Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I want to reiterate the positions that were taken by the gentleman from Texas. We have political subdivisions, primarily, as sanctuary cities that are violating Federal law, and all we are saying is follow the law. The point hasn't been made here that the Department of Justice could enforce this law, but they choose not to, and that empowers the political subdivisions, particularly the cities that continue to advance these sanctuary policies. Can you imagine being a police officer and being told that, if you pick up people who are unlawfully present in America, that you can't tell the INS--even if you are having coffee with them--that you have got a jail full of people who are unlawfully present in America that are required by law to be placed into removal proceedings? That is just illogical. I would point out that, if you disagree with this section of the code, you are here in this Congress, bring a bill to try to change it. In the meanwhile, I am for full funding of the SCAAP funding. I think that, when we have people in the country and we are not enforcing immigration law, we should make sure that local jails are funded when they are picking up people that are unlawfully present in America. I support the Byrne JAG grants. I want to give that to them, but we cannot do that under provisions if the local subdivisions are violating law. Then with regard to the statement that this is a problem that doesn't exist--no, it is a problem that exists all over this country. It is growing. It is replete in city after city. We need to restore respect for the rule of law. That is what this amendment does. I urge its adoption. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Alabama for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I would say, first of all, that neither the gentleman from Massachusetts nor the one from Chicago can quote any anti- immigrant statements from anybody over on this side. That is their tired rhetoric. It is not a fact. What is a fact is we initiated a lawsuit called Crane v. Napolitano clear back when these first unconstitutional acts were delivered by the President. He clearly has violated the Constitution. I don't actually think there is any worthy debate to the contrary, and this Congress has voted three times--three times--to shut off the funding or to eliminate the President's lawless, unconstitutional actions, Mr. Speaker. That includes June of 2013, King amendment, and very similar language in August of 2014 and January of 2015. So I wanted to announce to this Congress that we will stand on the Constitution. This Congress cannot send a message to ratify the President's lawless actions. We must defend the Constitution because that is our oath, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. His oath is to take care to faithfully execute the laws, and instead, he has done the opposite. So we have pro-amnesty people on the other side. I will support the rule, the Brooks amendment, but I will not support the NDAA if the amendment fails.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. I rise in support of H.R. 36. I would point out that we have had an estimate of 58 million abortions in this country since Roe v. Wade. That is roughly 14 million by Planned Parenthood alone, and it is about 1 million abortions a year in this country. We ended partial birth abortion for one reason: because those babies' lives were ended the moment before they could scream for their own mercy. Now, with the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, we are going to be able to stop that abortion that is coming because we can see in 4-D ultrasound that these babies are writhing for their own mercy. These babies need to be brought forward into us so that they can live, learn, laugh, and love so that, one day, they can stand here and celebrate the life that we gave them.

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 brought up in previous appropriation cycles. What it does is defunds and eliminates the Davis-Bacon federally mandated wage scale components in the construction of MILCON on this underlying bill. It recognizes a whole series of history that has been built since the early thirties on the Davis-Bacon Act. I have spent my life in the construction business, Mr. Chairman. I started a construction business in 1975. We are celebrating our 40th year in business, and, almost every one of those 40 years, we have dealt with Davis-Bacon wage scales. I have made out, personally, that payroll over and over again. I have also seen the inefficiencies that are created. The net effect is a de facto union scale. It is not a prevailing wage, but a de facto union scale. The net effect is it creates inefficiencies, and it increases and inflates the cost of our construction projects. Our records, over the years that I have been in business, show that Davis-Bacon wage scales--the federally mandated wage scales--range between an additional 8 percent up to 38 percent; so I just bring that back to a bit of a moderate, careful average, and we have a 20 percent increase. The bottom line on this is that, if you want to build 5 miles of road, repeal Davis-Bacon. If you are willing to accept 4 miles of road, accept a federally mandated union scale. That is true with whatever else we might be doing in all of our military construction and everything else. This is a substantial savings on this bill, and I would point out that this is the last Jim Crow law that I recall that is still on the books. It was designed to lock Black construction workers out of the construction work in New York back in the thirties during the Great Depression. When there was a Federal building contract that was let and