[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12354-12360]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            LAMEDUCK SESSION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, 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 to be recognized to 
address you on the floor of the House of Representatives this evening, 
as we move toward a September session that perhaps gets concluded in a 
way that we go back to the November elections and, hopefully, we are 
bridged over any great big decisions that might come in a lameduck 
session.
  Something that I wanted to address to you, Mr. Speaker, is the 
circumstances of lameduck sessions. I look back on the history of them 
and it is hard for me to find happy conclusions that are drawn during 
lameduck sessions.
  I recall that Thomas Jefferson once made the statement that ``large 
initiatives should not be advanced on slender majorities.'' What he 
meant by that was, if you have a large initiative and it is going to 
move this country and it is going to stress a lot of people in this 
country, then, if you move that large initiative and its margins are 
essentially close to a jump ball, you are going to have almost half the 
people unhappy--maybe more than half the people who are unhappy.
  So that large initiative should not be advanced on a slender 
majority, because you get so much pushback, you don't get public buy-
in. If you have a large initiative, you need to have a public that 
embraces it; one that, hopefully, we can get to a supermajority on 
large initiatives, because then we go forward in lockstep in defending 
and promoting those decisions that were made by this country.
  Worse than advancing a large decision on a slender majority is 
pushing large decisions in lameduck sessions. The reality of it is, 
however long and nobly Members of the House and Members of the Senate 
have served and however long and nobly the President of the United 
States may have served, when they are leaving town after the election, 
for them to come back here after the November election and push large 
initiatives in a lameduck session, they are not held accountable for it 
any longer. You have the people that are retiring, those that we voted 
out of office, and a President who is term-limited altogether packaging 
things up and shoving them at us, the American people, sometime after 
November 8 and before Christmas, where we have cliffhangers that go on 
until Christmas Eve.
  I remember Christmas Eve in about 2009. In fact, it was 2009. The 
ObamaCare legislation was hanging in the balance in the United States 
Senate. There, I recall my communications with the esteemed gentleman 
who is now the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I said: 
Procedurally, you are down to the last piece here. This is the eve of 
Christmas Eve day, December 23.
  I had sent an email over, which often and almost immediately is 
responded to by my senior Senator, and I said: Procedurally, you are 
going to hold ObamaCare until 9 o'clock tomorrow night on Christmas 
Eve. But it looks like the question is: Will the ObamaCare legislation 
be brought before the Senate before--earlier in the morning on the 
24th--so that everybody can catch their plane and fly back home and get 
home in time for Christmas?
  The price for sacrificing God-given American liberty to move a 
leftist agenda, Mr. Speaker, was what was going on over in the Senate. 
They brought this leverage right up until Christmas Eve day. But the 
deal was they had a couple of judicial appointments that they wanted to 
get in a vote on, as I understood, that could come along in January, as 
a promise that they allowed the ObamaCare legislation to be voted on 
before 9 o'clock on December 24, Christmas Eve day.
  That agreement was reached and the Senate conferenced in some 
negotiated fashion or another and the last delay that was hanging onto 
God-given American liberty in the face of ObamaCare's hook, crook, and 
legislative shenanigans, which they used to pass that through the House 
and Senate--in components, by the way--the last one was removed and 
they allowed that vote earlier in the day so the Senators could get to 
the airport, get on a plane, fly home, and be with their families on 
Christmas Eve.
  I said: If you are going to take away a God-given American liberty, 
then make them pay that price. Hold that vote up until 9 o'clock on 
Christmas Eve. Let them stay in Washington, D.C., on Christmas Eve. If 
they love their socialized medicine that much, let them pay that price 
of being away from their families to impose that on the American 
people.
  But that wasn't the agreement. So I sent the email back, which said: 
What are we going to do now?
  The answer I received was: We are going to pray. We are going to pray 
for a legislative victory in the special election in the Senate race in 
Massachusetts. Scott Brown.
  I thought that was a bit of a reach, to have the audacity to ask for 
that. We ended up with that. Scott Brown, for a time, did delay the 
socialized medicine program that we call ObamaCare. George Washington 
could not have called it the Affordable Care Act because George 
Washington could not tell a lie. It is not the Affordable Care Act.
  It came upon us in a lameduck session. Probably the worst example of 
a lameduck session that we have seen. Well, at least it was a December 
session rather than a lameduck session because it technically was not 
an election year.
  Now we are sitting in an election year. We will elect a new 
President. By the time the sun comes on the morning of November 9, odds 
are we will know clearly who the next President of the United States is 
going to be. We will probably have a good idea that evening before we 
go to bed. Maybe the polls will give us a strong indication going into 
that day and the exit polls during the day will be released as the 
polls close and give us a sense of how this thing breaks across the 
country.
  It is an exciting time. Whether the next President of the United 
States is going to be Hillary Clinton or whether it is going to be 
Donald Trump is a question that no one at this point knows. Now, this 
Congress will take conclusive acts predicated upon a presumption of one 
or the other, or, acting as if they don't have any consideration for 
who will be the next President and asking that those decisions be made, 
supported, ratified by people who are going home, retired by their own 
choice, retired by the voters, or retired, in the case of Barack Obama, 
by term limits.
  So what good could possibly happen in a lameduck session on large 
decisions that might bring forward--and I am not going down through the 
list, Mr. Speaker, because if I do that, that

