[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12143-12147]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1730
                        A HISTORICAL ASSESSMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
King) for the remainder of the time as the designee of the majority 
leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from 
Arizona for that outstanding transition that he made here. I actually 
came down to chide him just a little bit.
  I was listening very closely to what he had to say, and it was very 
valuable, the comments on energy that we need and the direction this 
economy needs to go. I am going to restrain the chiding because of his 
outstanding transition that he made and, let you know, Mr. Speaker, 
that I came down here to address you and to talk with you a little bit 
about the things that are ahead for us in this Congress, the things 
that are ahead for us in this country.
  When our Founding Fathers shaped this country and wrote our 
declaration and filed our Constitution and got it ratified, it was an 
extraordinarily accomplishment, and those documents will live for the 
duration of civilization, and they will be in our memory, they will be 
in our heads, they will be in our hearts for the full duration of the 
time of civilization, whether it is succeeding civilizations thousands 
of years from now, they will look back on what happened here.
  When our Founding Fathers put together this republican form of 
government, which is guaranteed to us in article IV, section 4 of the 
Constitution, it also guaranteed protection from invasion.
  They set up the House of Representatives to have elections every 2 
years, so

[[Page 12144]]

that we could be the quick-reaction shock force. When the public could 
see that this country was going in the wrong direction, they wanted to 
make sure that the House could be restored and filled with people that 
came from all across the country--the Thirteen Original Colonies or the 
50 States that we are now and the territories that send representatives 
here--and that we could reverse an erroneous course that could be taken 
by a Congress going in the wrong direction.
  That is the reason for 2 years--elections every 2 years. The Senate 
was set up with elections every 6 years, so they didn't have to worry 
about reelection for a longer period of time, and they could take the 
longer view.
  Now, that was the theory or a philosophy that was generally untested, 
at least within the culture and the civilization of the time, and it 
has proven to be a fairly effective approach.
  We saw what happened here in 2010, when I will say an overexuberant, 
very liberal Democrat majority in the House and in the Senate, 
essentially a veto-proof majority in the Senate, by hook, crook, and 
legislative shenanigans, crammed ObamaCare down the throats of the 
American people.
  I remember those dramatic times. Tens of thousands of Americans came 
to Washington, D.C., from every single State, including Hawaii and 
Alaska, to protest what was happening to our God-given liberty and our 
right, our God-given right to manage our health, our skin, and 
everything inside it.
  Well, it was still crammed down the throats of the American people, 
that policy called ObamaCare. The real name for it is the Patient 
Protection and Affordable Care Act--the Patient Protection and 
Affordable Care Act.
  I know. If I would say that about six times and you are having 
trouble going to sleep, Mr. Speaker, that would put you to sleep. It is 
a substitute for Ambien, to say Patient Protection and Affordable Care 
Act.
  Democrats finally recognized that, and they changed the name and 
their verbiage that they use. They said, oh, it is offensive to say 
ObamaCare; and then they realized that the President is the one that 
coined the term ``ObamaCare.''
  He did so on February 25 of 2009 at the Blair House, in that big 
square seating when they had a conference on health care, and he acted 
like a professor and interrupted Republicans 72 times that day, but he 
used the phrase ``ObamaCare.''
  Now, when we use it, they said that is pejorative. Don't use that 
because it identifies what it really is, it is a health care system 
that is socialized medicine. It is a government takeover of our bodies, 
our skin, and everything inside it; yet when the President used 
ObamaCare, then some of the Democrats decided: we will embrace the word 
``ObamaCare.''
  They did for a while, and they realized that they were adding fuel to 
the fire of the rejection of ObamaCare, and they decided, well, let's 
find another way we can name this thing.
  So then they insisted that you weren't nice and you weren't polite 
and it was inappropriate if we didn't use its official name, which they 
would liked to have changed to the Affordable Care Act, not the Patient 
Protection and Affordable Care Act, but the Affordable Care Act.
  Now, I get to this because I am thinking about our Founding Fathers 