the contractor went to Alabama and brought in African Americans to do that work, undercutting the essentially White labor union forces within New York, two New Yorkers--both of them Republicans, Davis and Bacon--got together and brought this Jim Crow law. Now, we are dealing with union scale mandates. I would point out I used to have this debate with the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Frank. He would make the argument that two consenting adults should be able to agree to whatever it is those two can do. I would say I agree, and there is no reason for the Federal Government to be involved in a relationship between an employer and employee that agree to a wage scale. We pay prevailing wages. They are not union scale wages, as a rule; but they are prevailing wages. We do that because we want to hire the best people. We do the best work that we can do under the plans and specifications offered to us--government work and private sector work altogether--for 40 years. We are about to hear that the quality of the work isn't that, that the government knows best, and government should intervene between a relationship between two consenting adults. We are about to hear some kind of response on why we shouldn't get rid of the last Jim Crow law on the books. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, first, in response to the gentleman's argument of a fair wage for a fair day's pay, that is determined by supply and demand in the marketplace. This is the United States of America, and on the flashcard the USCIS puts out, they say: What is the American system of America? It is free enterprise capitalism. You have to pay the going rate to get the people to do the job. That has been the case for a long time. I have done that for 40 years, and the quality of the work is there, and we are proud of the work that we do. I don't know how anyone argues that the Federal Government has got to intervene in setting the marketplace for wages on construction projects $2,000 or more, but not intervene in the price of gas or the price of electricity or the price of some of the commodities that we are dealing with on a regular basis. If we are going to have a robust economy, we have got to get a value received for the work that is done, and that value received is determined by supply and demand in the marketplace, not by a de facto mandated union scale. I know how these scales are reached. I know how these conferences go. Mr. Chairman, we want to save the taxpayers money. We want to build 5 miles of road, not 4. We want to build five bases, not four. We want to put five different components out there, instead of four, and get a return on the taxpayers' dollar so that we maximize the utilization of the hard-earned tax dollars that come from some of the people that are working on these projects. They want a return on their investment, too. You can't argue that there is fiscal responsibility in this country if we are going to impose an additional 20 percent on every dollar that is spent to produce construction projects on MILCON in America. So, Mr. Chairman, I urge the adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on roll call no. 131. Had I been present, I would have voted YES.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on roll call no. 130, had I been present, I would have voted NO.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 102, had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.'' Stated against:

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 103, had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on roll call no. 51, had I been present, I would have voted Yes.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on roll call no. 52, had I been present, I would have voted Yes.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas. Because we want to elect a President who will take the oath on January 20, 2017, to sign the repeal of ObamaCare at the podium on the west portico of the Capitol as the very first act of the next President of the United States. So I thank the leadership for incorporating my language into this bill. I thank those all across this country who have stepped up to defend our constitutional liberties, our personal liberties. When this is done, we will get to work on putting together a good health insurance and health care delivery system in America in spite of all of the time that we have lost fighting over this unconstitutional mess called ObamaCare.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding and for leading around this Nation on this issue. So far away from Texas as even Iowa, the gentleman from Texas has fought for the full 100 percent repeal of ObamaCare and laid out, I think, a good strategy for the future health care circumstances in America. First, Mr. Speaker, I would say that, when this passed, many of us went through a long battle here on the floor of the House of Representatives and outside among the masses of people that came here and surrounded the United States Capitol to plead: Do not take our liberty. Let us manage our own health and our own health care, and let us purchase a health insurance policy that is right for us, not one that the government thinks is right for us, and let's do something that is constitutional. Well, we watched as that drama unfolded and engaged in that drama. I have a number of scars left over from that. In the end, ObamaCare passed by hook, by crook, and by legislative shenanigan. History shows that. The litigation that has emerged and the litigation yet to emerge will shape this to some degree, but this Congress needs to resolve this. What had happened was, in the election in 2010, 87 freshmen Republicans were elected into office here