[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 1746-1749]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          THE PRESIDENT'S EXECUTIVE ORDER IS NOT A MUSLIM BAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
King) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I regret I wasn't able to work with 
all of the speakers here tonight they wanted to pack within that hour. 
I understand that they have prepared themselves to give this speech 
tonight, and there will be opportunities in each succeeding day. I just 
wanted to recognize their right to speak on this floor under the rules 
and be as lenient as I can, and also, of course, defending my own 
rights at the same time.
  But I would acknowledge that we did have a discussion before the 
Judiciary Committee today, and I want this Congress to have the level 
of comity so that we can exchange ideas and bounce them off of each 
other. And I have long believed that if I can't sustain myself in 
debate, I have got two choices. One of them is go back and do more 
research and build enough information that I can to sustain myself; and 
the other is adopt the other fellow's position. I am not very inclined 
to do that, but I am inclined to listen to their positions.
  So, as I have listened to these positions here for more than an hour 
here on the floor, things come to me and I hear these words recurring 
over and over again. I didn't get a full count on it, but I know I 
heard 7, 8, 10, or maybe even more, times saying that the President's 
executive order is a Muslim ban.
  Now, looking through that executive order--and I haven't read it 
thoroughly word by word, but those who were vetting that executive 
order, to use that term, tell me the word ``Muslim'' is not used in 
that executive order. I am going to assert that is the case, that 
President Trump did not use the word ``Muslim'' in his executive order, 
and that the executive order is not a Muslim ban, but is a ban on 
travel from seven countries that are Muslim majority.
  If it was his intention to try to block Muslims from coming into 
America, he would have started with Indonesia rather than Iraq and 
Syria and the war-torn countries.
  So I will assert it is not a Muslim ban, except that the words 
``Muslim ban'' are in the talking points of the Democrats, and they 
will repeat it over and over and over again, as if somehow they could 
amend the executive order to have the words ``Muslim ban'' in there so 
they can have their grievance to the executive order.
  I saw this unfold on Friday, when the President issued his executive 
order. It was a big day, I admit. He has had a lot of executive orders, 
and they have been raining down pretty fast on this country, and I am 
glad of that.
  We should objectively deal with the directive that is there. It is a 
temporary travel ban that focuses on the seven countries that President 
Barack Obama identified as the most dangerous countries, I call them 
terrorist-spawning countries. It is a prudent thing on the part of the 
President to temporarily suspend travel from those countries. I would 
have added a few more countries in the suspension of the travel to the 
United States.
  It is his intention, and I think it is clearly stated within his 
executive order to evaluate the security circumstances coming from each 
of these countries and determine how we can have a better policy, 
especially to do extreme vetting on the travel people that are coming 
from not only these seven countries, but other countries that do send 
terrorists to us. And I won't start down that list, but we know it is 
extensive.
  I will say some of the countries that are not on this list are Saudi 
Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other countries that would be listed 
as Arab countries, but including Indonesia, which is the largest 
population of Muslims, but the lowest concentration of terrorist 
production per Islamic society that I know of in the world.
  So I think this reflects the danger and the risk to Americans and a 
prudent approach to this. It is not only the ban on travel that is not 
a Muslim ban, not a Muslim ban--if I had to say that enough times to 
negate the times that that has been asserted here on the floor, I 
suppose I could; but we are going to hear it in the news every day 
because that seems to be what pays off politically.
  The argument that it was a religious test; this executive order is 
not a religious test. It doesn't reference religion. In fact, when I 
have asked questions of the officials of the Obama administration, I 
have said to them: Why is it that Christians don't seem to be allowed 
into the United States as refugees under the Obama administration?
  We saw one group that was 1,500-some-strong that had one Christian in 
there. So I traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, and sat down with the lead 
on UNHCR, the United Nations Council on Refugees. And there, I believe 
her name is Kelly Clements, I asked: Do you determine when you are 
vetting refugees, what their religious is?
  She says: Yes, we do.