and George Washington, who could not tell a lie. So I asked myself the 
question--this policy that is going to cost over $1 trillion extra for 
ObamaCare that was promised it was going to cut our premiums, per 
household, by $2,500 a year, and if you like your doctor, you could 
keep your doctor, if you like your policy, you get to keep your policy, 
those promises weren't true.
  The big promises of ObamaCare weren't true, and many things that were 
not advertised as highly as that didn't come true either.
  So now they want to say Affordable Care Act. George Washington could 
not utter those words, Mr. Speaker, because George Washington could not 
tell a lie. That is why he confessed to chopping down the cherry tree.
  I am not certain that the stump exists out there at Mount Vernon yet, 
but I am convinced that George Washington couldn't say the term 
``affordable care act'' in reference to ObamaCare because it is not an 
accurate term. It is a dishonest term. It is not affordable, and it is 
less care.
  Maybe it is an act, Mr. Speaker, so that is my commentary on going 
down that path with our Founding Fathers.
  They also had this vision and they hoped that--and they had a long-
term vision. It was a wonderful long-term vision of what kind of a 
country you could build if you just laid down God-given liberties, 
timeless principles, and laid out the pillars of American 
exceptionalism, articulate them, sell them to the American people, get 
them to support your Declaration of Independence, get them committed to 
doing what they knew they had to do, fight a war against King George.
  They had to go through the winter at Valley Forge, and they had to a 
march up and down the coastline and in the interior part of the United 
States, at least the Thirteen Colonies, and take on the redcoats 
wherever they where. They won that Revolutionary War, learned some 
lessons from that about how you field the Continental Army.
  You have to have a Commander in Chief, and you have to have a 
centralized government if you are going to defend yourself against the 
global powers of the world. They set up a Constitution to do that.
  They envisioned and anticipated a lot of things in this Constitution, 
one of them was a means to amend it, and they believed that the 
President of the United States would be a man of honor who would give 
his oath of office, and they wrote his oath of office into the 
Constitution, to ensure that the nobility, the integrity, the 
statesmanship, the character that was part of the culture at the time 
would flow forth forever, or as long as the United States might exist, 
through our Presidents.
  I noted the 210th anniversary of the duel that took place between 
three-time Vice President Aaron Burr and the Secretary of the Treasury, 
Alexander Hamilton. It was just last week--about a week ago.
  They met on an island, and they shot it out. They fought to the 
death. It turned out to be the death of Alexander Hamilton because 
Hamilton had insulted the integrity of Aaron Burr.
  Aaron Burr would defend his integrity, and Alexander Hamilton would 
not retract his allegations, so the two of them met in a duel. Think of 
that, that their word was so important, their integrity was so 
important that the two of them faced each other with dueling pistols, 
knowing that one of them was likely to die in that duel, all over their 
word.
  They had already by then written into the Constitution for the oath 
of the President of the United States and ratified. I do solemnly swear 
to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United, 
States--later on added--and to protect against all enemies foreign and 
domestic--and later on added--so help me God.
  In the Constitution is--they call it the Take Care Clause in the 
Constitution, and the President shall take care that the laws be 
faithfully executed. It is not actually the oath, but it is a component 
of the oath.
  I don't want to say the word ``implied.'' It is specific in the 
Constitution that the President shall take care that the laws be 
faithfully executed, Mr. Speaker.
  So we had men of honor, statesmen, men of dignity, men of an 
attitude, that their word and their integrity was more important to 
them than their very life itself.
  When they wrote the oath for the President to take into the 
Constitution and when they wrote in the Constitution that the President 
shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, they never 
imagined that we would have a President who didn't have that same 
sense, didn't have that same sense of nobility, that sense of 
integrity, that sense of statesmanship.
  They never imagined that we would have a President that didn't think 
his word was worth more than his life itself.
  We come to this place in time and history, Mr. Speaker, Alexander 
Hamilton went to his grave over a principle like that, and Aaron Burr 
lost his political career because he sent Alexander Hamilton to his 
grave over that

[[Page 12145]]

