illegal 
immigration and all the accommodations that have been made in efforts 
to, one, open our borders and open up our employment and open up our 
welfare systems and open up our public access to government services to 
people that are unlawfully present in the United States.

                              {time}  2130

  That's one side of the initiative. That's the Chuck Schumer side, Mr. 
Speaker. Then on the other side are those of us who, instead, argue 
that the rule of law has to count for something, that you can't be a 
nation unless you have borders, and if you don't determine what comes 
across those borders, then you can't call yourself a nation.
  I'd make the point that the most successful institution over the last 
couple of centuries has been the nation-state. Nation-states are formed 
around the lines of language and culture and national defense and 
civilization and economies. Language has been a primary component of it 
to which one can look at Western Europe, for example, and see where the 
lines are drawn around nation-states of common languages.
  But here we are in the United States. We're a different kind of a 
country. We are a Nation that has been benefited by the legal 
immigration that has come into this country from every donor 
civilization on the planet. Because of the magnet of the image of the 
promise of God-given liberty and freedom, people from all over the 
world have aspired to come to America to become an American, to take 
advantage of these opportunities of this God-given liberty in order to 
be able to start a business, to get a job, to save, to invest, and to 
establish and build the American Dream, the American Dream which is 
encompassed within this philosophy that each generation of Americans 
should have an opportunity greater than the previous generation's 
whether it's the whole generation of Americans in the current time or 
whether it is a generation of Americans growing up in a household of 
their generational predecessors--their parents. Each generation should 
have greater opportunity than the previous generation.
  That's why our Founding Fathers, our forefathers--our predecessors--
came here to this country. That's why they fought and defended God-
given liberty and the American civilization across the continents and 
across the planet: to defend our American way of life. The freedom that 
we have, the liberty that we have, the free enterprise capitalism, the 
strong faith and family values, the language that binds us together, 
all of those components come forth to create this assimilation concept. 
We are the Nation that has been built on--some say ``built by''--
immigrants. This is a Nation built by immigrants. True. This is a 
Nation of immigrants. True, Mr. Speaker. So is every other nation. 
Every other nation on the planet is a nation of immigrants--people have 
moved there; they've lived there; they've developed there; their 
children have been born there; and they built the nation that they're 
in.
  So we're not unique in the sense that we're a Nation of immigrants. 
We are unique in the sense that legal immigrants who come here can 
become American. They become American by embracing the American 
culture, American civilization, by understanding the Declaration of 
Independence, the Constitution, by understanding the English language, 
by partaking in free enterprise capitalism,

[[Page 6224]]