[[Page 12355]]

will add to the level of expectation on what might come.
  It is wrong for this Congress to make large decisions, especially on 
slender majorities, and it is wrong for this Congress to make decisions 
that are predicated by a presumption of who will be the next President 
of the United States. And it is really wrong to come into this Congress 
and make big decisions in here while people are on the way out the 
door; deciding votes while they are on the way out the door to go home 
for their retirement, whether it is by choice, whether it is by the 
voters, or by constitutional term limit, whatever the case may be. That 
lameduck session should be used only to do that which couldn't be 
accomplished before the election and that which must be done before the 
new Congress is sworn in in the first week of January 2017.
  We have that period of time. We can prepare for that. But it looks to 
me like there are some people in this Congress who are salivating over 
the idea of being able to exercise more leverage by moving an agenda 
through in a lameduck session that will be at the disadvantage of the 
will of the voters.
  If you can't put that up here on the floor for a vote in the House of 
Representatives between now and November 8; if you can't sell it to the 
America people, Democrats and Republicans; if you can't get the support 
of one of the likely next Presidents of the United States, then who are 
we to impose it on the American people now?
  By the way, who is the current President, Barack Obama, to be 
negotiating and leveraging and reaching legislative agreements with the 
House of Representatives and the Senate today on legislation that would 
not be signed by the next President and legislation that can't be 
subjected to the light of day prior to the election?
  Lameduck sessions that move large initiatives are wrong. Lameduck 
sessions that take care of emergency issues are okay. The public will 
know the difference between the two.
  This is just a component of the discussions that we will have the 
rest of this month of September, Mr. Speaker, and, hopefully, the 
American people will have all the way up until November 8 and beyond.
  I want the American people to be well informed. We owe the American 
people--every one of us, all 435 of here in the House of 
Representatives--everyone around this Chamber here tonight and everyone 
who is watching on C-SPAN, Mr. Speaker, our best efforts and our best 
judgment, and that judgment should not be something that can't be 
subjected to theirs. The American people need to agree with the 
judgment of the United States Congress.
  So I look at the issues that are unfolding here and that we will be 
taking up perhaps in the month of September, but also issues that have 
been seminal issues all along, throughout the Obama Presidency and 
prior to that and all the time I have been in this Congress, and I am 
seeing the pressure come forward to make a decision on a continuing 
resolution. We have to make a decision on a continuing resolution--a 
CR, as we refer to it here.
  I would like to have seen this Congress go through regular order. I 
would have been very happy to go back to the times that I remember when 
we had 12 appropriations bill, perhaps a supplemental appropriations 
bill--maybe 13, at the most--and we would see that our Appropriations 
subcommittees would do their work and the Appropriations Committee 
would do its work. And then the appropriations bill would come to the 
floor. They would come to the floor within the Budget Committee's 
resolution and the House's vote on a full resolution of the budget.
  Once that budget comes down, the Appropriations Committee goes to 
work and they look and see what their allocation is allowed in the 
budget resolution and they move the appropriations bills within that. 
Then the appropriations bills, Mr. Speaker, come to this floor under an 
open rule. I don't care if it takes all night for us to debate 
appropriations bills. If you don't care enough to stay up all night to 
offer your amendment, then just don't offer your amendment. Let 
somebody that cares more do that and have that floor. But Democrats and 
Republicans should be allowed to and have the opportunity to weigh in 
on every spending bill that we have.

                              {time}  1930

  And sometimes through the appropriations process is the only way that 
we end up with an open rule that allows a Member to bring the will of 
their constituents to the floor of the House of Representatives. 
Otherwise, the Rules Committee constrains that on policy bill after 
policy bill, standing bill after standing bill.
  The appropriations process is our opportunity to reflect the voice 
and the will of the American people. And when that is subverted, when 
that is circumvented, when we get to a place where we don't have the 
regular appropriations process that is going on, then we end up with 
leadership negotiating a continuing resolution or an omnibus spending 
bill or a minibus spending bill that is packaged up in a room 
somewhere, not out in the open, but it doesn't have the opportunity to 
be amended in the process by the will of the Membership.
  The more that process is narrowed down, and when a Member of Congress 
is required to go up to the Rules Committee and subject themselves to 
what can be a less than complimentary scenario of pleading with the 
Rules Committee for them to allow you to amend a spending bill up or 
down, or strike a spending line in there, or eliminate some policy, all 
within the rules that are there, why does a Member of the United States 
Congress whose constituents deserve every bit as much representation as 
the constituents of the leadership, or the constituents of the members 
of the Rules Committee, Democrat and Republicans, why does that Member 
of Congress have to go up and make that request to have an opportunity 
to make their argument to ask this floor to vote on an issue that funds 
or defunds policy? When we get to that point, the voice of the people, 
Mr. Speaker, is muted, and the will of the people, then, when it is 
muted, the will of the people is not carried out.
  I am all for open debate here on the floor of the House of 
Representatives. I am for open debate in committees. Let's have a 
verbal donnybrook here. Over time, it sorts itself out, and the will of 
the people is designed to bring itself forward here in the United 
States Congress.
  I would suggest also that, from a leadership perspective, anybody 
that holds a gavel, and whether that is the Speaker's gavel, Mr. 
Speaker, or whether it is a gavel of a committee or a subcommittee, 
wherever that might be, the job of that leader--chairman, usually--is 
to bring out the will of the group, not to impose their will on the 
group, but to bring out the will of the group.
  So when I see this discussion that comes forward here in this 
Congress that contemplates a CR, a continuing resolution, of roughly 90 
days or so that funds our Federal Government out till December 9, I 
look at the calendar, December 9, and I think, okay, that is just about 
how long it is going to take for them to bring pressure on people that 
are reluctant to agree with the CR that will come then, because people 
will want to go home for Christmas, just like they did when ObamaCare 
was passed over in the United States Senate. That is what we are 
looking at. December 9, tight little time there. Get done, compromise, 
go home for Christmas. That is what that says to me.
  I would say, instead, I am all right with a CR. I am all right with a 
continuing resolution. No, I don't want to fund any of the President's 
unconstitutional executive amnesty acts, and I don't want to fund 
Planned Parenthood. There are a number of things I don't want to fund.
  But as far as the decision to move the funding of this Federal 
Government from midnight December 30 to a date in the future, I would 
suggest that that date be January 31, probably not any later than 
February 28, because we need to get that, bridge that funding over into 
the next Congress for the next President, whomever that might be.