principle of your word is your bond, and when you get to a challenge 
like that, your word is more important than your life itself.
  Now, we are at a place where a President gives his oath of office to 
take care that the laws be faithfully executed and, instead, simply 
executes the law itself, wipes it out, ignores it, immigration law, in 
particular, Mr. Speaker, where the President, with his Deferred Action 
for Childhood Arrivals, the DACA program--DACA, which really stands for 
deferred action for criminal aliens, that policy and a number of other 
policies where the President has announced that he is going to ignore 
the law--and he constantly hides behind this phrase: prosecutorial 
discretion.
  He says he has prosecutorial discretion to decide not to enforce the 
law against people that are breaking it.
  Now, he has a prosecutorial discretion, Mr. Speaker, but it is on an 
individual basis only, and his lawyers knew that. That is why when they 
wrote the DACA memos--well, we call them the Morton Memos--when they 
were written, and we had Janet Napolitano, then the Secretary of 
Homeland Security, testifying before the Judiciary Committee, and I 
announced to her, if you go forward with this, you will be in court, 
and you will be sued because the President of the United States' job is 
to stick with his article II authority, and that is to take care that 
the laws be faithfully executed.
  He is the Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces, and he is to take 
care that the laws be faithfully executed. This is a limited 
government, but all legislative powers belong here in this Congress. 
That is article I, all legislative powers.
  The President doesn't get to write the laws. He is compelled to take 
care that the laws be faithfully executed. That is his constitutional 
obligation.
  Instead, the President has said, well, I don't like these immigration 
laws. If a law requires our immigration authorities, ICE--Immigration 
and Customs Enforcement--when they encounter someone who is unlawfully 
present in the United States, the law requires that they place them 
into removal proceedings. That is the law.
  The President has issued an order that says to ICE, thou shalt break 
that law and never apply the law to remove people from the United 
States who are here unlawfully, unless they have committed a felony or 
three mysterious misdemeanors that are vaguely identified.
  I don't know that they actually have ever executed that particular 
provision, although I would say it is likely that they have, Mr. 
Speaker, in all fairness.
  So the President has created four different classes of people with 
his Morton Memos and his DACA language, and by grouping people into 
classes of people, he has got a number of those who he has exempted 
from the law, some number approaching 600,000 people who came into the 
United States or were in the United States illegally, who are exempted 
from the very application of the law that requires our law enforcement 
officers, particularly ICE, to place them into removal proceedings. 
That is what the President has done.
  So he sent the message out, as far as back as 3 years ago, in 
midsummer--actually, June--sent the message out to everybody in the 
world, if you can get into America, and you don't commit a felony--and 
that is a little bit of a shorthand for the technicalities--then you 
get to stay.
  He has acted upon that. He has executed that all right. He has 
executed his executive edict, but he hasn't taken care that the law 
itself be faithfully executed. He has defied the law, and his oath is 
to uphold the law, to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
  Now, I have to put into the list the pillars of American 
exceptionalism, so we are thinking about it, Mr. Speaker. What makes 
America the unchallenged greatest nation in the world, and it is the 
composition of the pillars of American exceptionalism, and you find 
most of them in the Bill of Rights, freedom of speech, religion and 
assembly, and the right to keep and bear arms, and no double jeopardy, 
the property rights in the Fifth Amendment. You get to face a jury of 
your peers, quick and speedy trial.
  The Ninth and 10th Amendments devolve the powers not granted 
specifically in the enumeration in the Constitution to the Federal 
Government devolve to the States or, respectively, to the people.
  Those are many of the pillars of American exceptionalism, but there 
are others. We have a free enterprise economy, the ability to invest 
capital and sweat equity, and buy, sell, trade, make gain and get rich 
if you can, and we like to cheer you when you do because it helps all 
of us when that happens.
  Free enterprise economy is another pillar of American exceptionalism, 
along with the root of this culture and civilization being in Judeo-
Christianity, the work ethic that came from it, the values system that 
allowed that work to be prosperous and profitable and trustworthy, so 
that we could do business with people in a way that we didn't have to 
always be checking up on them because we knew that God is looking over 
our shoulder.
  That is shorthand for one of the reasons why this is such a great 
country.

