[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15753-15760]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1945
                            THE RULE OF LAW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, 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 here on the floor of the United States House of 
Representatives and to discuss the topics that are on my mind. 
Hopefully, you will consider these arguments as well, Mr. Speaker. I 
know that people across this floor and across the country have a lot of 
these same considerations in mind.
  I want to come to the floor and address the DACA situation and take 
you through a little bit of the history of the Deferred Action for 
Childhood Arrivals which was implemented by Barack Obama in an 
unconstitutional fashion. He knew it, and all of America knew it. We 
know that Barack Obama, 22 times, said that he didn't have the 
constitutional authority to implement a program that granted the 
equivalent of amnesty--at least temporary amnesty--let alone a work 
permit which he added to the program by executive edict, fiat, or 
order. Instead, it requires legislation in order to enable such a 
policy.
  A President can't grant amnesty. A President can have prosecutorial 
discretion. Prosecutorial discretion is a legal term for what the 
Justice Department does when they are determining whether the resources 
they have to prosecute crimes are adequate to enforce against the most 
serious offenders. Barack Obama, President Obama, did implement some of 
those relatively prudent policies with prosecutorial discretion. He 
prioritized the most violent and evil criminals that he could identify, 
at least by policy. He turned a lot of them loose too, by the way, onto 
the streets of America in the course of all that. So it was a very 
confusing policy that emerged without consistency under President 
Obama. However, he exercised a legal prosecutorial discretion when they 
looked at each case on an individual basis.
  But I recall when his Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet 
Napolitano, came before the Judiciary Committee to testify about this 
program on DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals--or some 
might say the deferred action for children of aliens. Her testimony and 
the memos that came down, the Morton memos, set up four different 
categories of people who would be granted a quasi-amnesty underneath 
the President's policy.
  There, Secretary Napolitano testified over and over again, and it 
reflected the document itself which, seven times, referenced on an 
individual basis only--on an individual basis only--seven times. I can 
repeat it for the Record, Mr. Speaker, but that is what was going on, 
which told me, as I listened to her testimony and had read the 
documents prior to the testimony, that they knew what the law said. 
They knew it required--that it required--an individual basis only and a 
prioritization of applying the law to bring about the best effect of 
the utilization of the resources of the Justice Department.
  Yet Barack Obama, President Obama, around the country multiple times, 
in the 1\1/2\ or 2 years building up to his implementation of the DACA 
policy, multiple times he said that he didn't have the constitutional 
authority to implement the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. 
Multiple times. It turned out to be at least 22 that we have a 
videotape on.
  The most recent that I recall was in a high school just outside of 
the Capitol here in Washington, D.C., where he was speaking to a high 
school group.
  He said: You are smart students. You know that there is a separation 
of powers. I don't have the authority to grant this legal status to 
people who are here illegally even if their parents did bring

[[Page 15754]]