[[Page 12356]]

  It is time to do this transition and move this government to the next 
Congress, to the next--hopefully, it is the same majority. It may not 
be in the House. Hopefully, it is the same majority in the United 
States Senate. It may not be in the Senate.
  The next President will be a different President, and the will of the 
President does itself upon the will of this Congress. We have been very 
much subjected to that over the last almost 8 years, Mr. Speaker.
  It has been an object of clarity that when the House majority has 
decided not to fund, let's just say, at least one of the President's 
projects and the President has said, I will shut this government down 
first before I will be denied the funding for my pet projects, in the 
end, the majority in the House of Representatives capitulated to the 
will of the President.
  We have that to contemplate going forward into the next Presidency. 
We have watched as the power of the House of Representatives has been 
diminished. The power of the Senate has been diminished and, I will 
say, significantly and dramatically. And it didn't just happen under 
this Presidency. It began in a significant way clear back in the 
thirties. I don't know the exact year that the Administrative Procedure 
Act was signed, but that would be, probably, a pivotal moment that one 
could point to on the calendar and conclude that the balance of the 
three branches of government that we had--that was designed by our 
Founding Fathers, and I would submit that the judiciary branch was 
always designed to be the weakest of the three branches of government.
  But our Founding Fathers envisioned that those three branches in 
government--thinking of it in a triangle, Mr. Speaker: the legislative 
branch, Article I; the executive branch, Article II; and then the 
judicial branch, Article III of your Constitution--they set them up to 
be a balance of powers, a triangular balance of powers. And even though 
it is often taught that it is three equal branches of government, I 
would argue that the legislative branch comes first--that is Article 
I--because we are the voice of the people.
  The House of Representatives comes ahead of the Senate when it comes 
to spending, by design, by Constitution, because our Founding Fathers 
wanted to give the control of the power of the purse into the hands of 
the people as closely as they could possibly get it. And that is why we 
here in the House are up for election or reelection every 2 years and 
why the Senate is up for election or reelection every 6 years, because 
they wanted the Senate to be insulated from the highs and lows of 
public opinion.
  They wanted the House of Representatives to be reactive and 
responsive to the highs and lows of public opinion, and they wanted 
that power of the purse to be in the hands of the House, so that we 
start the spending bills. By extension and by interpolation and by 
precedent, the House starts the spending, and the House takes care of 
initiating any taxes as well; and the Senate then can react to those 
things that are advanced by the House.
  But if there is a single spending bill over in the Senate right now, 
they have expanded in authority, historically, to be able to simply add 
anything spending to that spending bill they would like. And we are 
poised here in the House wondering: Are they going to send us a bill 
that is this continuing resolution that fits their wants, their wishes, 
and their will, which could be a CR till December 9 that funds Planned 
Parenthood and ObamaCare and the President's executive amnesty? All of 
that could come at us, Mr. Speaker.
  This balance of powers that is here, though, it was expected by our 
Founding Fathers, they believed that the people elected to serve in the 
Congress, the House and the Senate, and they believed that the 
President of the United States would all jealously protect the 
constitutional authority that is granted to them within the 
Constitution.
  They knew that no matter how good wordsmiths they were, it was 
impossible to define the distinctions, the bright lines between the 
three branches of government in such a way that there would never be an 
argument because, after all, words themselves get into a debate on what 
the definitions of those words mean.
  So our Founding Fathers precisely drew the difference as much as they 
could within the language that they had. And the data at the time, and 
the Federalist papers at the time, and the decisions that were made and 
the Congressional Record that was debated along the way, and of all of 
the debates that had to do with the Constitutional Convention helped 
flesh out the meaning and understanding of this great and wonderful 
Constitution that we have. But they also knew that, no matter how 
precisely they fleshed it out, that there would be disagreements, and 
they expected that each branch of government would jealously protect 
the power and authority granted to it within the Constitution.
  Well, this House of Representatives, and the Senate included, has not 
done a very good job of protecting and defending the authority and the 
power granted to it in the Constitution. Article I authority says all 
legislation shall be conducted in the United States Congress--all 
legislation, Mr. Speaker. And yet we have a President who has 
legislated from the Oval Office. He has legislated by speaking words 
into law. He has legislated by a third-tier Web site in the U.S. 
Treasury that essentially amended the effectiveness of ObamaCare.
  This Congress didn't step up in the way of that and take on that 
fight and challenge the President and ball up this government to the 
point where the President had to give in to the words in the 
Constitution, the meaning of the Constitution, the intent of the 
Constitution, and concede that the power and the authority in the House 
of Representatives, in particular, but in the legislative branch, would 
assert itself over the executive branch. It didn't happen because of a 
lack of will at the House of Representatives to better define the 
legislative authority that we have.
  It began, as I mentioned, with the Administrative Procedure Act, 
which granted rulemaking authority to the executive branch of 
government. And so rules, rules that once they meet the criteria that 
are defined within the Administrative Procedure Act--publish it, open 
it up for public comment, go through those conditions--if that rule as 
proposed reaches those conditions, then that rule is then enacted, 
implemented, and it has the force and effect of law as if it were law.
  Today, it is a lot easier to publish a rule and have that rule take 
effect and be and provide the force and effect of law than it is for 
Congress to actually pass a law.
  So if the President decides that he wants to see, let's say, 
environmental regulations, let's say, the WRRDA piece, the waters of 
the United States regulations that give the EPA and the Corps of 
Engineers the equivalent of legislative authority to regulate all of 
the waters of the United States through some ambiguous language that 
they had written into a rule, and it is so bad that it says these 
waters--the old language back from the nineties was these protected 
streams, as geographically defined, and waters hydrologically connected 
to them shall be protected streams.
  When I go to them and I ask them: What does ``hydrologically 
connected'' mean?
  Their answer is: Well, we don't know.
  And I said: Well, then take it out of the language.
  Well, we can't do that.
  How can you know you can't take it out of the language if you don't 
know what it means?
  Well, we know that we can't change or amend the language. That is 
what we are publishing here, and that is what is open for public 
comment. So you are either going to have to live with it or oppose it 
successfully. Which is it going to be?
  Well, try opposing a rule successfully. Try convincing the EPA that 
there is enough public comment and criticism that they ought to change 
that language when they are not accountable to the people.
  The EPA, the Corps of Engineers, any one of the dozens of agencies 
that are

