Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, my amendment is an amendment that I have brought in past years. What it does, it says none of the funds made available by this act, including the amendments made by this act, may be used to implement, administer, or enforce a prevailing rate of wage requirements in subchapter 4, which is basically referred to normally as the Davis-Bacon Act. The Davis-Bacon Act is a bill that was passed back in the early 1930s. The purpose of it was to lock the labor out from Alabama that was going, during the Depression years, up into New York to build Federal buildings and competing with the labor unions up there that happened to be locking Black workers out of the workforce in New York. It was brought to us by a Senator and by a House Member from New York-- both Republicans, by the way. It is the remaining Jim Crow law that I know of on the books, and it imposes what is called a prevailing wage on all contractors doing Federal contracts that are $2,000 or more. King Construction has been in business since 1975. That is 41 years. We have dealt with this Davis-Bacon wage scale for a long time. Not only is it expensive, and it costs the taxpayers extra money on every single project on which it is imposed, but it also brings about inefficiencies that are brought about because of the reporting requirements, the confusion that is there. We happen to have seen on our jobs people that jump from machine to machine to try to get to the highest paying machine, not the most efficient one. That is just one picture of what Davis-Bacon does. There are many others. Our numbers from our company are someplace between 8 and 35 percent, depending on your project, that the cost of these projects are increased unnecessarily. It does not reflect prevailing wage. It reflects an imposed union scale. This is something that this Congress has to come to grips with if we are going to ever get to balance and be responsible with the taxpayer dollars. I urge its adoption. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I would say in response to the gentlewoman from Minnesota that the actual application of the Davis- Bacon wage act is not what we would call a fair labor standard, not when you have some hacks that sit in a room once a year and decide whether and who gets how much of a raise. It is not free enterprise. It is not merit. It is based on backroom deals. It is based on imposing union scale and making the taxpayers pay for that. If I don't hear that this year, it is the first year I haven't heard it, and that is the argument that the quality of the work isn't there. Well, the honor of our employees for 41 years, and many other merit shop employees, is on the line. We meet plans and specifications. They are Federal projects. They are inspected, and the standard of the work is indiscernible, except that we don't happen to have union squabbles on our jobs, and we pay the wage that is necessary to keep good help, and we have had some of the lowest unemployment rates that anybody has had. In fact, my rates were zero because we kept our people on year round. We take care of our employees. We provide a benefits package. So do the merit shop people I know. So often I hear from the other side of the aisle that the Federal Government has no business interfering in a relationship between two or more consenting adults, and this is one of those cases. It is a contract of labor between the employer and the employee. The Federal Government needs not be involved in that. When they are, it invariably costs the taxpayers more money. We can dredge five harbors instead of four. We can repair five locks and dams instead of four if we pass this amendment. Why would we, with the starvation of resources to our interior, why would we deny those resources the most efficient application? I urge the adoption of my amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I have to say in contradiction to the gentleman who just spoke, on-the-job injuries, I don't know what would support that, whether or not there is a Davis-Bacon wage scale on that. That has to do with your safety policy on the job. It has to do with the culture of the company, and it has to do, to a degree, with the culture of the projects that you are on. The fewer benefits side of this thing, I think it goes the other way, because Davis-Bacon requires that you add dollars into this Federal- mandated union scale to pay benefits; and when that happens, you are paying a benefit figure on a dollar figure to the employees rather than, say, a health insurance package that is going to take care of them far better and in the long term. I point out also today that we had testimony from the Secretary of Transportation from the State of Oklahoma, Secretary Gary Ridley, who said that they run into the inefficiencies driven by Davis-Bacon where you have as many as three or more different pay scales on a single project that might stretch out over 6, 8, or 10 miles. They end up in different wage scales. So the contractors have to keep track of who crosses that line in what machine. The confusion of all that adds to the inefficiencies as well. The most important thing is this: the taxpayers are paying an unnecessary premium for projects that we could be far ahead of where we are right now if we hadn't had all these years of this Davis-Bacon wage scale. I would reiterate: it is ironic that it is the Democrats who are always on the floor defending the last Jim Crow law on the books. It is time to get rid of the last Jim Crow law on the books. Let free enterprise prevail. Let the taxpayers be the beneficiaries of this. I urge the adoption of my amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk, Number 38.