  And she said they had 115,000 refugees that they had run through 
their process that they had vetted.
  And of those 115,000, I said, how many of them are Christians?
  And she said: 15,000.
  So the rest of them, roughly the 100,000, she said almost all of them 
would be Muslim.
  But they fill out a form. They attest to their religion. They are in 
the database. We can identify Christians. They are the ones that are 
persecuted. They are the ones that are being targeted because of their 
religion. The Assyrian Christians, the Chaldean Christians, and then 
not Christians, but the Yazidis, they are the three groups that are 
targeted the most. We should establish an international safe zone for 
them in their neighborhood.

[[Page 1747]]

  When the word comes out that these countries have accepted a list of 
refugees, such as Lebanon or Jordan, there are also countries that 
haven't accepted any significant number, like Saudi Arabia.
  Why shouldn't the neighbors accept refugees, Mr. Speaker?
  They are the ones that have the most security at stake. They are the 
ones that are most invested in trying to establish stability in that 
part of the world.
  Don't we want people who have lived, say, in the Nineveh Plains 
region since antiquity to be close to home so that when security 
circumstances and economic circumstances settle down, they can come 
back to their homes where they have lived since antiquity?
  Of course we do.
  We see data from last year that says $64,000 is about the typical 
cost of resettling one refugee in the United States; $64,000. But that 
same amount of money will take care of a dozen people over in their 
neighborhood rather than one person here in America.
  Why shouldn't we get a 12-to-1 return on the taxpayers' investment 
and help people in the region where they live so that they can go back 
to their homeland again and grow their families and grow their 
population and their industry and re-establish their roots rather than 
let ISIS push the Christians out of the Middle East and push the 
versions of Islam out that they hate the most?
  If we take people out of there and resettle them in large numbers, we 
are giving them the region that they would like to have ethnically 
cleansed of the people they disagree with. So we are helping out their 
war effort by pulling people out of the way and bringing them here.
  They need to stay close to home. Especially the young men need to 
take up arms and defend their own country.
  I went over to the Middle East and I walked in that river of epic 
migration, that river of humanity that is flowing into Europe and has 
been flowing into Europe for 2 years, nearly solid. As I walked in that 
river of humanity, I asked them a lot of questions and I was able to 
communicate with them; sometimes an interpreter, sometimes hand 
signals, sometimes a word here or there of English or something else.
  Here is what I asked them: Where are you going?
  This was in Serbia. In my mind, as I watched them board the trains in 
Serbia--1,000 at a time and day and night, I might add--I would say: 
Where are you going?
  Germany.
  Do you have family there?
  No.
  Do you have friends there?
  No.
  Do you have a job there?
  No.
  What will you do?
  I don't know.
  How will you live?
  Germany will take care of me.
  That is the answer that I got over and over again. Eighty-one percent 
of that human river were, let's say, military-age males.
  They left their family? They leave their family in Syria and Iraq to 
go into Europe? What responsible father does that when he should be 
home defending his country and defending his family?
  They are not going because they are war refugees, for the most part. 
That wave is over. They are going primarily because they are economic 
refugees. They are economic refugees because we hang the carrot out in 
front of them and we say: Come to the United States. We will bring you 
over here and we will make sure that we take care of all of your needs. 
You don't have to worry about anything.

                              {time}  1800

  We are competing with countries like Germany, Austria, Sweden, and 
the Netherlands because they offer a standard of living. The law in 
Germany is that there is a baseline standard of living that every human 
being receives, work or not.
  Angela Merkel says: Come to Germany, and we will take care of you.
  I recall a 10-minute-and-49-second videotape of her in a townhall 
meeting speaking to a blonde German lady who stood up and said: Why are 
you doing this? They are killing us. They are raping us. They are 
taking German jobs. Why do you do this?
  Chancellor Merkel's answer was: We cannot be ruled by fear, and your 
voice is a voice of fear.
  So she just devalued or denigrated the voice of the grief-stricken 
German woman.