[[Page 12357]]

out there, their bureaucrats aren't up for election or reelection like 
Members of Congress are--only their President. Their President has 
given them orders, or at least a philosophical guideline that they are 
following, and so we end up with waters of the United States, now, 
language that says the navigable waters of the United States and any 
waters that are a significant nexus to the navigable waters of the 
United States.
  Well, think of that. The ambiguous language of waters hydrologically 
connected to was litigated down to the point where the courts finally 
ruled that it doesn't have an effectiveness because it is too 
ambiguous. And so they cooked up some other ambiguous language to 
litigate for another couple of decades, this ambiguous language of 
significant nexus to the navigable waters of the United States--
significant nexus.
  All right. What is nexus? Well, that is anything that intersects. 
Well, is it 1 intersection? is it 2? is it 3? is it 10? is it 50? is it 
100?
  If you could go down to New Orleans and track the Mississippi River 
up to the headwaters, how many significant nexus do you have that are 
tributaries that run into the Mississippi? How many of those 
tributaries can be traced up to creeks and streams and tile lines and 
wells and water lines that go up to the kitchen sink?
  They have defined ambiguous language that allows them to regulate the 
entire United States of America all of the way to the kitchen sink 
under requiring a significant nexus with the navigable waters of the 
United States. And we sit here and take this. And they can write rules 
like this that have the force and effect of law and put a chilling pall 
on the economy of the United States of America.
  That is what we are faced with, Mr. Speaker. And the legislative 
power that has been asserted--and to a large degree, successfully 
asserted--by the executive branch of government reaches into the 
Article I authority of the United States Congress. What are we to do 
about it here? We are to jealously protect this power. Our Founding 
Fathers charged us with that.
  And how do we jealously protect that power? We have only two things 
we can do: impeachment, which nobody wants to do, including me; the 
second component of that is the power of the purse--the power of the 
purse that James Madison spoke about and wrote about eloquently, and it 
is a powerful, powerful tool.
  But this Congress has declined to use the tool of the power of the 
purse, with the exception of what turned into the shutdown of our 
Federal Government in the first day of October of 2013, because they 
don't want to face the criticism that might come from the public of the 
American people.