them in or even if they came in on their own under the age of 18. I 
don't have the authority to do that. That is Congress that has the 
authority.
  I should remind everyone, Mr. Speaker, that President Obama taught 
constitutional law. He was an adjunct professor teaching constitutional 
law at the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago has a good 
reputation for understanding the Constitution, and Barack Obama 
demonstrated that when he said: You are smart students, and you know 
that we have three branches of government, a separation of powers. 
Congress is Article I. They make the laws.
  He said: I am Article II, the executive branch. My job is to enforce 
the laws. And Article III is the judicial branch of government. They 
interpret the laws.
  So when the courts interpret the laws that Congress writes, the 
executive's job is to carry them out. He knew he was violating the 
separation of powers because he defined that to America multiple times. 
But he did anyway.
  I believe that President Obama made a calculation, a political 
calculation. The political calculation, in my estimation, was that he 
could get away with it. He wanted the policy, but Congress wouldn't 
pass the policy because we have great respect for the rule of law, and 
we don't want to reward lawbreakers. That happened in 1986, and we are 
paying the price for that amnesty act of 1986. He couldn't get the 
DREAMers legislation through Congress, so he calculated that he could 
get away with implementing that as a policy even though he knew it was 
unconstitutional.
  So some of us went to work to initiate lawsuits to have the courts 
strike down the executive edicts of Barack Obama that was the 
foundation for DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
  As it wandered through the courts. The lead in the primary case was 
Chris Crane, the president of the ICE, Immigration Custom Enforcement, 
union. His name was on the case first. It was Crane, et al. v. 
Napolitano, et al. in the beginning. It went through the courts, and by 
the time you follow it through a circuitous route, you find out that 
Crane, et al. v. Napolitano, et al. got shifted off to the side. It was 
declared to be a decision that had to do with the administrative rules 
that if he had a grievance, he had to take that grievance through the 
administrative rules process rather than through the courts to address 
the policy itself. So it got parked off on a side rail, so to speak.
  Then we saw a parallel case come forward, the DAPA case, the Deferred 
Action on Parents of Americans was how the President described it. I 
would have said parents of aliens myself. But that case was found by 
Judge Andrew Hanen down in Texas to be unconstitutional. It was a very 
similar and parallel case. The President couldn't grant amnesty to 
parents of children who were here, and the President couldn't grant 
amnesty to children who came here. That same constitutional principle 
applies to both.
  We know that Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, and others 
with about 9, 10, or 11 other State attorneys general, had prepared to 
file a suit to litigate the DACA case in parallel fashion that DAPA was 
litigated successfully. They set a date of September 5 and said to the 
President: If you don't end DACA by September 5, we are filing this 
case.
  So that is about the day and probably exactly the day that President 
Trump came out with his decision on DACA.
  I moved too fast forward, Mr. Speaker, and I need to back up to what 
happened. Barack Obama, President Obama, finished out his term while 
growing the DACA recipients by hundreds of thousands. By the time he 
finished his term, that number was estimated to be over 700,000 
recipients who get a little card that says: You get to stay in America 
for 2 years, and there won't be any immigration law enforced against 
you as long as you don't commit any of these serious crimes, felonies, 
or a nasty combination of three different misdemeanors.
  Then also he created out of thin air a work permit. Now, Congress 
isn't going to grant work permits to illegal aliens, but Barack Obama 
did. Congress isn't going to grant a ``come out of the shadows and stay 
on the streets of America'' permit for DACA recipients, but President 
Obama did. He went outside.
  This Congress should have had its back up. I am frustrated. I am 
frustrated with the lack of conviction on the part of the Members of 
this Congress. Mr. Speaker, you stand in here once every 2 years, and 
you take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United 
States. That includes acknowledging that the Constitution is the 
supreme law of the land. It includes the requirement that you 
understand the difference between Article I, Article II, and Article 
III.
  Article I writes the laws--that is all of us here and over in the 
Senate. We write all of the laws for the United States of America. That 
is how the Constitution starts out: The legislative powers shall be 
reserved for we here that are the Representatives in this Republic of 
the American people.
  We are as close to the people as anybody who is elected in the 
Federal Government right here in this House of Representatives--435 of 
us. That is what you take an oath to is that you are going to protect 
the Constitution of the United States. You should at least be able to 
defend Article I, the very authority that is the reason that you are 
here serving in the first place, Mr. Speaker.
  Then we have an obligation also to look over the shoulder of the 
executive branch and have oversight over the function of the executive 
branch and conduct hearings and bring witnesses and dig into the 
methods and the effectiveness of the President of the United States, 
our Chief Executive Officer, in carrying out the execution of our laws.
  The President of the United States takes an oath to preserve, 
protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. But also it 
requires that he takes care that the laws be faithfully executed. Now, 
that means carry them out, not kill them off. It looks like he was 
trying to kill off the Constitution rather than carry out the laws that 
are described by this Article I, Congress.
  By the way, some of the laws that President Obama defied and gave 
orders to defy and to ignore were signed into law by Bill Clinton. So 
the legitimacy of the United States Congress and our effectiveness has 
been diminished by President Obama who went outside the bounds, the 
lines that are drawn between legislative authority, executive 
authority, and judicial authority.
  Now, our Founding Fathers set that up to be a static relationship. 
They expected and believed that the courts would be the weakest of the 
three branches of government. They expected also that since you always 
have ambitious people reaching for more power, they wanted to divide 
that power, and they wanted to restrain the power.
  That is why we have the system that we have today. That is why we 
redistrict every decade. That is why they called for a census so we can 
count all the people of America and set up congressional district so 
that there is a proportional representation in each of the 435 seats 
here offset by two Senators from every State so that we have a 
geographical representation--a small population State with a big voice 
or maybe a big population State with the same kind of voice--over in 
the United States Senate.
  But here in this Congress, in this House, everyone has roughly the 
proportional same number of constituents, and your vote means the same 
amount here that it does for each one of us, whatever your particular 
role is.
  So this was set up to have this balance of power. What our Founding 
Fathers envisioned was each branch of government would jealously 
protect the power vested in it through the Constitution. They didn't 
imagine that there would be a Congress that would be in opposite--they 
actually didn't imagine the two-party system, as I understand some of 
the history that I read, but they didn't envision that there would be a 
Republican majority in the House, a Republican majority in the Senate, 
and a Democrat President who clearly, openly, and blatantly defined it 
in advance and then violated the Constitution.

[[Page 15755]]

  Our Founding Fathers never expected that this House of 
Representatives would sit on its hands and simply let that Constitution 
be violated for 2 years or longer just on DACA alone. But that 
happened. I brought amendments to the floor time after time after time 
that cut off the Federal funding that supported the unconstitutional 
acts of the President of the United States. Those amendments passed off 
the floor of the House of Representatives, and they were killed off 
over in the Senate.