to come, and every single one of them ran on the full 100 percent repeal of ObamaCare. That was a transformative election. It shifted the majority from the Democrats to the Republicans, Mr. Speaker, a mandate to repeal ObamaCare. We acted on that mandate. In fact, the morning after ObamaCare was passed, I was at the door-- my staff was actually at the door. I had written a bill in the middle of the night to repeal ObamaCare. I had the first draft to repeal ObamaCare, a component of 40 words, and it applies to two sections of the bill. That bill was drafted March 24, 2010. It was filed March 25, 2010. I filed a discharge petition down here on the floor on the 16th of June 2010--it received 173 signatures--with Republicans in the minority, Mr. Speaker. It has been a long effort. We voted on the full repeal of ObamaCare, H.R. 2 by the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cantor), on the 19th of January 2011; another repeal by Mr. Cantor on the 9th of July 2012, always with the 40-word King language in it; and again on the 16th of May 2013, H.R. 45. We have been bringing the full repeal of ObamaCare here to the floor over and over again to give everybody an opportunity--even those who didn't have an opportunity to get involved in this debate--to go on record and tell us where you want to see the future of the health care circumstances here in the United States. Every Republican up to this point has voted to repeal ObamaCare. Every Member of the House, with the exception of those that were sworn in for the first time this Congress, has had that chance. Now we give everyone that chance, and we will send a full repeal over to the Senate so the nine freshmen Republicans over there can clearly also go on record.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on roll call no. 53, had I been present, I would have voted Yes.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlewoman from Florida for organizing this Special Order, and I associate myself with her words and her position and also that of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. DeSantis). I didn't, Mr. Speaker, realize how much was in him about this issue. It was instructive for me to listen to that stream forward. I have had the privilege of serving here in this Congress with a good number of Members that do a great job of representing the interests of the Cuban people, and I also had the privilege of going to Cuba on a legal trip some years ago before I came to this Congress. But I would take you back, Mr. Speaker, to a time in 1959 and trace some of this history. The revolution against Batista in 1959 was back before we had as many replays on television as we have today. And I recall watching the revolution in Cuba, and as Castro took over, as the promise came that they were going to bring democracy to Cuba--that was the promise. It was going to be democracy; it was going to be free and fair elections, a government of, by, and for the people of Cuba; and they were going to choose their leadership. But I remember seeing on television the videos of the people who were lined up against the wall and executed without a proper trial, executed without true justice. I remember in particular--it is branded in my memory--a man who insisted: If you are to shoot me here in front of this wall, let me give the order for my own execution. And he stood there in a Cuban shirt down to here--white pants, white shirt--and he raised his hand and faced the firing squad and dropped his own hand. That was the signal to the firing squad. They fired. He was shot to death in front of that wall, along with many, many others. We don't know at this point how many political prisoners have been executed, how many have died in custody. We have got a list of some; we don't have a list of all. But we know this: it has never been, since that time in 1959, a government of, by, and for the people of Cuba. And the hope that there will be the day that the Cuban people would be free was manifested--or at least attempted to be manifested--at the Bay of Pigs. I would have liked to have seen the air cover that would have made that be successful. We didn't get that. But we look for the day to come ever since that the Cuban people could be free. The Cuban people could be free. Since that time, there has been the nationalization of the real property, which we heard from Mr. DeSantis. At the time that Castro took control of Cuba, 25 percent of the real estate in Cuba was owned by Americans. They held deeds to that property. There was other land in Cuba that was owned by people from other nationalities. Every other country was compensated for their real estate, except Americans. No American that I know of has been compensated for their real estate. They hold those deeds to this today, sometimes a second generation. Before I came to this Congress, while I was there, there was also a situation where the exchange rate for Cuban peso to dollar was 21 to 1 at that time. And so if anyone achieved an American dollar, they could take it into a dollar store and they would get one peso's worth of goods for it or they could deposit it into a Cuban bank and they would get one peso for that. That is a 20-peso difference. And that is one of the things that supported the Castro regime financially. Another thing that happened was sugar was 6 cents a pound. The Russians paid them 52 cents a pound in oil for the sugar. That was a subsidy of Cuba. When the Soviet Union--it was the Soviet Union rather than just the Russians--collapsed, then the subsidy for Cuba also collapsed and the Cuban economy was no longer propped up. You saw Russian tractors sitting out there, having been stripped for parts, in the only country in the world I know