                              {time}  1945

  There is a tremendous amount of authority that needs to be clawed 
back to this Congress, Mr. Speaker, a tremendous amount of 
constitutional authority that needs to be clawed back. When I see a CR 
being prepared that looks like it is going to reflect some of the 
continuing resolution from last year, I see a continuing resolution 
that may be coming to expand, for example, immigration standards within 
the United States of America under the guise of, well, we are just 
going the kick the can down the road and do some spending that is going 
to get us into December 9 or on into, hopefully, February 28 or maybe a 
little later, and some want to go out to September 30.
  I think that is too far. I don't think we ought to give a blank check 
to the next President of the United States if we don't know who that is 
going to be--even if we know who that is going to be. We ought to be, 
instead, establishing a scenario by which the new Congress--House and 
Senate--can pass appropriations bills to get to the end of this fiscal 
year and get a signature of the next President of the United States, 
not this one.
  By the way, I don't want to give this President of the United States 
a blank check on anything anymore, but Barack Obama said 22 times--not 
just 22 times in the interviews, 22 times overheard, or 22 times 
reported--he said 22 times on videotape that he did not have the 
legislative authority to grant executive amnesty to illegal aliens in 
the United States of America--22 times.
  The most recent time that he did that was just about 10 days before 
he changed his mind. He was here in Washington, D.C., giving a speech 
to a high school here in Washington, D.C. He said to them: You are 
smart students, and I know that you have been studying your 
Constitution. You will know this, that I don't have the authority to 
grant executive--he didn't use the words--but executive amnesty. I am 
the President of the United States. Congress writes the laws. My job as 
President is to enforce the laws, and the job of the judiciary is to 
interpret the laws.
  I don't think that you could put it more concisely than that in a 
matter of two or three sentences. I think the President did a good job 
of describing that to the students there. But within about 10 days, he 
decided that he would reverse all of that, and all of a sudden he had 
the power to grant an executive amnesty--an unconstitutional executive 
amnesty, Mr. Speaker.
  President Obama unconstitutionally granted an executive amnesty to 
people who at least assert that they have come into the United States 
under the age of 18. Apparently, if you are under 18, you are not 
responsible for your actions, even though that is not true among the 
States, even in the case of homicide. So the excuse that it was 
somebody else's fault, it was their parents' fault or somebody else's 
fault, never held up. It didn't hold up in law.
  We write the law here in Congress, but the President granted an 
executive amnesty. He called it DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood 
Arrivals. You are a child, apparently, up until the moment that you 
turn 18, and we will take your word for it even if you are 35 today or 
older, by the way. That was DACA.
  Then there was DAPA, the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, he 
called it. That was another unconstitutional reach. Now, these things 
have--at least the one has been effectively enjoined by Judge Hanen in 
the Texas District. Now the President has been blocked, I think, 
effectively until the end of his term on continuing this amnesty 
process of executive amnesty. Meanwhile, the DACA executive amnesty 
continues. We have seen evidence that there has been circumvention of 
the court's order with regard to the DAPA amnesty piece.
  While we are watching this unfold, we are a Congress that has allowed 
for funding to continue with unconstitutional acts of executive amnesty 
on the part of the President of the United States. I recall a 
discussion before the Rules Committee before a previous appropriations 
bill when I made the assertion, Mr. Speaker, that we all take an oath 
to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Every one 
of us in here, all 435 of us, and every Senator of the 100 Senators on 
the other end of the Capitol here through the rotunda all take that 
same oath that we will support and defend the Constitution of the 
United States, so help us God. We should take that oath seriously.
  Our Founding Fathers imagined that we would always be electing 
serious representatives who when they took their oath that they would 
take that oath with their hand on the Bible, and they would know that 
they had to answer to their contemporaries, their colleagues, their 
constituents, the American public, and ultimately to God for that oath.
  Now, the Constitution means what it says. It has to be interpreted to 
mean what it was understood to mean at the time of the ratification of 
the Constitution or the subsequent amendments. Our oath needs to be an 
oath of fidelity to the text and the understanding of that 
Constitution. If it doesn't mean that then our oath means nothing at 
all. Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, taking an oath that is: I pledge to 
support and defend the Constitution of the United States whatsoever I 
might interpret it to mean at any convenient point in the future? No. 
The oath is not to support and defend the Constitution in any way it 
might

[[Page 12358]]