and by understanding that there is a uniqueness about being an American 
that gives us this vigor--this great vigor--that is an American vigor 
unique to the rest of the planet.
  It is because of the God-given liberties that we have, many of them 
in the Bill of Rights: freedom of speech, religion and the press, 
freedom to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for a 
redress of grievances; the Second Amendment: the right to keep and bear 
arms; property rights in the Fifth Amendment; the right to be faced by 
your accusers in a court of law and be tried by a jury of your peers 
and no double jeopardy; the concept of federalism where the power is 
not specifically delegated to the Congress or to the President or to 
the judicial branch but devolved to the States or to the people 
respectively. Those are all pillars of American exceptionalism that 
make us a great, great Nation.
  People around the world have seen that, and they've seen this 
American vigor and the magnet of the image. These concepts are all 
wrapped up in the image of the Statue of Liberty. Around the world, 
when people see the Statue of Liberty, they think, Well, that would be 
nice to live in a country like that or they think, I have to go there. 
I have to go there and find out what I'm made of. I think that I can 
develop and realize my potential in a place like America better than 
anyplace else in the world.
  If you put out a beacon like that, if you put out the beacon of the 
Statue of Liberty and if that penetrates into countries all over the 
world, whether it be in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, across Asia, 
down through the Latin area, through the Middle East, to South America 
for that matter, to every continent on the planet, including Australia, 
but probably not so much Antarctica, people have come to America 
because they've wanted to realize their dreams within that rubric of 
the American Dream.
  That's what makes this a special country, and that's why America 
could engage in global conflicts as far back as 1898 in the Spanish-
American War, which took us over to the Philippines, or why America 
could engage in a conflict like World War I, when we went over to save 
as much as we could--and succeeded to a great degree--of Europe from 
the heavy hand of the Kaiser at a cost of a lot of American lives--of a 
lot of lives, let me say, on the western side of that line--and freedom 
was preserved again for another generation until World War II came 
along.
  This was another challenge, and Americans rose up and met that 
challenge on two fronts. One of the pieces of wisdom about strategic 
warfighting is don't fight a two-front war. Well, America had to fight 
a two-front war in World War II. We had to fight our way back against 
Japanese imperialism across the Pacific, and we had to go to Europe and 
fight against the Nazis in World War II. That all happened 
simultaneously. Fighting a two-front war didn't work out so well for 
Hitler, but it did work out well for the United States--at a high 
price, but it worked out.
  Because of that, the American influence washed across the globe, and 
the United States had the only major undestroyed industry in the world. 
Our dollar became the method of currency for the globe. American 
industry penetrated into every corner of the globe, and American know-
how and ingenuity was established across this planet. That's because of 
those pillars of American exceptionalism that I talked about, and it's 
because of the American spirit of ingenuity, that spirit of ingenuity, 
which is a beneficiary of those willing legal immigrants who came here 
because they realized that they could achieve their dreams better here 
than anywhere else.
  So the magnet of the American Dream has attracted the best and most 
vigorous people on the planet to come here. That's the America I was 
born into, and that's the America that those of us who were born here 
inherited. Many immigrants have come since that period of time to 
contribute to this American Dream and to help redefine this American 
Dream and to make us stronger and make us better.
  Now we've reached a time when the political thought in America seems 
to have lost its touch with rationality. We've watched as there has 
been a stronger movement on the part of the political machinery of the 
left, and we elected a President of the United States in 2008 that said 
to Joe, the plumber, Share the wealth. Share the wealth. You're making 
money. Give some of that to the guy that's not--not realizing that Joe, 
the plumber, needed all that he could earn and that he needed more 
opportunity than that, not less; thinking that the now President of the 
United States apparently believes, if you're in business, if you've 
invested some capital or some sweat equity or both, that somehow you're 
capitalizing on your customers who are viewed, I believe, by the White 
House as victims of that free enterprise system and that somehow you 
have achieved your success unjustly. The implication is that the 
entrepreneurs have collected the proceeds of the sweat of somebody 
else's brow rather than their own, have collected the proceeds of the 
sweat of somebody else's sweat equity, brain equity, creativity, 
innovation, work ethic rather than their own.
  Truthfully, Mr. Speaker, any of us has the opportunity in this 
country to generate an idea. We have the opportunity to start a 
business. We have an opportunity to hire people to help us with that 
business, and we have an opportunity to buy, sell, trade, make, gain, 
and earn profit. The beauty of a free enterprise system is that, if 
someone is making too large of a margin, if their profits are 
excessive, we should have plenty of entrepreneurs who will see that as 
an opportunity and will generate a competing business that will go into 
that marketplace where there is a margin of profit that is high enough 
to attract that kind of investment, and they would take part of that 
profit out, and each one of those competitors that would materialize 
within that marketplace, the competition, would eventually take those 
prices down so that the profit margins of the entities that are making 
a lot of money would be reduced, not eliminated. We want them all to 
make money, but at the same time, the consumers benefit because the 
competition drives the prices down.

                              {time}  2140

  That's the concept of free enterprise. That's the concept of free 
enterprise capitalism. That's what Adam Smith wrote about so accurately 
and so succinctly when he wrote ``The Wealth of Nations'' and published 
it in 1776. It has been a foundation of American thought and the 
American Dream. It has been a foundation of American enterprise and the 
foundation of America's economic system. And if one is taking the 
naturalization test and the question comes--there are little glossy 
flashcards on how you study this that USCIS puts out, U.S. Citizenship 
and Immigration Services. You can pick it up and it will say, ``Who is 
the Father of our country?'' The answer is: George Washington. ``Who 
emancipated the slaves?'' The answer is Republican, Abraham Lincoln. 
That's just a little reminder there, Mr. Speaker, for the 10 percent or 
12 percent of this population that seem to forget that.
  Another question: ``What's the economic system of the United 
States?'' You snap that flashcard around and it says, ``free enterprise 
capitalism.'' That's the foundation of our economy.
  This economy has attracted people from all over the globe, and I 
recall that Professor Milton Friedman, one of the most respected 
economists in the history of not only the world, but the United States 
of America, a professor at the University of Chicago, a very well 
respected institution, made this statement:

       An open borders policy is not compatible with a welfare 
     State.