                              {time}  1745

  Another one would be when the Statue of Liberty went up. The image 
and the inspiration of that statue said to the world that if you can 
come here, to America legally, you can achieve all that you are capable 
of achieving. All of the things that you might imagine that you are 
capable of achieving anywhere in the world, you can achieve in America 
because you have all of these other rights. And these rights aren't 
rights that the government confers upon you.
  As in every other country in the world, the government confers any 
rights you might have. These are God-given rights, and God has given 
them to us. And our Founding Fathers articulated that and put that down 
on the parchment, and we have fought and defended it all of our years.
  So if our rights came from government, government could take them 
away. The reason that they can't take them away is because they are 
God-given. And the inspiration comes from all of these pillars of 
American exceptionalism, which send that message and beam it across the 
world in National Geographic magazines that show up everywhere around 
the world or in encyclopedias or through cyberspace today--that picture 
of the Statue of Liberty, of the Washington Monument, of the Lincoln 
Memorial, of the United States Capitol, the White House itself. 
American success across the world and all of the places where it has 
been, this record of achievement, this record of sacrifice of Americans 
to expand the nobility of the human race everywhere around the world 
has inspired people in every country.
  And the people that came here, Mr. Speaker, were inspired by that 
image and those ideas and those ideals. So we didn't just get a random 
selection of people that came to America legally. We got the cream of 
the crop. We got the vigor of the planet.
  If there were 10 siblings in a family and only one of them had enough 
inspiration to find a way to come legally to the United States of 
America, we got the superachiever. We got the can-do. We got the cream 
of the crop. We got the vigor of the planet from every donor nation on 
the planet to come to America because they were attracted to the God-
given liberty that was established here. They came here, they achieved, 
and they embraced those principles. And America embraced them.
  And in each generation from that, we taught our children the same 
thing. So it has descended down through the generations, and it has 
brought in more, and America has gotten stronger.
  But we are not a stronger nation if we erode those pillars of 
American exceptionalism. We are not a stronger nation if we lose faith 
with those things that have been the core of the success of this 
country. And we can't be sacrificing the pillars of American 
exceptionalism for the sake of having our hearts overrule our heads.

[[Page 12146]]

  Our Founding Fathers didn't let that happen. The principles that came 
through from the work that they did, the God-given rights and liberties 
that are there, they are timeless. And they index into human nature, 
all of human nature, but they are embodied here.
  And, by the way, one of the other things I left out of that, another 
reason for American exceptionalism is that all of that settlement 
arrived here. And a lot of it, it arrived here on a continent with--at 
the time, at least, unlimited natural resources. And at the dawn of the 
industrial revolution, we settled this continent from sea to shining 
sea.
  And here we are today, Mr. Speaker, with a President who wouldn't 
agree with what I have just said. I mean, if he had the time or took 
the time, he would seek to rebut the principles that I have laid out. 
And he would say, instead, well, let's see. We really don't need to 
have borders in America. We don't have to have that. There is no reason 
for America to be as successful as we are. We are using a 
disproportionate share of the planet's resources. We are pumping 
CO2 into our atmosphere. That is turning the Earth's 
thermostat up, even though for 17 years there is not any evidence of 
that happening.
  And we have watched as he has diminished America. He has diminished 
it in foreign policy. He has diminished it economically. He has 
diminished it socially and culturally. And today we are watching as he 
has established this policy of amnesty. He is pushing hard for the 
Senate Gang of Eight bill.
  The Senate Gang of Eight bill is a matter of record, Mr. Speaker. It 
is instantaneous amnesty for the people that are here illegally, 
whether they overstayed their visas 40 percent or whether they came 
across the border illegally 60 percent. Or it is instantaneous amnesty 
for them.
  For anyone that would come into America in the future, it is silent, 
which means it is an unspoken promise that if you can get here--we 
haven't demonstrated the will to enforce the law if you came here. So 
if you come here, why would anybody think that we enforce a law on 
anybody that would come here after a Senate Gang of Eight bill might 
potentially become law?
  And, to add insult to injury, they sent an invitation out to the 
people that have been sent back to their home country. It is what I 
call the ``well, we really didn't mean it'' clause. And that means that 
anybody that has been deported in the past is sent an invitation saying 
reapply; we really didn't mean it. That is how bad this is.
  And this gaping hole that we have in our border in the McAllen sector 
of the Texas border, where we now have 57,000 unaccompanied children 
who have come into the United States--many of them hustled across 2,500 
miles or more from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala through Mexico, and 
there is a significant number yet from Mexico coming into the United 
States--these unaccompanied minors are hauled up here by coyotes who 
may live in those communities and recruit these kids.
  All of this is going on. And we have a President who says: I need 
$3.7 billion to expand the bureaucracy to maybe buy a hotel to put them 
in and move them across the country and infuse them into our 
communities.
  People that are unlawfully present in the United States simply say: I 
am an unaccompanied minor, and I have been promised that if I can get 
into America, I get to stay in America. 57,000 of them, Mr. Speaker. 
And what percentage of the unaccompanied minors have been sent back to 
their home country? 0.1 percent. One-tenth of 1 percent.
  They sent Joe Biden down to Guatemala. He landed in Panama and then 
went to Guatemala. He said that he went down there to send a message 
which is that we are going to send your kids back. Don't send them 
here. Well, if there is no record of that, then they know it is not 
happening.
  So think of the difference. If we would take a military airplane and 
put a couple hundred unaccompanied Guatemalan minors on it, for 
example, send that plane down the runway and up into the air, if the 
President picked up the phone and called the President of Guatemala and 
said: Be on the tarmac in 2 hours; you are going to have 200 of your 
kids that are going to arrive there, and you should greet them--that is 
what a leader does, sends them back. If you do that and do that and do 
that, eventually they will stop coming because they will know they are 
actually coming back, and they will know that their money is wasted. It 
is not happening.
  But this President is not going to secure this border, Mr. Speaker. 
He has demonstrated that. We have got 2\1/2\ more years of this 
President. And whatever we do in this Congress, we can't make him 
secure the border. We can't make him do it. The Congress doesn't have 
the authority to do that. There are only two constitutional provisions 
that can force the President to do anything, and we have tried them 
both within the last 15 years or so, and neither one of them have 
proven to be effective.
  Public opinion might push back hard enough. Well, they kind of are. 
But we cannot allow our border--especially right now, the Texas 
border--to be under invasion in the fashion that it is by the tens of 
thousands of unaccompanied minors who are, by the way, only 20 percent 
of the illegals coming in in that sector. And they are maybe stopping, 
at best, 25 percent of those that are trying to come across. So we have 
got a number that is up there over 1 million people that are attempting 
to cross into the United States, and 57,000 of those that we pick up on 
that are unaccompanied minor kids.
  The President will not secure the border. We should come to that 
conclusion. We have got 2\1/2\ years of open borders. Or we find a way 
to secure it, maybe even against the will of the President of the 
United States, because I don't know if he has got the will to block it 
if we do this.
  But who has the authority? I look around the whole country, and the 
people who have the authority to do so are the Governors of the border 
States.
  I have a resolution, Mr. Speaker, that I would like to introduce into 
the Record that says so. It calls upon the border Governors to call out 
their National Guard to secure the border, and it says that this House 
of Representatives will support the funding to do so. I call for that, 
Mr. Speaker. I urge us to pick this up and sign it. I am going to 
introduce it tomorrow. I would like to take it up real soon and send 
that resolution to the world, and I would appreciate your indulgence in 
doing so.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                              H. Res. ___