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, my amendment is an amendment that I offered before in the past. It simply says: ``None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to enforce Executive Order 13166.'' That is an executive order that was filed by then-President Clinton on August 16 in the year 2000, in the last months of his Presidency, that directs all Federal fund recipients--and that would include Federal contractors, State and local governments, as well as the Federal Government--to facilitate language interpretation with anyone who seeks to engage with them. That has been an executive order that has been highly costly not only to the taxpayers, but to the consumers in this country, in time and in money. It was one of the initial things that began to slow down this process of assimilation in America. We know that a common language is the most powerful unifying force known throughout all of history, whether it is English or whether it is some other language in some other country, and that we have a strong effort to establish English as the official language of the United States. I happen to be the author of that accomplishment in the State of Iowa. Thirty other States have English as the official language, and some 83 percent of Americans support this policy. Yet President Clinton's executive order subverts this and works to fracture us rather than unify us. So it will save us billions of dollars. I didn't bring that figure to the floor with me, but we know it has been very expensive over time. We are 16 years into this. It has been destructive to the unity of the American people. I want to see us united as a people, and this is one of the steps that we can take. I reserve the balance of my time, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I would say first in response to the gentleman, and I respect his position and his background, but I would say if he had a development in the Greek language, he might think of that pursuit of happiness as what our Founding Fathers did. They called it eudaimonia, E-U-D-A-I-M-O-N-I-A, the Greek word. That means developing the whole human being--the body, the mind, the spirit, and the soul--all together. That pursuit of happiness wasn't about a tailgate party. It was about becoming the best human being that you could. That is a little difference in the translation of the language that got lost. It is an example of how we are divided by language rather than unified by a common language. Another example would be Israel. It became a country in 1948. In 1954, they adopted Hebrew as their official language. I asked them why, and they said: Because we saw the example of the United States, that you have embraced English as your common language. It has unified the people. We needed to have a language to unify the Israelis. And it has been successful, and I could give you examples. One day I got in a taxicab and there was a gentleman there. He spoke perfect English and he didn't seem to fit what a normal taxicab driver was. I said: Where were you raised? He said: Bosnia. How long have you been here? Seven years. Did you learn English before you came? Not a word. How can you speak perfect English in 7 years? He said: It helps when you have to. So I am not about discouraging the utilization of other languages, and this amendment does not do that. What it says is I am dispatched by the taxpayer dollars that are contributing to the division of America rather than let us have an encouragement to pull together in the same language. That is what this is about. It is a fiscally responsible amendment that addresses an 83 percent majority in 31 States that have already taken this act. I urge its adoption. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I would say in response to the gentleman, I give some thought to the story of the Tower of Babel. We know that the construction manager there was Nimrod. He was building a tower to the heavens. They had the arrogance to believe that they could bypass God and get to heaven without Him. The Lord looked down on the Tower of Babel and He said: Behold, they are one people, they speak all one language, and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. He scrambled their languages and scattered them to the four winds. Humanity on the planet has been at each other's throats ever since. That is the message of the Tower of Babel. My message is unify us as one people. It is not discouraging the utilization of other languages, but it is discouraging the idea that we should establish ethic enclaves in America, that we should isolate ourselves somehow in these neighborhoods and not be assimilating into a broader neighborhood. I will give an example to the gentleman. When Bush was President and we had a representative from the Department of Labor who came to testify before the Small Business Committee, she said: We have a problem. We don't have enough workers in the factories to run our punch presses and our lathes. Simple industrial work. Why is that? She said: Well, the applicants are not literate in the English language, and we have great difficulty in teaching them how to operate these machines. I said: I can understand that if they are first-generation immigrants. In fact, I can understand it if some of them are second generation. She cut me off and said: Even third generation. So the pick-up of the language and the transition into the next generation is not happening at the speed it did because our enclaves are getting larger and more populated and people are more isolated into that. I want to encourage people to be successful, to go out and get an education and to assimilate more broadly. I want to be able to look across this country and know that I can walk into a city council meeting anywhere and know that it is being conducted in English. I want people to be able to talk and communicate with each other. When I go to a foreign country and they speak their language, I get the sense of that, too. We gravitate towards common kind, and the more common we can be, the more things we can have in common with each other, the more likely we are to be bonded together. That is what this amendment is about. I urge its adoption. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Nebraska for bringing this amendment. I would like to just focus us on what this is about. This is a Humane Society of the United States vegan/ vegetarian kind of initiative. It is about taking meat off the plates of the American people. They are in here in this Congress constantly year after year with another attempt and another attempt. The USDA had meatless Mondays, and the Secretary of Agriculture said: I don't know where that came from. It just happened. I don't even know what staff person put that up on our Web site, but they took it down right away. Our military? We would starve them for meat? We need them to be aggressive and healthy. There is a picture here from The Atlantic that shows the Norwegian army. They have meatless Mondays. And they are fighting climate change with meatless Mondays. Then, why is this a political agenda? Let people eat what they want to eat. Let's not take it off of their plate. They need it. By the way, there is a reindeer on the shoulder of this Norwegian soldier. It is the number one favorite meat in all Norway, but they can't eat it on Monday because the political agenda seems to want to drive this thing. Let people have freedom. Let's have a strong military. Let them have a lot of protein and a lot of energy to defend our God-given liberty.