that had gone from mechanized agriculture to animal husbandry agriculture because their machines no longer worked. And the taxicabs are driven by doctors, with a five-cylinder Russian diesel under the hood of a 1954 Chevrolet. This country has been frozen in time. It has a collapsed and failed economy. It has been propped up by the subsidy of, first, the Soviet Union, and then later on, the Venezuelans, who are collapsing, themselves, today. This is a country of people that are vigorous people. They are an outgoing, hardworking, I will say, gregarious people. I thought I would see people down there that had the thousand-yard hopeless stare. I am sure that exists. But I also saw people that worked hard and they kept their chin up and they kept a smile on their face. I thought, If these people could be unleashed, if they could be unleashed by the heartbeat of freedom, if we could just get them that opportunity to be who they are, they would become a very, very successful island and trading partner and a nation unto themselves and, one day, an ally of the United States. So my dream has been to help them with that opportunity, and my dream has been to one day swim ashore at the Bay of Pigs and walk out and wade onto a free Cuba, with a free Cuban. But, Mr. Speaker, the Cuban people have been burdened with more than five decades of Marxist slavery that they have had to face. And this policy of the President's that comes right on the cusp of what is likely the biological solution in Cuba, which would be the end of the Castro brothers that would come along naturally and the opportunity to bring about a regime change in Cuba, the President of the United States may well have handed Cuba another 50 years of living in Marxist slavery when he had just the opportunity for them to be free. So our policy here in this Congress, I am hopeful, is the policy that says: regime change in Cuba and a government of, by, and for the people of Cuba. And I, one day, hope and pray to do what I have said with my colleagues here and many others, and that is swim ashore at the Bay of Pigs and wade out on the shore of a free Cuba. God bless them all.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Clerk, I rise to place in a nomination for election to the constitutional office of Speaker of the United States House of Representatives a man who has served as speaker of the statehouse, a man who respects this institution, a man who understands that power and principle cannot coexist without recognizing the sanctity of each Member's vote in this House of Representatives, a man who will restore this institution of the House of Representatives. I place in nomination the name of Daniel Webster, a Representative-elect from the great State of Florida.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the 20th anniversary of ProEnglish, a national grassroots organization based in Arlington, VA. ProEnglish works on Capitol Hill, in the states, in the courts, and in the court of public opinion to defend English as our common language and to make it the official language at all levels of government. ProEnglish is an effective and vigorous advocate for English language unity, and for the past 20 years, ProEnglish has worked hard to stop harmful, divisive policies such as bilingual education and multilingual ballots. At the time of their founding, only 18 states had passed laws establishing English as the official language, yet thanks to ProEnglish along with other patriots, 31 states and countless towns, cities, and counties have official English laws today. Originally founded in 1994 as English Language Advocates, it was renamed ProEnglish and helped defend Arizona's state official English law. This law was the subject of a 10-year long federal court challenge, Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona (1997). The case was eventually appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the ruling there was important in upholding official English laws in other states. ProEnglish has filed amicus curiae briefs in a number of successful landmark English cases, including Home v. Flores (2009), where the U.S. Supreme Court found that bilingual education (where children are segregated by language and taught primarily in their native tongue) was not the most effective way of teaching children. In Anderson v. Utah (2001), ProEnglish successfully argued in defense of a year 2000 official English ballot initiative that passed by 67% of the popular vote. This ballot initiative declared English as Utah's official language. ProEnglish has even come to the aid of various small business owners, like Richard and Shauna Kidman in EEOC v. Kidmans (2002), who were bullied by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for implementing lawful English-language workplace policies. The organization has testified before Congress and various local and state legislatures with the goal of restoring the Melting Pot principle inherent in having a common language. Our common English language has helped make the U.S. the most successful multi-ethnic and multi-racial nation on earth. Over 90% of the world's nations have an established official language, but despite the high levels of public support, the United States is not one of them. Polls continue to show that immigrants--like all Americans--support official English in overwhelming numbers. The vast majority of Americans agree that official English laws are necessary to prevent waste, protect freedom, and protect national unity. Official English laws are nondiscriminatory, because they treat all Americans, of whatever background, alike. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to recognize ProEnglish for its 20th anniversary. I ask all of my distinguished colleagues to join me in commending ProEnglish on its commitment to preserve English's role as the nation's unifying tongue.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Idaho for yielding to the gentleman from Iowa. There are about four people on the floor right now that do know the difference. I rise today, Madam Speaker, to give a great message of gratitude and thanks to Congressman Tom Latham. I want to tell a little bit of the narrative about how this unfolds from the perspective of Iowa, and that is this: we are all politics all the time. There is no off season for us. You are always on season. When the Iowa caucuses emerge, there is a big focus on Presidential politics. If you are on the State Central Committee, you are in the middle of that arena. That is where I first met Tom Latham and first became aware of his commitment to the political arena and to conservatism. I would want to let the body know, Madam Speaker, that Tom Latham didn't come from a place that was a big magnificent megalopolis, unless you would want to describe Alexander, Iowa, with 160-some people, as a big megalopolis. 168 people would be the population of Alexander, Iowa, rooted in now a three-generation seed company, and rooted in the soil. I don't have to explain this to the people from either Idaho or Iowa, but all new wealth comes from the land, and it regenerates itself every year in the form of corn in our neighborhood and soybeans and potatoes in Mr. Simpson's neighborhood. When you see where their origin of wealth comes every year, and you see the families that came across the prairie and turned the sod for the first time and maybe built their house out of it and put their roots down into that soil, and then took the family farm that raised the wealth and boiled that out of there and over from the farm to the town to the city, and you see a family business with multiple brothers engaged in it, and three generations now, you know that they are tied to the heart of the heartland and the good of what is good about Iowa and America. That is what Tom Latham brought to the political arena from the State Central Committee to a primary and to the United States Congress in 1994, and then catching that wave, that 1994 wave and being elected to the United States Congress 20 years ago. I take a look at him now, and I think he is no worse for wear. It is the same Tom Latham that came here 20 years ago that is going off into retirement today, or shortly here at the end of this Congress, and he hasn't lost his enthusiasm. Here is what I see--this is a Steve King perspective, Madam Speaker-- and that is that everybody that comes to this place has their own style and their own way of getting things done. But the people that have worked with Tom Latham for these years know that it isn't always an issue that is run up the flagpole. It doesn't come necessarily with lights and blaring horns, but it gets done. It gets done in a quiet way, it gets done, sometimes with just a slow persuasion. It gets done with building a network of people that want to help and want to get things done. So when I was elected to come to this Congress in 2003 and inherited a lot of the real estate that had formerly been represented and the constituents that had formerly been represented by Tom Latham, I noticed that there were ribbon-cutting ceremonies taking place in my district, and I wasn't necessarily the lead guy when it came to the ribbon-cutting because Tom Latham had laid the groundwork for that for years, and they knew it, and they still know it. The friends and the relationships that were built by doing a good job of representing constituents throughout those years are still there. They still exist. And it has been an easy thing for me to step into that neighborhood because they were well taken care of and well represented. So, now, after moving from Agriculture over to the Appropriations Committee, I would just remind the body that Tom Latham, today, is the only Iowa member on the House Appropriations Committee. He has done a good number of things with projects, not only the transportation projects, but the Iowa National Guard, ag, economic development, small business development, and he is currently chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies, and he serves on the Appropriations Subcommittee for Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug, and also on Homeland Security. That is an influential footprint in this Congress, and the people that arrive here as freshmen and sophomores recognize that. But I recognize, also, this man that is rooted in Iowa soil, who is the continuation of the family farm and the family business that relies upon the very foundation of our economy, that all new wealth comes from the land, and that there is a core of family and faith and neighbors and neighborhood that Tom Latham has brought to this Congress. Wherever he ends up in his retirement, we all want to congratulate him and say to Tom Latham, ``Congratulations, you have earned it. You have picked your time, you have done it your way.'' There are only about three ways to leave this Congress: one of them is to get beat, one of them is to die in office, and the other one is to choose your time to retire. I am glad that you are fit and vigorous and prepared for a fit and vigorous retirement. But it wouldn't be appropriate, Madam Speaker, for me to conclude my portion of this without saying into this Congressional Record a deep and heartfelt thank you to Kathy Latham. It is from me personally, as well as, for a lot of reasons, across this Hill that with the work that she has done, you got, oftentimes, two for the price of one with Tom and Kathy Latham. She sacrificed a number of times and made my life easier and made things work better for Iowa, for the House of Representatives, and for this country, and I think that the best interests of all of us have always been what made the decisions in the Latham family, which, by the way, now ranks up in about the top three of Iowa political families. So pay attention, Madam Speaker, to the Latham family going forward. They are not done yet, but they do have a patriarch that is going to ride off into retirement. Thank you a lot, Tom Latham, for serving our country. God bless you.