       Whereas, the crisis on the Southwest border is of such 
     significance that it demands national attention and urgent 
     action.
       Whereas, the President, the Secretary of Homeland Security, 
     and the Administration have enacted unconstitutional 
     policies, such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals 
     program and the Morton Memos, that have contributed 
     significantly to a massive increase in illegal immigration.
       Whereas, the President has not secured the border.
       Whereas, the President has failed to fulfill his 
     Constitutional obligation to protect each state against 
     invasion according to Article IV, Section 4.
       Whereas, states have specific authorities under Article I, 
     Section 10 when ``actually invaded, or in such imminent 
     Danger as will not admit of delay.''
       Whereas, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection 
     between October 1, 2013 and June 15, 2014, 52,193 
     unaccompanied children have been apprehended on the Southwest 
     border.
       Whereas, according to a June 3, 2014 Homeland Security 
     Intelligence report, only 0.1% of illegal alien, 
     unaccompanied minor children from non-contiguous countries 
     were removed in FY 2013.
       Whereas, the Secretary of Homeland Security expects 90,000 
     unaccompanied alien children to be interdicted by the U.S. 
     government while crossing the border in Fiscal Year 2014.
       Whereas, according to the Department of Homeland Security, 
     only twenty percent of those interdicted are and will be 
     children.
       Whereas, border security officials estimate the 
     interdiction ratio is twenty-five percent of those attempting 
     to cross the border.
       Whereas, according to border security official's testimony 
     before Congress, the likely number of illegal crossing 
     attempts is four times the number of those interdicted.
       Whereas, our Southern border is not secure, and this fact 
     represents an immediate danger to every citizen of the United 
     States of America.
       Whereas, the Governor of a state is the commander in chief 
     of the National Guard of that state.

[[Page 12147]]

       Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
       (1) recognizes, supports and defends the Constitutional 
     authority of any Governor to deploy his or her state's 
     National Guard division to secure the border;
       (2) commits to appropriating the necessary monies to 
     effectively support any such deployment of National Guard 
     troops; and
       (3) calls upon the Governors of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, 
     and California to deploy the National Guard forces under 
     their command to immediately gain effective control of our 
     southern border, to turn back anyone without legal 
     immigration status, and to ensure for the people of their 
     states and the United States a safe and free future.

                          ____________________