  She said: We cannot stop them. We must take care of them. The 
violence that they are perpetrating against Germans is not going to be 
as great as that which we have perpetrated against others in our most 
recent history.
  That is the statement, Mr. Speaker. The constitution in Germany says 
they have to accept refugees. We put that in there post-World War II. 
Because they had created so many, we required that they take them. In 
their law that they have written there is a baseline standard of 
living. The other part was Nazi guilt. So Chancellor Merkel opened that 
all up because of those roughly four reasons that I have given you, and 
1.6 or so million poured into Germany.
  The last two New Year's Eves have seen rape after rape after rape--
many of them not even investigated--right there next to the dome of the 
Cologne Cathedral. It is an annual event now: New Year's Eve in 
Cologne, migrant men come and rape German women there. That is the last 
2 years, and you hardly find that in the news unless you know where to 
look. I do look, and I talk to people over there.
  This is not a Muslim ban. This is not a religious test. You can read 
the executive order and determine that. The difference is my 
constituents will check to see if I am telling them the truth. Others' 
constituents apparently don't hold them accountable. It has no 
reference to whatever color people are, whatever race they are, 
whatever ethnicity, or whatever the national origin--I guess in a way 
because it says if you are coming from these nations. I will agree, we 
have Iraqis who have helped us and saved American lives, and we have 
Afghans who have helped us and saved American lives. But, on balance, 
this has been blown completely out of proportion.
  Here is another statement that was made about the refugees. This is a 
quote from the gentleman who spoke here, ``an executive order banning 
Muslims.'' Again, it is an executive order, and it bans travel from 
seven Muslim countries--primarily Muslim countries--but it bans 
Christians as well as Muslims coming from those countries. As for the 
Christians, I think we should have been allowed in because they are the 
ones who were targeted.
  By the way, Egypt is not on this list, but the Christians were 
targeted there. They blew up the church where the Coptic Pope presides. 
I visited him there. They killed 50 or so Christians, and they have 
blown up churches all over the place. That is, by the way, Muslims 
attacking Christians, just for the record.
  When the gentlewoman spoke here of the 3-year-old who washed up on 
the beach, that is the one that troubles me a lot. I saw that image. I 
watched that picture, and it went right into my heart like it did most 
everybody else in this country. That has been several weeks ago that 
America was mobilized by that little boy lying face down on the shores 
of the Mediterranean after the boat had capsized and many of them had 
drowned, including his father.
  But it came out a couple of days ago that that family had been living 
in Turkey for 3 years, and that the father of that little boy's sister 
had been sending money to them so that they could slip into Europe 
because the father needed a new set of teeth. They were motivated so 
the father could get dental work perhaps most likely in Germany. It 
wasn't because they were running from the war. They had stabilized 
themselves in Turkey for 3 years. They were going to Germany for the 
dental work of the father. That is a matter now of public record that 
has been exposed by Kerry Picket who did the research back on this and 
corroborated by a number of other news outlets as well.
  So it isn't always what we see. It isn't always what it seems. The 
people

[[Page 1748]]

who speak into the megaphone in the airports aren't always telling us 
the truth. We find out sometimes it is anything but the truth.
  What is the truth is that there has been a tragic war in the Middle 
East, and it continues. The civilian population has been decimated in 
Syria, and there are refugees going in all directions. A lot of it is 
because we have created and we have allowed for a power vacuum--a power 
vacuum in Syria. That brought Putin into that power vacuum, and he was 
able to assert himself and, so far, at least, protect al-Assad. In 
doing so, we see the operations of the invasion that has come out of 
Baghdad and gone up towards Mosul and taken the east side of the river 
in Mosul. The west side is still held by ISIS.
  I think that is a shortsighted strategy to have Shia militia, 
Iranian-supported Shia militia going in to take Mosul when Mosul is 
populated by Kurds in the suburbs and Sunni Muslims in the inner city. 