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk made in order by the rule.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, my amendment is a bit different than the gentleman from Alabama's previous amendment in that I drafted this amendment to block the use of any funds within this appropriations bill from being used by our military to house illegal aliens or unaccompanied alien children. So my amendment is a bit more specific, and I think it is on target in that it says that: ``None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to carry out or in response to the memorandum of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. . . . titled `Memorandum for Secretaries of the Military Departments Director, Joint Staff' and dated November 25, 2015.'' The summary of that is that this memorandum, which I have in my hand, dated November 25, is from the Department of Homeland Security to the military that says identify the inventory that you could allow to be used to house unaccompanied alien children, and then they want to enter into private agreements for each facility. So this amendment that I have, as drafted, really says this: No military bases or buildings will be used to house the unaccompanied alien children, period. So that covers, I think, the topic that is in Mr. Byrne's amendment, and it covers the broader topic, which is our military should not be used to inappropriately house and be part of the welcome party that the President has set up that is encouraging people to come into the United States illegally. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I would point out the distinction that the ranking member defines as without a difference, without a distinction. There is a difference, and the distinction is that the previous amendment said no new construction and no renovation on existing bases. My amendment says no funds can be used to even negotiate any provisions nor do new construction or renovation. None of the resources can be used. Mine actually blocks the President's policy as opposed to catching up on the other end of it. But the important point of it is this. We have a President, an administrative policy that has defied the rule of law. He has even refused to enforce the laws that he has signed, and then put the welcome mat down in, especially, Central America. We have reports of planes lifting off from places like Guatemala City flying unaccompanied alien children into the United States, and then they claim the Department of Homeland Security has a legal obligation to care for them and house them--well, not for everybody on the planet that the President has sympathy for, Mr. Chairman. So what we are trying to bring forth here is a greater respect for the rule of law--the President, I believe, has gone outside the law with this memorandum--a greater respect for the rule of law and moving towards a fiscal responsibility that may require a sense of austerity. We don't have either one with this administration. This amendment does also preserve the Article I authority of the United States Congress, which has been eroded significantly over the last 7\1/2\ years. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I would say again, addressing you, and with the attention of the body, that this is one of the pieces that the President has used to go outside the bounds of his authority and inside the bounds of our constitutional authority. I have made it a point to come to this floor time after time and protect our Article I authority that is vested in us and to be able to make sure that we keep all of this in front of us. The House has never failed to send a message to the President of the United States that we will defend our constitutional authority, at least with regard to immigration. This amendment does that. I urge its adoption. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, my amendment is very similar to Mr. Gosar's. I think it is important that we continue the debate on this particular issue. What it says is that none of the funds made available by this act may be used to extend the expiration date of the memorandum titled Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest program changes. Again, it is the President reaching outside the bounds of the law. It is the President deciding he is a legislator instead of the executor. His job is to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, not make them up and go around the United States Congress. I think there is something missing from this debate. It is an assumption that if we have someone in the military and they happen to be covered under DACA, that somehow they are legal. The President can't legalize people that are unlawfully present in America by law. He just asserts that executively, and we have to go to court then to reverse it and get the courts to change that. But the President has relentlessly amended immigration law by executive fiat and executive edict, and this is another time. Under my amendment, he has the authority to put specialized people in place in the military if they have a special skill set. Now, one of those skill sets is not being an interpreter from English into Spanish. We have plenty of people who can do that. But it is for perhaps interpreters who speak Arabic; it is people who have special skills. It is not for the President to use this as a blanket amnesty. By the way, people who come into this country under DACA have violated the law. Now, whether they were old enough to be aware or not, it is a matter of law. It doesn't matter to the law. They wave their DACA card at me and say, ``I am now here legally.'' They are not here legally. They just presume they are because we haven't been able to yet block the President on this issue; but we have litigated it, and I have been one who helped initiate the lawsuits to do that. Now, when someone gets into the military who is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, chances are they were in the military before they ended up with that card. But if they did, if they came into the country illegally and the President said, ``I am not going to enforce the law against them until such time as DACA expires,'' and then he would like to extend it, they broke the law to come into America, then they lied to get into the military, and then they took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. So I would say which of those three times were they really honorable, the last time or one or two of the first two times? That is really what is at stake