                              {time}  2000

  Our Founding Fathers did not imagine that the Constitution could be 
openly, defiantly, and blatantly violated and not have this Congress 
hold together and shut off the funding. The power of the purse is the 
power of bringing that President back in line and making him keep his 
constitutional oath.
  The will wasn't there.
  As I went before a committee to present an amendment to get Rules 
Committee consent to an amendment, I reminded everybody on that panel: 
You all took an oath to support and defend the Constitution. If you 
meant it, if you take your word seriously, if your oath to the 
Constitution means anything, then not only do you have to open the door 
so that my amendment comes to the floor and we have an opportunity to 
debate it and force a vote on the floor of the House of 
Representatives, not only is that the case, if you don't support this, 
then your own oath to the Constitution is called into question.
  By the way, Mr. Speaker, I just remind people that I chair the 
Constitution and Civil Justice Subcommittee. There are a couple of 
reasons for that--more than a couple--and I have defended this 
Constitution every day that I have been here in this United States 
Congress, and I take it seriously.
  My father used to lecture the Constitution to me at the supper table. 
He would bring out the Constitution, set it down at the table. He would 
bring the Code of Iowa and set it down at the table. The Bible would be 
on the end table. The Constitution and the Code of Iowa would be on the 
kitchen table, and he would open it up and say: Now, we are going to 
trace back for you how ``pick your law out of this book'' gets back to 
the Constitution. Where is the authority for ``pick your law out of 
this book?''
  He would debate that and discuss it with me. That is where I learned 
that I shouldn't ever utter an opinion that hasn't been thoroughly 
thought out. He was the most effective critical thinker I ever met in 
my life. But he steeped me in the great respect for the rule of law and 
a great respect for the supreme law of the land, our Constitution, and 
the structure that is guaranteed in the Constitution: a republican form 
of government.
  That, Mr. Speaker, means a representative form of government, where 
the people select their Representatives and send them off to be their 
voice here in this Congress.
  It was a fantastic piece of wisdom and historical knowledge that put 
this together in the fashion that it did. Now we have not just the 
oldest constitution on record, but we have the most successful 
constitution on record.
  You can put this altogether. I believe that our Founding Fathers, as 
they put this together, were inspired by God to write the Declaration, 
to fight the war, to shape the Constitution. I think that our Founding 
Fathers were moved around like men on a chessboard to bring about this 
fantastic country that we have.
  A big part of this fantastic country is the rule of law. When I write 
``rule of law,'' for years, I capitalized the word ``rule.'' I 
capitalized ``rule'' with an ``R'' and ``law'' with an ``L'' so that it 
stands out on the page, so that it looks as important as it is when you 
read the phrase: rule of law.
  Rule of law is an essential component of American exceptionalism. It 
is a pillar of American exceptionalism. If you think about what went 
together to make this great country that we have, I would add up a 
whole series of things.
  I would trace our American exceptionalism back all the way to Mosaic 
Law. The Mosaic Law was borrowed by the Greeks. The Greeks kind of 
teased each other: Well, that isn't your original law. You borrowed 
that from Moses.
  Well, they had great philosophers and they added to the culture, but 
the law came out of Moses from the Greeks to the Romans. The Romans set 
up republican forms of government. They also had a very good and 
healthy rule of law so that, at least in theory, they applied that to 
everybody.
  That rule of law spread across Western Europe by the Romans all the 
way to Ireland. When the Dark Ages came--the Visigoths sacked Rome in 
410 A.D. When that happened, historians, more or less, called that the 
signal of the world falling into the Dark Ages.
  For several hundred years, not much happened that was reported to us. 
People lost the ability to think and reason in the fashion that they 
had from among the Greeks and among the Romans.
  Christianity had to get itself spread into all of that and then 
emerge. It did emerge. It emerged sometime shortly before the end of 
the first millennium. It became the Age of Enlightenment and the 
industrial revolution.
  We know, Mr. Speaker, these courses of history that have followed, 
but I would just point out what happened in America.
  In America, we are about ready to celebrate--we did it on Monday, 
because it was a Federal holiday--Columbus Day on October 12, the day 
after tomorrow. It happens to also be my wife's birthday, Mr. Speaker. 
There are a couple of reasons we should celebrate Columbus Day.
  He discovered the Western Hemisphere. He did so because he had a 
vision that the Earth was round and not flat. He was able to convince 
Ferdinand and Isabella that they should invest their capital in three 
ships to send him across the seas in the hopes that they would circle 
all the way around to India and maybe find a passage to come back. They 
could trade and be an even richer nation than Spain was.
  By the way, that was the same year that the Spanish threw the Moors 
out. That is when the kingdom of Ferdinand and Queen Isabella was 
established in a more stable fashion than it had been prior to that.
  They found the money for Christopher Columbus. He discovered the 
hemisphere. After that, we saw a lot of Spaniards emerge. They focused 
down in the south, in the Central American region, in the Caribbean, 
and settled in that area going south and north from the isthmus. They 
brought with them Christianity. They were driven by the idea of 
spreading Christianity around the world.
  That went on through the 1500s, where they were settling and 
developing in that part of the world, and conducting some atrocities as 
well, Mr. Speaker--just to address what otherwise somebody would ask me 
to yield and listen to. Yes, they had some atrocities. They began to 
develop and bring Western civilization, though, to the New World.
  The other end of this thing, in 1607, the first people who settled 
and built a permanent settlement in the North American continent were 
there at Jamestown, just down the road from us a little ways. It was 
1607.
  The Christians who landed there came for religious freedom. They sat 
across there on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and they knelt at that 
cross and prayed. The prayer was: Lord, thank You for sending us to 
this new land. We hear Your call and we call out to You to guide us and 
bless us. We will listen to the mission that You delivered to us, which 
is to evangelize all people here and around the world and to settle 
this continent to please You.
  That is the summary of the prayer. If you read that prayer, you can 
see and hear manifest destiny in that prayer. You can see religious 
emancipation in that prayer as well. They knew why they were here.
  A country that is formed by people who have powerful faith, as they 
did, and then you have the pilgrims of Plymouth Rock in 1620, and the 
rest of America was built out. As the colonists began to throw off the 
yoke of King George, they still retained essential