How are the Shias going to govern a city that doesn't, in any 
substantial way, include their population? So I am troubled by 
shortsighted decisions that don't seem to take into account the tribal 
connections that we know have been so much a part of the sectarian 
strife that has been a part of Iraq, Syria, and also Iran in the Middle 
East.
  I want people to be self-determining. I want people to be able to 
determine their own government and rule their own countries. This is 
going to take a prudent knowledge of those tribes, and it is going to 
take input from them. We need to build alliances in the Middle East 
with the moderate Muslim countries that will join with us in bringing 
out stable governments that respect the autonomy of the populations 
that live within the various regions. That is the best solution that 
can come about, and it doesn't put a lot of American boots on the 
ground.
  So I hope we can step back, Mr. Speaker, and take a deep breath and 
recognize it is not a Muslim ban, and it is not a religious test. But I 
want this statement to go into the Record with clarity, and that is 
that the President of the United States not only has the constitutional 
authority to bring about this suspension of travel from these seven 
countries because of security reasons, he is specifically authorized to 
do so by the United States Code, by Federal Law. So he is operating 
within the law; he is operating within the Constitution; and he is 
operating within the realms of prudence, at least on a temporary basis.
  I am hopeful that the input that we have is an input that will help 
bring about the dialogue in this country. The debate we have here on 
the floor hopefully causes people to think about this, go back and read 
the executive order, look for the word Muslim or Muslim ban, look for 
any kind of religious test. There is none. But I think we ought to 
know.
  I mentioned and didn't go deeply enough into this that when the 
executive branch of government, the USCIS in particular, and ICE 
included, when I asked them: When you have these applicants for 
refugees that you say you are vetting, then do you know what religion 
they are?
  They say: No.
  Do we ask them? No. We don't ask, but the information is there in the 
database at UNHCR, at the United Nations. They had vetted 15,000 
Christians, and one got through in a list of 1,500. I think that was 
probably a mistake. I think there was a religious test for refugees 
under Obama, and I think it was a preference for Muslims, and it was 
discriminating against Christians.
  I hope that we can have a stable policy that brings people relief, 
but I think the prudent one is give them a place to live in the Middle 
East, protect them, and create an international safe zone so that they 
can live in peace where they have lived since antiquity.
  Mr. Speaker, I have addressed the topic of what I heard as I sat on 
the floor tonight. I really came to the floor here to speak in favor of 
Judge Neil Gorsuch.
  Mr. RASKIN. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland and welcome 
him to the United States Congress.
  Mr. RASKIN. I thank you for your thoughtful comments tonight, and I 
think you made some good points. I think you effectively made the point 
that this is not, strictly speaking, a Muslim ban. It is not a ban on 
all Muslims entering the country. In the popular vernacular, the public 
has taken up basically what was the current President's language that 
he used during the campaign. So people are using it for kind of a 
shorthand.
  But I want to ask you about the ban. It is not the case that there is 
no religious reference in the executive order because it does say that 
the religious minorities from those countries are given preference, and 
that would be the Christians in those countries.
  One thing I think that does need to be corrected is thousands of 
Christians were admitted from the Muslim world under the Obama 
administration, and there was no discrimination. In fact, I think there 
were almost as many Christians admitted as Muslims.
  But here is my real question for you. The 9/11 hijackers--which was 
the worst terrorist atrocity ever committed on our shores, thousands of 
Americans were killed, the country plunged into chaos--came from three 
countries: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. All three 
of those countries where Trump Industries does business were exempted 
from the ban on the seven countries. Why? What is the policy 
justification for not including that?
  None of the countries that are included in the ban produced any of 
the terrorist attacks that we saw in Orlando, in San Bernardino County, 
or any of the other ones. So how were those chosen and the source 
countries for the 9/11 attack exempted?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, in addressing both of those 
topics, the gentleman's data that says that more Christians than 
Muslims have been brought in as refugees, I have heard that as an Obama 
administration information that has come out. That doesn't match up 
with the data that I have seen when I traveled to places like Geneva 
and looked at that or looked at the data that came out before that 
release. The data up to that release indicated entirely the opposite 
which I have identified. And the data that came out in the last weeks 
of the Obama administration asserted that they had a significant number 
of Christians who were part of that.