here, Mr. Chairman. We can't be allowing the President to go outside the law. I urge the adoption of this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I would point out that I disagree with the gentleman from Arizona. There is a provision that allows the MAVNI program to be used by the Secretary of Defense, and it has notwithstanding language: Notwithstanding paragraph, the Secretary concerned may authorize the enlistment of a person if that Secretary determines that such enlistment is vital to the national interest. That has long been used in the MAVNI program. It has just never been used under another President to circumvent our immigration laws and fast track people not just into the military, but into citizenship. If a DACA person is able to get into the military under this MAVNI program or any other program, they don't have to go the green card route with a lawful permanent residence card. They can go directly on a fast track to citizenship. It is a way of circumventing our immigration laws. The President has been using it. And this amendment would block at least that provision of it, so I urge its adoption. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I was unable to vote on 5/18/2016. Had I been present, I would have voted as follows: ``Yes'' on rollcall No. 200. Stated against:

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for pulling this Special Order together and for his generous introduction, and especially for Mr. Yoho's leadership on the restoration of article I authority and addressing the executive overreach that has become part and parcel of the Obama administration. It didn't begin there, but it needs to end with the next President of the United States and be slowed down in the last months of the Obama administration. Mr. Speaker, I was just exercising a thought here as I was reviewing some of the executive overreach that we have seen from this President, and it occurred to me to take a look at the Declaration of Independence and review some of what I will call the lamentations of our Founding Fathers. It is to this effect, Mr. Speaker. When we get to the laments, these are the things, the wrongs that have been committed by the King of England. It says in the Declaration: ``The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations''--that sounds like the history of our current President of the United States-- ``all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.'' This is from our Declaration, Mr. Speaker. I will just quickly hit some of these. ``He has refused his Assent to Laws . . .'' ``He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws . . .'' ``He has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation . . . of people . . .'' ``He has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual . . .'' ``He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly . . .'' ``He has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby''--summarizing that, hindering legislative activity elsewhere. ``He has endeavored to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither . . .'' ``He has obstructed the Administration of Justice . . .'' ``He has made Judges dependent on his Will . . .'' ``He has erected a Multitude of new Offices''--that would be his czars. ``He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies . . .'' Well, not quite, but rumors of them do exist. We could go on and on and on, the grief that King George dished out on our original colonists here at the time of the Revolution, at the time of this Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, but I look at the present times, and it rings to be pretty close--along the way there are echoes of 1776--in the overreach of the President of the United States. I mentioned them. This is a list from some testimony before the Executive Overreach Task Force, which I have the privilege to chair, and among this list are some of these: He has appointed policy czars to high-level positions to avoid constitutionally required confirmation hearings--that could be lifted almost right out of the Declaration of Independence. By modifying, delaying, and ignoring various provisions of ObamaCare, in violation of the law itself--that is a long list of things on ObamaCare that the President has altered outside of the law. By attacking private citizens for engaging in constitutionally protected speech--utilizing the IRS to diminish that as well. By issuing draconian regulations regarding sexual assault on campus. By ignoring 100 years of legal rulings and the plain text of the Constitution and trying to get a vote in Congress for the D.C. Delegate--I had forgotten that one, actually. By trying to enact massive immigration reform via an executive order, demanding that the Department of Homeland Security both refuse to enforce existing immigration law and provide work permits to millions of people residing in the U.S. illegally. Now, these all ring like the laments, the charges that were laid against King George in 1776. It is the same tone. It is a similar message. It is going outside the law and outside the Constitution. By imposing Common Core standards on the States via administrative fiat. By ignoring bankruptcy law and arranging Chrysler's bankruptcy to benefit labor unions at the expense of bondholders. And I could continue. Well, here is one that is of significant interest to my State and I think to Florida and many other States, and that is his imposition of a regulation called the Waters of the United States. That dropped on us on May 27, 2015. The Waters of the United States said we are going to regulate all the navigable waters of the United States. Oh, and this ambiguous term that is called--let's see. It used to be ``and waters hydrologically connected to them.'' That got litigated into being too ambiguous even for the courts to tolerate. They are the masters of ambiguity. But instead they put the language in that said ``these waters of the United States shall be the navigable waters of the United States and waters that have a significant nexus to the waters of the United States.'' Now, a significant nexus is going to be determined by the administration, another term of ambiguity. I see some eagerness over here on the part of the gentleman from Florida. Does he have something to add?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, to the gentleman from Florida, we may have a legitimate competition going on here. The Waters of the United States regulation would put 96.7 percent of my State under the EPA's regulatory jurisdiction. Florida would be a competitor to that number, I would think.