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, and I always appreciate that opportunity to come here and voice some of the things that are expressions often of the voices of my district and also the voices of Iowans, the voices of the American people. I happen to live in a place that is the best place in the world to live and raise a family. The anchor of the values that are there and the culture in the neighborhood are reflected in the people. I rise today, and I come to the floor to express my sadness at the passing of a very, very good friend and a great man, Dwayne Alons. Dwayne Alons passed away Saturday night after a short but brutal illness with cancer. His life meant so much to so many of us. He lived in Sioux County. Sioux County is that place where I would think, if I would go to sleep and wake up in the park in Sioux County, I would think I might have died and gone to heaven. It has got the best balance of faith and churches and economics and education and families and culture and work ethic and neighborliness. It has got the best balance of anyplace I know, and Dwayne Alons contributed so much to that. In almost all of my years that I was in the State legislature, I served in the senate while he served in the house of representatives. When I needed a partner on a cause over in the house, it was Representative Dwayne Alons that I called upon, and it was he that came over to talk to me when I needed some help on my side or if he needed help on the senate side where I served. We stood in the same philosophical and ideological square year after year after year. The 6-year endeavor that I had embarked upon in 1996 and early 1997 to establish English as the official language of the State of Iowa, that effort came up short in the first general assembly. That was 1997 and 1998; then, in 1999 and 2000, that effort came up short again. In the next general assembly, I talked to Dwayne Alons, and he agreed that he would be the individual carrying the bill in the house of representatives, and there, in that general assembly, after 6 years of trying, we were able to pass English as the official language over from the senate to the house, and there, Representative Dwayne Alons floor- managed the bill, and we were able to put that bill on then-Governor Tom Vilsack, a Democrat's desk, where he signed the bill that established English as the official language of the State of Iowa. That was a crowning achievement of much of the work that we had done together. We also opposed the Iowa State Supreme Court's decision called Varnum v. Brien, when the supreme court, magically, unanimously decided that, somehow, in the ratification of our State constitution and their equivalent of the 14th Amendment of the Equal Protection Clause that they had magically written in there, that marriage didn't necessarily have to be between a man and a woman. We were able to pass legislation earlier in 1998 that established that a marriage in Iowa would be between one male and one female. Representative Alons definitely supported that. When the judges unanimously decided that they could rewrite Iowa law without a legitimate legal and logical constitutional basis, it was Dwayne Alons that stepped up to defend marriage between a man and a woman. He did so without apology. He did so without reservation. He did so because he always acted on his convictions. He carried deep convictions. He had a style not at all similar to mine, Mr. Speaker, a quiet, understated, respectful style, a strong, faithful man who was also a prayer warrior. Whenever there was a Bible study group, you could look around and Dwayne Alons and his wife, Clarice, would be there. I would like to just chronicle some of the milestones along in his life that he represented the Fourth and then I think, later on, the Fifth District in the State of Iowa. He also joined the Air Force and became a fighter pilot, an F-16 pilot, and rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Iowa Air National Guard, the 185th--the beloved 185th. He raised a pilot, his son Kevin. That example that was before his four children was one that they acted on. He had such an influence on their lives, on the lives of their four children and their 14 grandchildren--a quiet, respectful, staid, resolute voice that lived by example. When he spoke, you knew you wanted to hear what Dwayne Alons had to say. He was stricken by cancer in September and taken just right after Thanksgiving, but his wife, Clarice, they had 47-plus years and the four children that they raised and the 14 grandchildren, and their daughters-in-law and sons-in-law and a host of family and friends remember Dwayne, remember him as I did, grateful to God that we had him as a gift to us and had an opportunity to get to know him, an opportunity to call him a friend, to work with him, to pray with him. On his last days, I had the privilege to stop and see him in the hospital where I think we all knew that he was in his last days, and I was able to go to his bedside and hold his hand and offer a deep prayer with and for him, and the strength that he had left after I said, ``Amen,'' he said, ``Now I am going to say a short prayer of my