be subverted or perverted by any other authority. No. We are taking an 
oath to support and defend the Constitution according to the text of 
its clear meaning and understanding as understood at the time of 
ratification.
  If we don't like what that Constitution means, Mr. Speaker, then we 
have an opportunity to amend the Constitution. It is simply defined and 
difficult to do for good reason. Simply defined, it just takes a two-
thirds majority in the House and Senate to pass a constitutional 
amendment out of here. The President has no formal say in the process. 
Although, he will have an opinion, and then that constitutional 
amendment goes out to the several States as it was referred to in the 
Constitution, and there, if three-quarters of the States ratify that 
constitutional amendment, it becomes a component of the Constitution.
  Our Founding Fathers gave us a tool to amend the Constitution because 
they knew they couldn't see into the crystal ball by the centuries. 
They wanted it to be difficult because they wanted to protect the 
rights of minorities against the tyranny of the majority, and they 
wanted to protect God-given liberty. They had a vision, they were well 
educated, and they had a sound and faithful foundation within them. 
They laid out a brilliant document that would only maybe be second to 
the Declaration itself when it comes to the brilliance of documents 
that are written, at least by Americans and perhaps by mortals 
altogether.
  We are an exceptional nation. God has given us this liberty. We have 
an obligation to protect it, an obligation to restore the separation of 
powers, and an obligation to assert the constitutional authority here 
and say to a President that overreaches: I'm sorry, we are not going to 
fund your unconstitutional activities. We are going to stand on the 
principle itself of the Constitution.
  Whether or not we agree with policy, we need to have fidelity to the 
Constitution. We don't get a pass because the Supreme Court errs in its 
interpretation of the Constitution. We don't get a pass because the 
President says that he has a different opinion. We don't get a pass no 
matter which side of this aisle we are on, on the right or on the left. 
We have an obligation to God and country and to have fidelity to this 
Constitution.
  So now this expansive immigration policy that has been delivered by 
the President has set a goal of 10,000 refugees coming out of Syria. At 
this point, I will concede that he has the executive authority, as 
granted by Congress, to bring in refugees in numbers and under 
consultation with the House and the Senate. I have sat in on some of 
those consultations in previous years, and, in fact, with Hillary 
Clinton for that matter, and we have arrived at, I will say, a 
reasonable approach to the numbers of refugees.
  But this President had set a goal that he was going to bring in at 
least 10,000 refugees out of the Syria and Iraq region. When I look at 
the numbers that are there and the costs that we have, if we want to 
provide relief to people, we can provide refugee relief to a dozen 
people in their home country, and that would be Iraq or Syria in these 
circumstances, for every one that we bring into America.
  When you clean that area out, when you bring people out of that area, 
you are handing it over to ISIS. That is part of what the President has 
been doing. He has been bringing people out of there and handing that 
region, the real estate, over to ISIS. They are glad to get rid of 
them. They killed thousands of people who didn't agree with them, and 
there are those that are on the run from ISIS. ISIS has been committing 
a genocide against Christians and against Yazidis in the Middle East, 
especially in the Nineveh plains region. I have seen the devastation 
that is taking place there.
  Mr. Speaker, I have gone into those regions and gotten as close to 
the ISIS front lines as possible, and that is just outside their 
artillery range. I went looking for Christian refugee camps, Mr. 
Speaker. I couldn't find Christian refugee camps in that part of the 
world, into the edges of Syria, into northern Iraq, into the Kurdish 
region, and into Turkey for that matter. The place to find Christians 
in that part of the world is go to church, and there you will find 
Christians. I have met with the Chaldean bishop twice in Erbil in the 
northern part of Iraq.
  In my last trip in, I went into the Catholic Church, the Roman 
Catholic Church in Istanbul, and I met with a good number of Christians 
there. Then I went down into Erbil the following morning. It was a 
Saturday night mass and then a Sunday morning mass in Erbil, and there 
I met a good number of other Christians. I sat down with a family that 
was a refugee family out of the Syrian region and met with the Chaldean 
bishop there.
  Here are some things that I learned from them and others: The 
Assyrian Christians are under attack. There is a heavy assault of 
genocide against them. Chaldean Christians, same way, they are 
subjected to genocidal attack from ISIS. The Yazidis, who are 
technically not Christians, are under genocidal attack from ISIS, and 
their home region is the Nineveh plains region. The Nineveh plains 
region runs along, I will say parallel or next to, Mosul in Iraq in 
that area.
  In my discussions with the Barzanis, who are essentially in charge of 
the semiautonomous region of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq and 
the Erbil area and all across, I pressed them that we need to establish 
an international safe zone for Christians and for the Yazidis, the 
native minority, so that they can live there in peace and be protected.
  I made that case rather extensively to him. He repeated it back to me 
probably two or three times greater in detail and in conviction than I 
had delivered it to him. I said to him: Mr. Barzani, you sound like you 
have said this before. His answer to me was: I have said it before. 
That is my public opinion. We will support an international safe zone 
in the Nineveh plains region. We will support it, we will help defend 
it, and we are committed to it. That is my public position.
  I was awfully glad to hear that. It is a lot better solution for 
refugees to give them protection in their home region and protect them 
from the genocidal ISIS people than it is to try to bring them out of 
the Middle East and bring them into the United States, or other places 
in the world for that matter. But we do have refugees that are looking 
for a place to call home around this world.
  So I stopped in Geneva a couple of months ago, Mr. Speaker, by the 
way, with Chairman Goodlatte of the Judiciary Committee, and met with 
the number two on the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. In that 
meeting and in that discussion, I learned a few things. I thought that 
it was a good meeting. It was a very constructive meeting with a lot of 
information that poured back and forth.

                              {time}  2000

  I have this report that I probably will not put into the Record. 
``Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2015,'' which flows, of course, 
into 2016, Mr. Speaker.
  I noted a report that we had that showed some--and I am close, but 
maybe not exactly precise on this top number--1,562 refugees out of the 
Syrian-Iraq region that had come in in a group into the United States. 
Of that 1,562, roughly, number, I can give you the exact number of 
Christians that were included in that: one. Only one.
  We have seen other larger groups--several thousand--where there was 
only a little more than 1 percent Christians that come out of there. 
Christians in that part of the world, as far as refugees are concerned, 
grow into a number of 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 percent.
  So why is it that this administration can bring in more than 10,000 
refugees out of that part of the world--now approaching 12,000, looks 
like will be the number even greater than that by the end of this 
fiscal year on the last day of this month, Mr. Speaker--and not have 
any statistical representation of Christians that are emerging from 
that part of the world?
  I asked our director of USCIS, under oath before the Judiciary 
Committee:

[[Page 12359]]