Mr. KING of Iowa. All of Florida. I have said that once you regulate waters hydrologically connected to or once you get to define significant nexus, that goes all the way up to the kitchen sink. We know that soil itself, whether it is under water, it can be saturated with water, and just old black Iowa dirt can be 25 percent water, so they have got it all, this overreach of the Federal Government. Our Founding Fathers envisioned that there would be a competition between the branches of government to sustain their constitutional authority in each branch. They wanted to draw as bright a line as possible between the three branches of government, with the courts being the weakest of the three. They expected that we would jealously guard the constitutional authority. Congress writes all the laws. The President is supposed to enforce all the laws. That should be pretty clear. But the President has reached across that over and over and over again, as evidenced by this list of laments that I offer, Mr. Speaker. Does the gentleman from Florida have something to add?

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Florida for those timeless thoughts. Something that our Founding Fathers discovered was a concept that was relatively new to society at the time, and that is the concept of God-given liberty and God-given rights, natural rights, natural rights that did emerge with Locke, for example, in the United Kingdom, but they hadn't been implanted into culture and civilization until they were implanted in America. Here we are in this country, everyone that serves in this Chamber takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, as do all the Senators on the other end of this Capitol Building, as does everyone who puts on a uniform to defend our country, and many of them who serve within our executive branch as well. The President is a bit of an exception because he is required to deliver an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and he is required to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. And what he has done, instead, is turn himself into an independent legislative body. He has said 22 times: I don't have the constitutional authority--and I am going to summarize here--to grant amnesty to millions of people in America. That is up to the legislature. He taught the Constitution at the University of Chicago for 10 years as an adjunct professor teaching Con law. And that was the message, I am sure, that he taught in those classrooms; and it was a message he taught in a classroom out here at one of the high schools in D.C. shortly before he decided to reverse his position and impose this edict of amnesty on the United States, which went down through a long path of litigation for more than 2 years and a week ago last Monday was heard before the United States Supreme Court, at least in the DAPA case--the deferred action for parents of anchor babies is actually what that acronym stands for, in my view. So I take this oath that I have to support and defend the Constitution seriously. I have the privilege of serving on the Constitution and Civil Justice Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee and of chairing this task force. I congratulate the gentleman from Florida for stepping up to the lead on this issue.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I am looking at our job and our destiny here, and I think that our constitutional obligation is to restore the pillars of American exceptionalism. You can identify many of them in the Constitution itself. In the Bill of Rights it is pretty well summarized: freedom of speech, religion, the press, the freedom to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances. The Second Amendment rights, which are the property rights that the gentleman mentioned, I would point out that, in the Kelo decision, which happened about 10 years, the Supreme Court ruled that they could amend the Constitution itself. Well, they didn't say they did, but that was the effect of their decision. ``Nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation'' is part of the Fifth Amendment. The Supreme Court ruled that private property could be taken for private use as long as there was just compensation. So they struck the three words ``for public use'' as a conditional clause out of the Fifth Amendment. We had a Supreme Court that amended the Constitution, effectively. We have a Supreme Court last June that amended ObamaCare by writing words into it; ``or Federal Government'' would be the three words inserted there. And then, the next day, they decided they would create a new command in the Constitution, a command that all States shall conduct same-sex weddings and honor them from other States, as if somehow that were the will of the people or something done under the Constitution. This is an appalling reach on the part of the Supreme Court. It is even more appalling on the part of the President of the United States, and it is our task to identify what needs to be done and start down that mission of restoring the constitutional authority and this balance between the branches of government. I am happy to have a chance to say a few words.