[[Page 15756]]

principles. The essential principles would include those of the Magna 
Carta: the idea that a man's home is his castle and that the law has to 
be applied equally to everyone.
  King John wasn't happy to sign that, by the way, but I think it came 
down to: It is your head or your signature. Why don't you decide, King 
John?
  He decided his signature.
  It has been a long time ago since the Magna Carta was signed, but it 
laid a foundation for the pilgrims and the settlers who came to 
America. They came here for religious freedom and to get away from the 
yoke of the old country, Great Britain.
  We should remember that the pilgrims who came in on the Mayflower 
didn't sail out of jolly, old England. They sailed out of Leiden in the 
Netherlands. Several years before, they sailed the Atlantic Ocean. They 
pulled out and went to Leiden in the Netherlands. There, several 
hundred of them lived around in the area, in a community, in various 
different houses and apartment complexes that were there.
  A lot of them went to church in Pieterskerk, which is the church in 
the center. They staged themselves until they were ready to go across 
the Atlantic Ocean to settle and land at Plymouth Rock in 1620.
  These early settlers were driven by religious freedom. As they began 
to build their farms, their shops, and trade and build ships along the 
coast and our harbors, we reach the year of 1776. Then, of course, we 
know the Declaration was on July 4 of that year. But there is another 
seminal event, Mr. Speaker, and that is Adam Smith published his 
treatise on free enterprise capitalism. The name of it is ``The Wealth 
of Nations.''
  No one has surpassed that document at this point. If you allow people 
to keep their own goods, earn their own profits, invest that, he 
explained with utter clarity how it will improve the productivity--they 
will invest it in efficiency--and how the invisible hand, that is the 
person who is buying the loaf of bread off the shelf, if that shelf is 
empty, you put more bread on there and sell more. If you are selling 
more than you can make, you raise the price a little. If somebody 
thinks you are making too much money, they start up their bakery. They 
get their bread on the shelf, and then it competes with each other. The 
shelf is always full of bread and the consumers get a product that they 
demand. That is the concept of free enterprise capitalism. I don't hear 
anybody talking about that today.
  We also developed here a meritocracy. If you have freedom, you can be 
rewarded for merit. We don't talk about meritocracies anymore. We give 
out participation trophies for kids. They don't really want them to be 
winners or losers, just participants.
  That is not the American way. The American way is: we get in, we 
compete. There is bound to be a lot of losers because there is only one 
winner at the end, but the losers all learn something and so does the 
winner. If the winner gets complacent, if the winner gets lazy, then 
the others who are competing are going to pass up that former winner, 
and he is going to have to get a little sharper in his game. That makes 
us all better.
  When I look at my neighborhood, Mr. Speaker, I see that we have got 
some counties in particular that have excellent competition between the 
public schools and parochial schools. They have a number of different 
churches to choose from. They have a lot of banks that will loan money 
and compete with each other to invest back in the communities so 
entrepreneurs with ideas or families that need a bridge to the next 
month or two can have something to bridge them through that.
  This is the kind of competition that I see. It is not just sports 
competition, but it is academic competition, it is competing for 
students, it is competing for tuition dollars, it is competing for the 
business investment dollars among the banks, it is churches competing 
for the faith and competition to save the maximum number of souls, and 
it is a very healthy environment.
  If you take competition out, this goes flat and the vitality that 
exists today and just the vibrant humming of the lives that I am 
thinking of would be gone. It becomes complacent. I fear that is where 
America is going: if we are afraid to compete, we are afraid to defend 
our values.
  Free enterprise capitalism. I think every college campus in the 
country has some professor who will speak against it. Some of them have 
many professors who speak against it. They are teaching against free 
enterprise capitalism. They are teaching socialism. They are teaching 
Marxism. They are rejecting conservatism.
  By the way, I can't find a school in the country today that has an 
effective course on Western civilization itself. That doesn't mean they 
aren't out there. This is just me asking questions of people who should 
know the answer to that. They are saying: I can't name one, unless it 
would be Hillsdale College or maybe Liberty University.
  I grew up in an era where every school had multiple courses on 
Western civilization. Because we understand our culture, we respect it. 
We know that, without Western civilization, the world would be so void 
of the contributions that came from Western civilization.
  Sometime a year ago last summer, I found myself on a panel at MSNBC, 
Mr. Speaker. One of the panelists said: One could be an optimist and 
hope that this is the last Republican convention where old White people 
have anything to say about it.
  There is no way to let a comment like that pass. So I pointed out: 
Charlie, that is getting a little tired, this criticism of old White 
people. I would challenge you to name another subgroup of people who 
have contributed more.
  Then the lady on the panel started fanning herself. She was getting 
the vapors because I defended Western civilization. The host leaned 
over, almost with a leer, hoping that I would take the bait, and she 
said: More than White people.
  And I said: More than Western civilization itself.
  Western civilization is everywhere that Christianity has laid the 
foundation for civilization itself; where Christianity has been the 
footprint that has laid down the foundation of Western civilization 
itself.

                              {time}  2015

  And you don't have western civilization without Christianity; you 
don't have a successful history without Christianity; and you don't 
have people that abide by the moral laws so we don't have to have a lot 
of legal laws. You can't not manage a people of 300 million people and 
think you are going to get that done effectively if they fail to be a 
moral people, a people that reach over and pay forward and take care of 
their families and their friends and their neighbors.
  I see it all over this country, Mr. Speaker. I have been to all 50 
States in this country, met people in all 50 States. I have gotten 
behind the steering wheel in 48 of the 50, and I see good people, great 
people day after day after day that get out of bed, and all they want 
to do is help somebody. And they don't care about credit; they don't 
care if anybody ever notices it or sees it; they just want to help 
somebody. That is what makes this country turn and work the way it 
does.
  If we wonder, we should take a look at the hurricanes that we have 
suffered in the South and all across, from Texas, Louisiana, and now 
Mississippi the other day, and Florida--Irma. American people, some 
people fled out of the hurricane and some people come to help, and I 
imagine there is a traffic jam there from time to time. But I am so 
grateful that we have the American character that it is.
  American character is a can-do spirit, people that--I know that I had 
a banker visit me one day, and he showed me a picture. Actually, I met 
him at the airport. He showed me a picture of their bank, and the water 
was ready to run in the door of their bank. They had a flood that 
flooded the whole downtown. He said: Don't send us anything. We can 
handle this. It is only a flood.
  I have been back to that community, and he was right. I am glad we 
have people like that, these spirited Americans who are part of a 
culture that is a