  I appreciate the gentleman's point that the executive order 
references religious minorities, and I appreciate that it does, because 
I think they are the ones that are targeted. But the gentleman's point 
about the origin of the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 is an 
accurate point, and the largest number of them came from Saudi Arabia.
  I would just assert that because Donald Trump has done business in 
three of those countries, I would be surprised if he didn't do business 
in a place like Dubai where they have developed a wonderland out of the 
desert, and his business in each of those countries. How many other 
countries has he done business in? I don't think we can correlate that. 
But what we can correlate is that these seven countries are the 
countries identified by the Obama administration.
  So, maintaining my time, we can have conjecture on this back and 
forth. But the facts are that it is the Obama administration that 
identified these seven countries, and it is the Trump administration 
that brought them forward with the travel ban on them. I believe it is 
a coincidence that these other countries are places among many 
countries that Donald Trump has done business in.
  I know that I only have about 7 minutes remaining to take up Judge 
Gorsuch, but I would yield to the gentleman briefly, simply out of the 
comity that we discussed earlier today.
  Mr. RASKIN. Again, that is very gracious of you, and I appreciate the 
spirit with which you engage in this dialogue. I think it is something 
we really do need to get to the bottom of. To my knowledge, Trump 
Industries is not doing business in the poor Muslim

[[Page 1749]]

countries that were targeted like Somalia, Libya, and so on, but 
perhaps I can be corrected.
  In any event, the fact that he has done business in Saudi Arabia, in 
Egypt, and United Arab Emirates--in the wealthier Muslim countries--it 
may be logical as a matter of business practice, but I don't think that 
can become the basis for American foreign policy. I think that is the 
reason why this policy has created such outrage in America and around 
the world because it doesn't seem to have any national security logic 
to it. It is not about terrorism unless you can convince me that those 
seven countries actually generated terrorism.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, it is conjecture that any of 
the Trump businesses had anything to do with this decision. It is pure 
conjecture. If the argument is that Donald Trump didn't do business in 
Somalia, I wouldn't blame him one bit. If anybody watched ``Black Hawk 
Down'' then they would know a good reason. It is essentially a 
terrorist state in Somalia.
  So I will thank the gentleman for his comments, and I am going to 
turn then to Judge Neil Gorsuch and see if I can make that point yet 
this evening, and it is this: We had this vacancy in the Supreme Court. 
It is a vacancy that is brought about by the tragic death of Justice 
Antonin Scalia, a man whom many of us have admired for a long time and 
enjoyed his friendship, his company, his sense of humor, his 
gregariousness, and also especially his dissenting opinions that were 
written for the law school students whom he always understood would 
have to read the dissent when they studied the cases. He wanted to 
write them in such a way that they would read them, hopefully enjoy 
them, and remember them. He has been a speaker before the Conservative 
Opportunity Society which I have chaired for some time, and he has done 
it a number of times. We really enjoyed his company. We had very 
engaging debates and discussions.
  There is a huge hole in the United States Supreme Court created by 
the loss of Justice Scalia. I am grateful that we have taken serious 
time in filling that hole and seeing a nominee come forward that has 
the chance to grow into the shoes of Justice Scalia.

                              {time}  1815

  As I went to the White House a couple of nights ago to be there to 
witness the ceremony of the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch, we were 
all briefed on a lot of things that had to do with his bio. I am just 
quickly going to touch on some of the high points in Judge Gorsuch's 
bio.
  His undergraduate school was Columbia University, with honors, Phi 
Beta Kappa; Harvard Law School, cum laude; a Truman Scholar, where he 
received his juris doctorate; then went to Oxford as a Marshall Scholar 
and received another doctoral degree, a Ph.D. in philosophy. Then he 
became a clerk for Justice White, and then, later on, for Justice 
Kennedy.