Do you ask these refugees that you claim that you are vetting, and I 
don't believe can be effectively vetted, do you ask them what their 
religion is?
  He said: No, we don't ask. How would we have any way of knowing? Even 
if we asked them, we don't know. So that is not a statistic that we 
collect or keep.
  Well, it seems to me to be foolish and imprudent not to be taking a 
look at the religion of people. We would want to be accelerating 
bringing Christians into America if we are going to bring refugees at 
all into America. They are the ones that are targeted. They are the 
ones that are subjected to genocide.
  I would like to carve out that international safe zone and let them 
live in peace in the area that is their home of antiquity. If that is 
not going to be the case, why would we be then seeing a 
misrepresentative sample coming into America, unless there is a 
preference of, let's say, a bias against Christians coming into 
America, one out of 1,562, roughly 1 percent out of 3,600 or so?
  Then on top of that, when I began to ask the representative of UNHCR, 
the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees, in Geneva--who gave a very 
impressive presentation, I would add, Mr. Speaker--when I began to ask 
those questions: How many refugees do you have cleared to come out of 
the Middle East that could be going to any of the designated countries 
that are accepting them? And we know that Germany, Austria, Sweden, and 
France, to a degree, are picking up refugees. We watched them pour in. 
I walked with them pouring in that epic migration. Many of them are not 
cleared, but of those that have been cleared by the U.N. High 
Commissioner on Refugees, how many do you have?
  Her answer was: Well, we have 115,000 who have been cleared under a 
refugee status that have, roughly, a background check--she didn't use 
the word ``roughly''--but a background check done on them that we say 
are ready to be transported to host countries--115,000.
  I said: Do you keep track of what religion they are?
  Well, absolutely, yes, we do.
  How many Christians?
  Fifteen thousand Christians out of 115,000 refugees.
  I didn't do the math, but I am going to say that is 12 or 13 percent. 
Now, if 12 or 13 percent of the refugees that are approved by the 
United Nations are Christians and 1 percent, or maybe even one out of 
1,562, are Christians coming into America, does that mean that this 
administration set up a filter to filter them out and only made 
mistakes?
  I would support, instead, an effort that if we are going to accept 
refugees from that part of the world, let's make sure it is the 
refugees that are subjected to a religious genocide. By the way, I 
think they are more likely to be assimilated into America judging by 
the responses that I have heard from them.
  I looked at some of the results in this report that I have 
referenced, Mr. Speaker, and I was surprised, not quite shocked, to see 
the number of refugees per 1,000 inhabitants in these countries who 
have been flooded with refugees. I want to tip my hat to the countries 
that have taken on a high number of refugees that is also a high 
percentage of their overall population.
  Lebanon is at the top. Out of every 1,000 inhabitants of Lebanon, 183 
are refugees. They have been stretched to the seams in Lebanon. Jordan, 
87 out of 1,000. And then you go to Turkey, 32; Chad, 26; Djibouti, 22; 
on down the line getting down to the end, Malta, 17 per thousand. That 
is a high number, especially for a small island, but it is still a per 
capita basis. Out of all of the countries in Europe, or the United 
States for that matter, Sweden, 17 per thousand. That is the highest 
rate out of Europe in its entirety, or the Western Hemisphere for that 
matter, or Oceania for that matter. The Swedes continue to take a lot 
of refugees in.
  We have a national destiny, a national security, to be concerned 
about. We know that it is a very difficult task to vet refugees. I am 
supportive of an effort to suspend refugees coming out of that part of 
the world that produces terrorists until such time as we can get a 
handle on the vetting of them, on the background checks. Many times 
when they leave their home country and when they enter a foreign 
country, they will destroy any identifying documents that they might 
have so that they can't be sent back to their home country.
  This is a big problem for Europe. We have watched as the attacks have 
emerged in country after country. And it is a big problem for the 
United States. We are challenged with this vetting process that cannot 
possibly uncover those who will turn to violence. We can look at 
polling that shows what percentage of people from terrorist-producing 
countries that settle in the United States are supportive of Sharia 
law, are supportive of violence to promote Sharia law, that are, at 
least philosophically, supportive of organizations including and like 
ISIS.
  Those numbers are shocking. They are far too high, which caused our 
Director of the FBI, James Comey, to make the remark when asked to be 
responsible for the vetting of the refugees: You are asking us to 
identify the needles in the haystack. That is a very difficult task to 
identify the needles in the haystack. But if we could get that done, 
the far more difficult task is to identify the hay that will become 
needles.
  We have seen that pop up second generation, I will say, immigrants 
from that part of the world that adhere to the philosophy that believes 
that they can impose Sharia law on America through violence. And even 
James Comey has said: You are asking us to sort out the hay that would 
become needles later on. That is the second generation terrorists that 
have attacked us.
  So it is a difficult task in a war, Mr. Speaker, that has gone on for 
1,400 years. We don't recognize it as a war that has gone on for 1,400 
years, but they do.
  Then I see legislation that is coming at us in the form of, first, H-
2B legislation in a continuing resolution, Mr. Speaker--H-2B 
legislation. That is low-skilled workers. The highest unemployment 
rates we have in America are the lowest skilled workers that we have. 
Double-digit unemployment in the lowest skilled workers that we have in 
this country. The last thing we need in America are more people that 
have less skills, but that is what is pouring across our borders in 
legal and illegal immigration.
  We are essentially a welfare state. We have 94.6 million Americans of 
working age who are simply not in the workforce, and there are 
another--not quite 9 million--that are on unemployment. So we are 103 
million or 104 million Americans of working age who are not in the 
workforce. Yet, we are watching the entitlements grow and grow and grow 
and swallow up our budget. So Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security--
all of them--are on autopilot for spending.
  What do we do when we are trying to keep up with the spending from 
those three?
  We go borrow the money from the Chinese or borrow the money from the 
Saudis. By the way, half the money that we are borrowing that is this 
$19.4 trillion in national debt, half of that is borrowed from the 
American people who have bought the bonds and decided they are going to 
invest in America's future as if somehow this was an all-out effort 
like World War II was. Well, it may be because we are under 
historically low interest rates. If interest rates should double or 
triple--and they could easily do that, and they would not be in 
historic places if they did that--we would watch a collapse on our cash 
flow and a collapse in our budget.
  Yet, this Nation has got its borders open and this Nation is bringing 
in more and more legal immigrants and this Nation is not protecting its 
borders from illegal immigration. They have turned the border patrol 
into the welcome wagon. And now we are poised here wondering: Is our 
leadership going to want to serve up an expansion of
H-2Bs as they did a year ago in the C.R. that came down?
  I oppose that, Mr. Speaker. We can't be expanding legal immigration. 
We don't know who the next President is