[[Page 15757]]

can-do culture. And I don't want to lose it, Mr. Speaker. I don't want 
to lose it by devaluing any of the pillars of American exceptionalism.
  Now, I will just list a few others.
  Aside from the rule of law, there is freedom of speech, religion, 
assembly, the press. There are all of those together in the First 
Amendment, and they are put up there in the First Amendment because, 
without them, without an open dialogue, without ideas having to compete 
in the public square, then we don't test those ideas, and our Founding 
Fathers understood that. They wanted debate to take place here on the 
floor of the House of Representatives. They wanted debate to take place 
in the Senate. They wanted these ideas to be tested.
  For me, I have long believed that I should engage in debate; and if I 
can't sustain my position in debate, I only have two choices: I can 
either adopt the other guy's position, or I can go back and do my 
homework and get that research done, up my game, so to speak, and be 
prepared to defend myself for the next round. That is usually what 
happens if I am not able to defend myself. But over the years, I pay a 
little more attention to preparation than I used to when I was younger, 
and so that is how it is, and the best ideas can be sorted forward.
  Sitting in a meeting here, we can be discussing these ideas; somebody 
brings up an idea, might get knocked down like that. I don't think the 
public gets to see how many ideas are not successful in competing with 
other ideas, but sometimes there is a power structure, too, that is 
involved. What troubles me is when good ideas can't have a fair hearing 
because others want their idea to come through to have their name on 
it. That is a bit of a side issue, but I point that out.
  So freedom of speech, religion, press, the right to peaceably 
assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances, First 
Amendment, all pillars of American exceptionalism.
  Second, the right to keep and bear arms. We have had a lot of 
discussion about the right to keep and bear arms, but our Founding 
Fathers put that provision in the Bill of Rights, not so that we could 
hunt or collect or target shoot or even defend ourselves. The Second 
Amendment is in our Constitution so that we can defend ourselves from 
tyranny, from a future tyrant who would come in; and if they 
confiscated our weapons, then they can force anything upon the people 
of this country.
  History has proven that over and over again. The first thing a tyrant 
does is go after your guns. The second thing they do is they go after 
all the other rights, and pretty soon you are a subservient people. 
Imagine North Korea or Cuba to get a model or an example of that. And 
you can go on up the line: the protection against unreasonable search 
and seizure, constitutional right.
  I am naming pillars of American exceptionalism. Without them, we 
would not be an exceptional nation. There is no pillar that we can pull 
out that the edifice wouldn't tumble if we lost our First Amendment or 
Second Amendment or Fourth Amendment.
  Our Fifth Amendment, we have lost a part of it already with the Kelo 
decision, Mr. Speaker. The Fifth Amendment says, ``nor shall private 
property be taken for public use without just compensation.'' In the 
Kelo decision, the Supreme Court ruled--I believe it was a 5-4 
decision. And I know that Justice Scalia dissented, as did Justice 
O'Connor in one of her last major dissents that she had written, but 
the Supreme Court essentially struck out--I will say, de facto struck 
out--the terms ``for public use'' from the Fifth Amendment.
  They ruled that a locality could condemn private property and hand it 
over to another private interest, provided they had a government 
interest and the private interest being successful. And so they could 
take, let's say, a senior lady's home, a whole tract of land, and force 
that into the--and confiscate that and put it into the hands of a 
private investor.
  That decision is a horrible decision that weakens American 
exceptionalism, weakens our property rights in America.
  I had a private conversation with Justice Scalia, and he told me that 
he expected the Kelo decision to be reversed one day. But to amend the 
Fifth Amendment, effectively, by a decision in the Supreme Court, ``nor 
shall private property be taken for public use without just 
compensation,'' this private property was taken not even for public 
use, but for private use.
  Now, they didn't write in there ``nor shall private property be taken 
for private use'' because that was a given that that would not be the 
case. It is absolutely implied in the Fifth Amendment itself, but the 
Supreme Court ruled the way they wanted to rule, and they have weakened 
a pillar of American exceptionalism.
  Trial by jury, no double jeopardy, you can go up the line. The powers 
that are not enumerated in the Constitution are reserved, respectively, 
for the States or the people. All of these are pillars of American 
exceptionalism.
  Free enterprise capitalism, another pillar of American 
exceptionalism.
  And, by the way, if you take the naturalization test, there is a 
series of flashcards, laminated flashcards, and these flashcards, you 
can hold them up and you can ask these aspiring citizens some 
questions. And part of some of the questions are this: ``Who is the 
father of our country?'' And then you flip that card over and it says: 
``George Washington.''
  ``Who emancipated the slaves?''
  ``Abraham Lincoln.''
  ``What is the economic system of the United States of America?'' It 
is on a flashcard: ``Free enterprise capitalism.''
  That is under assault. Our religious values are under assault. Our 
family values are under assault. The very definition of the 
Constitution itself is under assault, and Barack Obama landed some 
heavy blows to it while he was President of the United States.
  So as we began bringing forward a nominee who could compete 
effectively and hopefully be elected to the Oval Office as President of 
the United States, 17 Presidential candidates came through my State. 
Many of them I knew before they announced, and I think I can say that 
all of them I knew by the time they got through with their campaigns.
  Out of that all, hard fought, there was a platform that was hammered 
out, and Donald Trump earned the nomination. His platform is awfully 
close to the platform of Ted Cruz, who was the second to the last man 
standing, and that platform is a platform that I appreciate, I respect, 
and I worked for, Mr. Speaker.
  I have watched as Presidential candidates can see themselves as 
President of the United States. They may not have all of their 
positions hammered out when they present themselves as candidates--in 
fact, I don't know if any of them ever actually did have all their 
positions hammered out when they presented themselves as candidates--
but they give their speeches. There is a crowd reaction. There is some 
polling information that is there. They have a team, a team of 
advisers. We all talk to them and we try to convince them of the 
priorities that they should be bringing forward.
  In the end, throughout all of this, by the time you get through the 
national convention and confer the nomination on your Presidential 
candidate, there is a platform to run on from June or July on through, 
all the way to November 8 it turned out to be last year. Donald Trump's 
platform was clear.
  He said to me, one day, about the events that he has done for me--and 
I am very much appreciative of President Trump and the times that he 
has come in to help me politically, Mr. Speaker. He made that reference 
in a discussion among several of my colleagues, and I said: Yes, you 
helped me, and I appreciate it, Mr. President, but I market-tested your 
immigration policy for 14 years, and you knew how Iowans were going to 
respond and how most people across the country were going to respond 
because I market-tested it.
  And he did a great job with it, and he gave it more clarity than I 
have given. But throughout all of that, it was: build the wall and 
secure our borders