  Here we are, Mr. Speaker, and we live in a welfare State, and we have 
an open borders policy. The welfare State and the open borders policy 
are being promoted, pushed and advocated by the President of the United 
States. The President who has--even though there was a minor little 
change made to welfare reform here on the floor of this Chamber in the 
mid-nineties. When the

[[Page 6225]]

Republicans took the majority in 1994, the welfare reform came in 1995 
or 1996, one of those 2 years, Bill Clinton, the President, at least 
twice vetoed welfare reform. ``Welfare to work'' was the mantra of the 
day.
  There was only one component of welfare to work that actually was 
welfare to work. There are over 80 different means-tested Federal 
welfare programs in the United States today. There is not a single 
person in America that can list you those welfare programs from memory, 
which should be a pretty strong indicator there's not a single person 
in the United States that could also tell you how those 80 different 
means-tested welfare programs will affect the way people act, whether 
it encourages them to go to work or encourages them to quit their job; 
whether it encourages them to get married or whether it encourages them 
to get a divorce; whether it encourages them to raise the children 
within the home, or whether it encourages them to not kick them out on 
the street, or horribly, potentially, get an abortion.
  How do all of these 80 different means-tested welfare programs 
interact with each other and what is the net result of which direction 
our society goes? Let alone the question on each precious individual. 
How do they act and react towards all these programs that are here? 
This is America. The huge magnet of the welfare state is attracting 
people to come to the United States to tap into the welfare system much 
differently than back in the day when people came here to have access 
to God-given liberty, that vision within the Statue of Liberty that 
just said to them, Come here. You can work. You can earn. You can save. 
You can invest. You can buy, sell, trade, make gain, and you can make 
do and you can make profit and you can make a fortune in the United 
States of America.
  That message is now clouded. Sure, there's opportunity here, but the 
taxes and the regulations are higher, higher than they've been in a 
long time. And the taxes and regulation drain the energy off of the 
entrepreneurs at the same time that the welfare state is regulating and 
attracting people off of the work rolls onto the welfare rolls.
  Years ago, Steve Moore, who is now one of the public commenters and a 
much published author--you'll see him on television a good number of 
times. He was with The Cato Institute at the time, I believe, and he 
was a founder and an original executive director of the Club for 
Growth. He said in words pretty close to this: People will do what you 
pay them to do.
  If you pay them not to work, they won't work. If you pay them to stay 
home, they'll stay home. If you pay them if there's not a father in the 
home, there at least officially will not be a father in the home, 
although you'll have visitation going on, and you'll have more 
children. If you pay for them to have children at home without a 
father, that's what they will do. It's a logical thing for people to 
react to the negative incentives that come from government.
  So with that foundation, Mr. Speaker, it was interesting for me to 
pick up the executive summary of the special report dated May 6, 2013. 
It's the Heritage Foundation report written by Robert Rector and Jason 
Richwine, Ph.D., and it's titled, ``The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful 
Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer.'' Well, this may be the 
third time that Robert Rector and the people he's worked with will have 
saved America from a disaster.
  Robert Rector was a central player in writing the language of 
``welfare to work'' back in 1995 and 1996. He wrote it very tight, and 
he wrote it in such a way that it prohibited the President of the 
United States from suspending the work component of TANF, the Temporary 
Assistance for Needy Families. The only component out of the 80 
different means-tested programs that had actually required work, they 
made sure that an executive that wanted to give license to people to 
use the program but not follow the directive of Congress, the law, 
would be taken away, and that the President couldn't just simply by 
whim or executive order or edict violate the law and eliminate the work 
component to TANF, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
  But look what President Obama has done by his executive edict: he's 
suspended the only work component that existed that was in one of the 
80 different means-tested Federal welfare programs, TANF, in violation 
directly of the specific statute that was written then.
  Now, Robert Rector came back to us again in 2006 or so and wrote 
another report, and that's the report that told us about the cost of 
illegal immigration and what it meant to our society and our culture 
and our civilization. I believe that that report was instrumental in 
America waking up and coming to an understanding that there was a lot 
bigger equation than the simple buzz words of ``we have to bring them 
out of the shadows, but what are you going to do about the 11 or 12 
million that are here?'' It's curious to me that number hasn't changed 
except has dropped by a million since 2006.
  When I came to this Congress, I thought that the number of illegals 
in America was someplace in the neighborhood of 20 million, the 
judgement of those that we knew were here, plus a calculation of those 
that we knew were coming here, minus those that were going back home 
and those that are deceased. That came to a number that I thought 
approached 20 million people or more, and yet now we're hearing, in the 
time that I've been in Congress, more than a decade, 12 million 
illegals in America has now been reduced to 11 million illegals in 
America. All the while, the only thing that has changed in the dialogue 
of the left and the open borders people has been, Well, we can't 
deport--they used to say 12 million people. We can't line up all the 
buses and load up 12 million people. Now they've changed their 
dialogue.
  Remember the people that were advocating that we needed to do 
something about man-caused global warming? They've changed their phrase 
now to be ``man-caused,'' or else ``climate change.'' ``Global 
warming'' has become ``climate change.'' Twelve million people that 
couldn't be rounded up and put on buses now becomes 11 million people. 
What happened to that other million? Especially when we have a pretty 
good measure that they're coming across the border at a rate of 
something like 4 million a year. If that number has been reduced by 
half and maybe today it's 2 million people, that's still a lot of 
people. The cumulative effect of this population that's growing in the 
United States, it's not going down from 12 million; it has to be going 
up from 12 million. If it's not, we have a problem that's solving 
itself, Mr. Speaker. Yet, a pragmatic viewpoint is not going to be 
something that the people on the other side of this argument ascribe to 
because they have an agenda that's a little bit different than, I 
think, the practical application of what's good for the United States 
of America.