  If he is confirmed, it will be, we think, the first time that there 
has been a clerk that became a Justice on the Supreme Court serving 
with the Justice whom he clerked for. So that is a unique component of 
Judge Gorsuch.
  He is a man of the West. He has a strong work ethic and common sense. 
He is an outdoorsman. He loves to fly-fish, and he raises animals in 
his barn at home.
  His background, he was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but 
worked blue-collar jobs and worked his way up. We know that he 
accelerated his education very well.
  For his 10 years on the bench, he clerked for the judge on the D.C. 
Circuit, and then from there, clerking for the Supreme Court Justices, 
whom I mentioned, White and Kennedy.
  He was then appointed by George W. Bush on May 10, 2006, after a 
decade in private practice where he became a partner in a large law 
firm. They must have liked him there. They took him in as an associate, 
and he became a partner for a decade.
  Then in his heart was that he wanted to be a judge, and he wanted to 
protect the Constitution and the rule of law. After a year at the 
Department of Justice, George W. Bush appointed him to the D.C. 
Circuit. There, he was confirmed by the United States Senate, without 
dissent, by a voice vote on July 20, 2006. He served for more than a 
decade as a district court judge. His record is stellar.
  When I asked questions about Judge Gorsuch, I learned a number of 
things. One of them was that, of the 21 candidates that were listed by, 
first, President-elect Trump and, now, President Trump--he would draw 
from that list and nominate, and then seek confirmation and appoint 
from that list--each candidate was asked the question as they were 
interviewed: Who would you name for this position if it isn't going to 
be you?
  A tough question.
  So, it is like saying, I would interpret that as: Who do I think is 
second best? That is the only reason I would be there is if I thought I 
was the best choice. I would think that is what all of them must have 
thought as they were interviewed.
  There were 21 candidates. You take one out of that number, because 
that is Judge Gorsuch himself. We don't know how he answered this 
question. When the other 20 were asked, if it is not to be you, who 
shall it be, everyone said Judge Neil Gorsuch.
  There can't be a stronger endorsement than that. It shows a respect 
from all of his competing peers. I believe that they believe he will do 
the best and the clearest job of preserving, protecting, and defending 
our Constitution and read the letter of the Constitution and interpret 
it, as Judge Scalia did, to mean what it says and to be understood to 
mean what it says and was understood at the time of ratification of the 
body of the Constitution or the various amendments, whichever the case 
may be. That is the strongest and most profound.
  When I asked the question what is his level of respect for stare 
decisis, the people who know him and studied him say he has more 
respect for the text of the Constitution than the decisions that have 
been made along the way. I think that he will recognize those 
decisions.
  I asked that question, would he look into them to determine if that 
rationale has helped his rationale but always anchor it back to the 
Constitution and the original understanding. This is secondhand of the 
people that know him, but the best answer I can get from that is yes.
  The next one is the Chevron doctrine. He has written about the 
Chevron doctrine. It is pretty clear that he thinks that the Chevron 
doctrine is unjustly created by the courts and that you shouldn't give 
administrators of undue legislative authority the benefit of the doubt.
  So those things sound really good to me. I am looking forward to the 
confirmation hearings. Hopefully, an expeditious confirmation of Judge 
Gorsuch. I am very, very happy with the selection that President Trump 
has made, and I really appreciate what I saw there that night as I 
watched Judge Gorsuch.
  In the middle of his speech, he turned and looked at his wife, Marie 
Louise, and there was that significant eye contact that told me that 
they are a bonded couple that are a team together. The friends of the 
family tell me she is more conservative than he is.
  So I look forward to his confirmation. I think the President of the 
United States has made a terrific choice. Let's get the judicial branch 
of government up and running again, along with the executive branch, 
and let's keep up pace here in the House. We have got some work to do, 
too.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________