[[Page 15758]]

and enforce domestic immigration law and reinforce ICE and reinforce 
Border Patrol and CBP, put that all together, and the birthright 
citizenship. Support English as the official language. These are just 
some of the pieces along the way, and we have refined some of this 
since then.
  And also, it was the New IDEA Act, the act that denies deductibility 
for wages and benefits paid to illegals, and let's see IRS come in and 
do the enforcement through the normal audit process. So if the IRS came 
in under the New IDEA Act and did a normal audit, they would run the 
Social Security numbers and other pertinent information of employees 
through E-Verify. If E-Verify confirmed that these employees could 
legally work in the United States, the employer will get safe harbor 
for having hired them; if they couldn't verify it, the employer gets 72 
hours to cure, we see, 72 hours to correct the record.
  But, if he is hiring illegals, then the IRS would say: All right. But 
you can't deduct this $10,000, $20,000, $100,000 that you paid this 
illegal, and so we are going to have to charge taxes on that because 
that deduction is not a business expense; it is actually income 
instead.
  So the tax that would be applied to that $100,000, so to speak, plus 
interest, plus penalty, and it would turn your $10-an-hour illegal into 
about a $16-an-hour illegal. That is the essence of it.
  And we require, also, that the IRS and the Social Security 
Administration that is collecting Social Security deposits from workers 
all across this country, sometimes multiple sources on the same Social 
Security number--I mean, scores and scores of people on the same Social 
Security number.
  Social Security stopped sending out no-match letters some years ago 
under the Obama administration. We put that all back together, and we 
require the IRS communicate with and trade information with the Social 
Security Administration to target and flag those false Social Security 
numbers. And then also bring the Department of Homeland Security to the 
table so that the IRS, Social Security Administration, and the 
Department of Homeland Security are all working together to cooperate 
to enforce immigration law and denying, then, the deductibility of the 
employer.
  The employer will have all kinds of incentives to clean up his 
workforce. In fact, we have a 6-year statute of limitations that 
compiles or accrues over the years. And so if you are sitting there 
with a 6-year potential liability, you are going to want to be with a 
clean workforce.
  That is another piece that is a policy that the President has been 
for, at least in the past. Now, things move on, but we are--we have an 
immigration policy that became part of the platform for the President 
of the United States, and in that policy and throughout, there are 
multiple times in speeches he announced that he is going to end DACA. 
He is going to end DACA, and we all expected that that would happen at 
noon January 20 of this year when the President was inaugurated out 
here on the west portico of the Capitol not very far from where I stand 
right now. That would have been consistent with his campaign promise: 
build the wall, and the unconstitutional DACA.
  And so while he was signing executive orders--and I give him credit. 
He went to the Oval Office, and at least he had a formal signing of 
multiple executive orders that day, launched his Presidency with work 
right on the spot instead of--he shortened up the parade for himself 
and went to work for America. Hats off to President Trump for that, and 
I support his entire agenda, and I am going to do my best to help him 
keep his word on that entire agenda.
  But we found out weeks later that DACA permits were still being 
issued, and they were still being extended, and those permits also 
included work permits.