                              {time}  2150

  Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation in his report that came out 
today, May 6, 2013, lays out some of these points economically. I can 
talk about the cultural, the constitutional, the rule of law part, but 
he lays them out economically. He makes these points in this executive 
summary, that there are four different ways that federally funded 
benefits are distributed.
  One is in direct benefits. That's the form of Social Security, 
Medicare, unemployment insurance, and workers comp. That's the direct 
benefits component of it.
  The second one is the means-tested welfare benefits, the 80 different 
Federal means-tested welfare benefits. That totals around $900 billion 
a year in welfare. That provides cash for food, housing, medical, and 
other services. There's about 100 million people in the means-tested 
welfare system, and that could be Medicaid, food stamps, earned income 
tax credit, public housing, supplemental Social Security income, 
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. That's the one work component 
that I talked about; President Obama has removed the work requirement. 
Now it's just another welfare program.
  So there's two categories: direct benefits; the second category, 
means-tested welfare benefits.

[[Page 6226]]

  The third category, public education, which is costing an average of 
about $12,300 annually per pupil.
  And the fourth benefit is population-based services, which include 
fire services, police services, parks, and those kinds of things that 
it takes for people to have a way to live in this society.
  Of those four categories then, people use them, if they are legally 
here or illegally here, and often they will, the people who are here 
working here illegally will pay taxes. It's an honest thing. But 
they're also drawing down public benefits.
  So if I would draw some numbers off of the Rector report, Mr. 
Speaker, the average household of an illegal household will draw down 
$31,584 a year in public benefits. But if the household is headed by a 
college graduate, the difference is instead they will pay taxes and 
draw down some benefits, but they will have a net contribution of 
$29,250 a year. Look at the difference; it's $60,000-plus. The average 
dropout, a household headed by a high school dropout, without regard to 
their status, legal or illegal, they will have a net cost of $35,113 a 
year. They'll pay in taxes, and they'll draw down benefits, and the 
average net cost to the taxpayer is $35,113.
  The average illegal household, however, and the average has a 10th 
grade education, the average household headed by someone who is 
unlawfully present in the United States, there'll be a net cost to the 
taxpayer of $14,387. Now why is that so cheap? Well, it's because the 
law blocks access to many of these programs; and if and when they are 
legalized, they start to have access to these programs.
  Now it's true that if you look at the proposal of the 844-page bill 
delivered by the Gang of Eight, the average illegal household during 
the interim phase of the kick-in over the next 13 years, actually 
they'll tap into the government a little bit less, about $3,000 a year 
less than the $14,387. It'll be $11,455. That'll be the net cost per 
household. But once they are legalized, the average, I call it the 
post-interim household, will be drawing down a net cost of $28,000 a 
year, and the average retirement cost is going to be $22,700 a year.
  So the current law, under current law, illegal households are a net 
cost to the taxpayer today, under current law, of $54.5 billion a 
year--$54.5 billion a year. If we go into an interim phase, if the bill 
in the Senate is passed, then it's going to be an annual cost--it's 
less, remember I said--of $43.4 billion a year, and that's through that 
phase over the next 13 years. But after that, it legalizes a lot of 
people, around 33 million people according to NumbersUSA, and I'm not 