[[Page 12360]]

going to be, but if it is Donald Trump, he is not going to be for this.
  So is this an effort to try to hustle something through that Barack 
Obama will sign that the next President may not?
  That is H-2Bs.
  H-1Bs, for example, are being abused and they are being abused 
grossly. We are seeing examples of sometimes hundreds of employees who 
are being laid off that are charged with the responsibility of training 
their foreign immigrant replacement that is coming in on an H-1B 
because the employer can hire cheap labor out of places like India and 
bring them into the United States and lay off more Americans after 
those Americans train their incoming workers that will work for a 
cheaper rate. This is the kind of country that we are building. So we 
end up with more and more people in that 103 million to 104 million 
people who are of working age who are simply not in the workforce while 
all of that is going on. We are requiring companies like maybe Disney, 
for example, to those employees on their way out of the door: We are 
laying you off, but, first, do you want to train your employee, your 
replacement that is coming in on an H-1B?
  The H-1B program is abused. The H-2B is bringing in more of a surplus 
of what we already have, a surplus of unskilled workers. The H-1B 
program is being used and it is laying off American workers and green 
card holders that are sitting there now doing jobs that Americans will 
do. By the way, there isn't any job Americans won't do. They are doing 
jobs by definition that Americans will do, being required to train 
their replacements. I think that is wrong. I think it is a crime for a 
company to require an employee to train their replacement worker while 
their worker is being replaced by a visa program that is designed to 
bring in high school people to establish a need that presumably exists 
within our economy.
  How could there be any need for employees in our economy when you 
have over 100 million people that are of working age and simply not in 
the workforce?
  And then we get to the EB-5 program, Mr. Speaker, the EB-5 program, 
the investors visa, that was set up a quarter of century or so ago and 
said that if you have $1 million and you can create 10 jobs investing 
and establishing an enterprise in America, we will give you a pass 
coming into the United States. A quarter of a century ago, $1 million 
was real money. Today it is still real money to a lot of people in 
America, but not so much as it was then. If you are going into a 
stressed area, an economically disadvantaged area, you can get by with 
half a million dollars.
  I am seeing programs like here comes--let me see--here comes 30--no, 
say 29--29 Chinese each with half a million dollars that bundle that 
money all together and maybe team up with one American. Now they have a 
business enterprise. Now we have 29 new Americans--Chinese--it will be 
the rich Chinese that are buying a path to citizenship here. Once they 
do that, then they can begin that family reunification plan and begin 
bringing their family back into the United States, too.
  I am seeing enterprises where an investment in, let's say, a 
commercial building takes a pool of--it is a $30 million investment and 
it takes a pool of 60 Chinese with half a million dollars each to build 
this commercial building, they then become conceivably partners in 
that, and they have a path into the United States. We are selling 
citizenship. There is a price on it.
  And on top of that, we have birth tourism, Mr. Speaker, birth tourism 
that these numbers will be a little old, 3, 4, or 5 years old where--
and I am focusing on the Chinese at this point--a turnkey operation. If 
you have $30,000 and you are a pregnant Chinese woman, you can fly to, 
conceivably, California, most likely, and be put up there in housing 
and have your baby. Your baby gets a birth certificate. You can fly 
back to China. And when that baby becomes 18, then can begin the family 
reunification program and the extended family and all can be hauled 
into America--a $30,000 turnkey. But you have to wait for 18 years 
before that baby is old enough.

                              {time}  2015

  If you can't wait, don't want to wait, and you have got the money, 
you can lay $500,000 down on the barrelhead, cash on the barrelhead, 
and get a path into America, a green card and citizenship.
  These programs are just wrong. The EB-5 program should be ended; it 
should be sunset.
  If we have to make concessions on H-2B, we don't need to make them. 
We should not make immigration decisions in a CR. We ought not make 
them in a treaty. We ought not make them in a CR, and we ought not make 
them in a lameduck. Immigration decisions should be made subject to the 
pen, the signature of the next President of the United States. They 
need to have the considered judgment of the House of Representatives 
and of the Senate, Mr. Speaker. I will push that we do only the minimum 
in a lameduck, if we have to do anything at all.
  I would promote that a continuing resolution could kick us into the 
early part of next year, when we have a new Congress seated, when we 
have a new President that is inaugurated and sworn into office, and 
that the will of the American people can be reflected in the large 
initiatives that would be advanced by the House of Representatives, by 
the United States Senate, and by the next President that should reflect 
the will of the people.
  All of this, Mr. Speaker, is our charge and our responsibility 
because we have taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution of 
the United States of America. It is our duty, and we owe the people in 
this country our best effort and our best judgment. Our best effort and 
our best judgment includes: we listen to them; we gather all the 
information that we can; we look into the crystal ball of the future as 
far as we can; and, with good and clear conscience and good judgment, 
we make those decisions that reflect their will that is within the 
confines of the Constitution, that fit within free enterprise, then lay 
down a foundation for America's destiny so that we can be ever-stronger 
in the future and so that we can have an ascending destiny rather than 
a descending destiny.
  With all of that, Mr. Speaker, I thank you for your attention. I 
yield back the balance of my time.

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