                              {time}  2030

  So President Obama's unconstitutional DACA--deferred action for 
children of aliens--program was continued, and it continues actually to 
this day under the Trump administration, completely in contradiction 
with the campaign promises he made. I would say many more times than 
Barack Obama made the statement that he didn't have the constitutional 
authority.
  Barack Obama violated the Constitution. President Trump has continued 
that violation. And I am calling upon him to keep his campaign promise, 
restore the respect for the rule of law; and DACA, by the executive 
action, just sign it off and end it.
  If we fail to do that--and I have worked for 31 years to restore the 
respect for the rule of law with regard to immigration. In 1986, Ronald 
Reagan signed the Amnesty Act. At least he was honest about it. He 
called it the Amnesty Act.
  I listened to what I could on the debate from the House and the 
Senate. And I didn't believe it would pass either Chamber, but it 
passed both Chambers, and it was messaged to President Reagan's desk. I 
read the material and I thought that through. I thought: I don't have 
to worry about this. Ronald Reagan will know that, if he signs the 
Amnesty Act, it does great damage to the rule of law and it will take 
years to restore it.
  Now, the deal was to be that if you sign the Amnesty Act, we will 
give you the reinforcement and will enforce the law from this point 
forward, and illegal immigration will no longer be a problem in 
America. That is what the deal was. They promised us that this Amnesty 
Act in 1986 would be the last one ever, that they were going to then 
set about establishing respect for the law.
  Well, it seems to me that most everybody in this Congress has lost 
any memory they may have had about what was going on in 1986. Things 
haven't changed. There is nothing really new under the Sun. Human 
nature is human nature. It is what it has been for 2,000 or more years.
  But when there is a promise made that is ``first you give us this, 
and then we will see to it that you get that,'' let me see, we had 
Ronald Reagan's successor, Bush 41--George Herbert Walker Bush, a great 
American as well--who took the promise and said: ``Read my lips: No new 
taxes.'' He said that more than 22 times, too.
  But when it got to the point where he was wanting to get some 
spending cuts, the Democrats went to him and said: Do you know what? We 
have to raise taxes if you are going to get spending cuts. We will 
follow through on our part of the deal if you just sign the tax 
increases that they pass.
  So Bush 41, dealing honestly and straight up in believing that the 
people he was dealing with had the level of integrity that he had, 
signed the tax increase in exchange for the promise of the spending 
cuts. And we all know the answer to that, Mr. Speaker. We know the 
story. When you make a deal like that and you don't have the things on 
the table that you are supposed to get for that deal, never comes 
first. You don't see them.
  So George H. W. Bush 41 signed the tax increase. He violated his 
pledge of: ``Read my lips: No new taxes.'' Not only did he sign that 
and not get the spending cuts, but they beat him over the head with 
that at his reelection. He lost his reelection because of it, and we 
ended up with Bill Clinton.
  I think that lesson should be enough to make us all smart enough to 
know not to make a deal like that. Ronald Reagan recanted and regretted 
that he signed the Amnesty Act because of the damage he did to the rule 
of law when he signed that. There were to be 1 million who would be 
recipients of the Amnesty Act of 1986. It turned out to be 3 million 
because, let's say, the estimates were wrong, but there was a lot of 
fraud and corruption, and people slipped through because we didn't have 
tight enough security on it.
  So 3 million people got amnesty in 1986, and that was a path to 
citizenship--a fairly short path to citizenship--as well. I have talked 
to some of them, and they say: It was great for me.
  And some of them think that amnesty for another group of people is 
all right.
  But if the law means nothing to someone and they violate the law, or 
it

[[Page 15759]]