sure that's the number Rector is using, but it legalizes a lot more 
people, and they have access to a lot more public services, a lot more 
of that borrowed money from China that goes in to fund the welfare 
state that Milton Friedman talked about, and now after that interim 
phase, 13 years down the road, the post-interim phase, the net cost to 
the taxpayer--net--$106 billion a year. And into the retirement phase 
for the same generation of them, the net cost to the taxpayer is $160 
billion a year.
  So it boils down to this in the Heritage study that was released 
today, a lifetime summary, it's this: that those who are here today 
that are unlawfully present in the United States will be collecting 
$9.4 trillion over their lifetime. They will pay $3.1 trillion in 
taxes, and they'll have a net benefit of $6.3 trillion as far as the 
collections that they would have from the taxpayer.
  What nation in its right mind would go down a path like this and try 
to convince Americans that somehow this is an economic development 
situation?
  I go to page 3 of the executive summary, Mr. Speaker, and Robert 
Rector makes this point:

       At every stage of the life cycle, unlawful immigrants, on 
     average, generate fiscal deficits (benefits exceed taxes). 
     Unlawful immigrants, on average, are always tax consumers; 
     they never once generate a ``fiscal surplus'' that can be 
     used to pay for government benefits elsewhere in society. 
     This situation obviously will get much worse after amnesty.

  That, Mr. Speaker, is the bottom line on the Rector report. That's 
the economic analysis. I know that there is a competing analysis out 
there. I would submit that that competing analysis, which I've read, 
conflates the terms ``legal'' and ``illegal,'' and it calculates the 
economic benefit but not the full cost. This study is a study that has 
been through the mill before. The principles that it was founded upon 
have been analyzed before, have been tested before. And yes, there will 
be those who will seek to discredit this, but I would say to them, step 
back, take an objective look, and ask yourself the question: Even 
though you might believe that historically large numbers of legal 
immigrants coming into the United States have developed themselves 
economically and fit into the economic component of the United States, 
even though you might believe that--and I do believe that, Mr. Speaker. 
A hundred years ago, this country had a need for skilled and unskilled 
labor, an educated and uneducated workforce, but today it's a different 
world. Today it's a technological world. Today it requires an 
education. It requires technical skills.
  We have a completely adequate supply of low and unskilled workforce. 
In fact, we have an oversupply of low and unskilled workforce. In every 
category that shows the highest levels of unemployment, we also see 
that those with the highest levels of unemployment are in the lowest 
and unskilled workforce. This isn't 1900. This is 2013. America needs 
educated people, talented people, people who contribute to the economy 
and pay a net increase in taxes over their lifetime so this economy can 
grow; and to take on the load of funding people who would come here 
without skills and without prospects of those skills is a foolish thing 
to do from an economic perspective.
  There will be those who say maybe so, but the next generation will 
far surpass. This is a multigenerational investment, to which Robert 
Rector says, no; even if the second generation all graduated from 
college, if they all turned in this ability to have an average college 
surplus of $29,250, they still could not pay back the deficit of $6.3 
trillion. And all of them are not going to go to college. About 13 
percent will.
  So that's a quick summary of the Rector study. I appreciate your 
attention and the privilege to address you here on the floor.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________