is an obstruction and they slip around that law, or, as we have today, 
some number that is 750,000 to 800,000 DACA recipients, they are 
demanding that we grant them amnesty. Illegal aliens came here to the 
Capitol, right out here on the grass, 2 weeks ago, on a Monday, 
gathering around, demanding that Congress grant them amnesty.
  Now, how do you go to a foreign country and be unlawfully present in 
that country and you go protest to the government that they should 
ignore their own laws because you have something that you want that you 
slipped across the border to have access to?
  And I do not buy the idea that most of these DACA recipients are 
kids. The average age is 23. Some of them go all the way up to 37. Some 
of them are bald. Many of them have gray in their beard. Some have a 
build like mine. I don't think of them as kids when I look at them. Yet 
there are some who came across the Rio Grande River on their mother's 
arm. And, no, they didn't know and they didn't form intent.
  But there are a whole lot of them who would qualify under this, who 
did have intent and did know. And we know there are a whole lot of them 
also--and I have witnessed this with my eyes and helped to collar some 
of them as this goes on, and I have walked through the desert and seen 
the burlap backpacks that they haul marijuana in into the United 
States. And it is not only marijuana.
  But some of these will qualify under DACA. Drug smugglers will 
qualify.
  And they say: We will do background checks.
  Well, how do you do a background check on somebody who doesn't have a 
legal existence in their home country?
  If there is no record of them existing there, then they will say: 
Well, we didn't find anything negative.
  Of course not. The person didn't exist.
  I know I had an individual I wanted on my Hispanic Advisory 
Committee. A smart, personable, young businessman. I said: I would like 
to have you sit down and I would like to hear your advice. I would like 
to have your finger on the pulse because I want to know what is going 
on in the minority communities, and I want to make sure that I am doing 
a good job of representing them, too.
  And he said: That is fine. I am interested.
  And I said: But before I put you on this committee, I have to make 
sure. So I want to see--and he said he was born in America--no. Excuse 
me. He said he was born in Mexico, but he is a naturalized citizen.
  And I said: Well, I would like to see your birth certificate.
  And he said: Okay. I can get it for you.
  And I said: How long will that take you?
  And he said: Well, it will only take me a few days. What do you want 
the birth certificate to say?
  Now, that is a legal document, and you don't get to ask that question 
if you have respect for the rule of law.
  I just dropped him as a potential candidate on my advisory committee. 
And a year or two later, I found out that ICE had come in, picked him 
up, and deported him. I didn't know that he was illegal, even at that 
time. I just didn't trust him any longer when he asked me that 
question. So that is another individual that could have been, and may 
still be, qualified to be a recipient.
  Those that come across the border, I have gone down and looked into 
the jail cells of the Border Patrol, and there were hundreds there at 
the times that I have been there--hundreds of them. They are sorted 
between children, women, men. And the men far outweigh the numbers of 
women or children. Some of the numbers we looked at were 80 percent 
men. Some of these men will present themselves as under 18--many of 
them will.
  And I have seen the cell with those minor males that are in there. 
And some of those, supposedly, minor males have gray in their beard. 
They would also qualify, or at least apply for. And if we didn't have a 
way to do a background check on them--and many cases we don't--and they 
give you a false name, what do you do after that if they had never been 
printed? They would qualify.
  And MS-13. We know that there have been a significant number of MS-13 
gang members, who also are DACA recipients. That has been published 
multiple times throughout the last couple of years.
  So many people that we would want to get out of this country would be 
granted a path of citizenship to stay in this country. That is why it 
is so wrong. And it disrespects natural-born American citizens. It even 
more disrespects naturalized American citizens, who came here the right 
way, applied the right way, and spent maybe 7 years to get in a 
position where they could take the naturalization test and then the 
oath; which is a grand day, by the way, Mr. Speaker.
  I look forward to every opportunity I have to speak to the 
naturalization services that take place in the Federal building in 
Sioux City, Iowa. And I always tell them: Remember this date that you 
became an American citizen, and I want you to memorize it.
  I hand them a Constitution with the date on it and my signature on 
it. Hopefully, they will have the reverence for the Constitution that I 
and many have developed as well.
  But we have a vigor that comes into America. These are self-selected 
people. If you have ten kids growing up in a family in Bangladesh or 
Ireland or Italy, or wherever it might be, and one of them has the 
inspiration to come to America, you are going to get the one who had 
the greatest aspirations, the one with the strongest ambition, the one 
with the deepest convictions in themselves. The most can-do sibling out 
of 1, 5, 6, or 10 is the one that has the dream to come to America. So 
they line up and come here legally. And they built this country for 
over 200 years. We need to respect the rule of law that they came here 
to embrace.
  We have people who are leaving countries that don't have the rule of 
law, that are corrupt. And when I go to Mexico, I see the problems down 
there. Any country that I go to, I can put together a formula to put 
that country into the First World from the Third World, except for 
corruption.
  How do you address the corruption?
  Law doesn't mean law in Mexico and points south the way it does in 
this country. If you get pulled over by the police, they might pull you 
over because they might need an extra tip that week. You may not be 
speeding, you might not have run a stop sign, they might just pull you 
over, and you have to pay the ``bribe,'' ``mordida.'' That is 
corruption itself. That doesn't happen in this country hardly ever 
because we get their badge number and they are out of a job.
  No country is free of corruption, but we have a healthy country with 
a rule of law. It is a pillar of American exceptionalism. We cannot, 
Mr. Speaker--and my message is to the President--we cannot reward 
lawbreakers. It destroys the rule of law. Our hearts cannot be leading 
ahead of our heads.
  There is a DACA recipient that I would like to adopt, if that is what 
it takes to keep that individual in America. I think that much of that 
individual. I like this individual a lot and respect this individual a 
lot, but I love the rule of law. I love the rule of law because, 
without it, we descend into the Third World.
  So this debate about, ``don't you have a heart, don't you know that 
these are just 800,000 kids, and can't we just give them the confidence 
of having a legal status in America,'' I say, no, not if you love the 
country, you can't do that.
  And it is not our doing. They either came here of their own volition, 
formed the intent, or their parents did. The law is the law. We don't 
tell the judge: Don't be putting this criminal in prison because he has 
kids at home.
  We don't worry about the separation of families when it comes to 
enforcing the law against American citizens, but we worry about 
enforcing the law against people who have intentional and willfully 
divided themselves.
  Now, what happens if we should grant amnesty to DACA recipients and 
then deport their parents?
  That splits up the family.

[[Page 15760]]

  I say: Get right with the law, go to your home country and apply to 
come in the legal way. By the way, when you arrive in your home 
country, if you truly are characterized for DACA, you will have a free 
American education that the American taxpayers pay for. You will be 
bilingual. You will have familial connections in your community. You 
will have a skill set that is there, a good educational set. You will 
know what it looks like to live in a country where things work 
generally right.
  And if you think of the 7,000 Peace Corps workers that are working in 
about 130 countries in the world and how much good they do, they go to 
countries without speaking the language, they don't know where they are 
going to land, they find a way to help out and contribute. People going 
home is not being condemned to hell. People going home is like sending 
out 750,000 or 800,000 fresh Peace Corps workers back to their home 
countries.
  What could be a greater economic development plan for Mexico, 
Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua than for their best and 
brightest to go home and build their countries while they apply to come 
back to the United States?
  That is the best solution we can have, Mr. Speaker. And we don't even 
have a serious debate on that in here unless I bring it up.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address you here on the 
floor of the House of Representatives this evening. I am hopeful that 
we made a little bit of progress. I will continue to defend the rule of 
law and the Constitution. I challenge my colleagues to do the same.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________