own,'' which I could hear--I could barely hear--but in that, there was a message to me, ``Don't let up, don't give up, keep up the fight, keep up the fight,'' as Dwayne did for his whole lifetime in a quiet and a polite and a respectful way, but as a leader. He led by example, he led by conviction, he led with the moral authority of a man who knew who he was, a man who understood his faith, a man who understood the Constitution and the rule of law, the structure of government and his role in society as a father, as a grandfather, as a husband, as a friend, as a State representative, as a brigadier general in the Air Guard, and as a father of another officer in the Guard. As I think about Dwayne Alons and think about having to say goodbye to such a good friend, I look at the back of the announcement here for the funeral, and it couldn't be more fitting. It is something that, of course, I think the language has been embedded into the hearts and the minds of the American people, and it is the poem ``High Flight.'' As an F-16 pilot, as a general, he always saw the clear blue skies, and ``High Flight'' says this: Oh. I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of Sun-split clouds--and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of--wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there, I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air . . . Up, up the long, delirious burning blue I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace Where never lark, or even eagle flew-- And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod. The high untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God. That was the life of Dwayne Alons, my pheasant-hunting friend, my legislating friend, my Bible-studying friend, my air warrior friend, and my prayer warrior friend, General Representative Dwayne Alons, may he rest in peace, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate your attention to his life and the opportunity to place some of these memories into the Congressional Record here. His last ask of me and his last prayer, which was not for him but for me, tells you something about the sacrifice and the will of the man that we have lost as a servant to our country, but his inspiration lives beyond, keep it up, don't let up--understood the Constitution. Here we sit today, Mr. Speaker, with a President who lectured on the Constitution for 10 years as an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago and many times lectured about the separation of powers. Article I is the legislative body of the government, this Congress, comprised of a House and a Senate. Article II is the executive branch, the President and the people that he gets to command. Article III are the courts. The separation of powers that was defined by our Founding Fathers, this was not three equal or coequal branches of government--not designed to be, Mr. Speaker; instead, the legislative branch was designed to be a preeminent branch of this government, article I, the branch closest to the people, most responsive to the people, and most accountable to the people. Of the legislative branch, of the article I, the two bodies of the Senate and the House, it is the House of Representatives that is established to be the quick reaction force. Up for election every 2 years, so that if the people are dissatisfied with their Representatives in the United States Congress and the policies that we bring forth, then the people have an opportunity to change out those seats in this House of Representatives, all 435 of them, within each 2 years, we are all up for election or reelection. If the people decided they wanted to throw out all 435 of us, they had their chance just about a month ago today, and if they decide 2 years from now, short a month, that they want to throw out everybody in the House of Representatives, that is what they do. Our Founding Fathers wanted that restraint on this House. They wanted this House to have the most control. They wanted the House of Representatives to be where most ideas originated--not all of them, most of them. They wanted us to be the place where we fought out these ideas, and the genius of it is this: each of us represents 750,000 or so people here; each of us in the House of Representatives represents about that many people. Out there in America, 316 or so million Americans, all of the good ideas that this government needs to consider are out there in the hearts and minds of our people. And our job in this constitutional Republic is, go home, listen to the people whom you have the honor and the privilege to represent, listen to them, exchange ideas with them because we are not charged to be devoid of ideas and simply carrying their ideas here. We are charged in this Republic with having a responsibility to get informed, be informed, stay informed, do this full time, so that we are giving all of our heads, all of our hearts and all that we can to this job that we have. We owe our constituents our best effort and our best judgment, and that includes go home and listen to them. Gather the best ideas that can come out of our districts. Bring them here. Each one of these seats in this place should have within it, within the mind and within the records and within the staff of each one of us and our staff, we should have the best ideas that come from our district. They should be incorporated with the best ideas that we can generate. We should bring those ideas into this idea marketplace and test them; and while we are doing that, we are evaluating the best ideas that come from the other 434 Members of Congress that come here with the best ideas that they can gather. And throughout that all, with that competition of ideas, the competition of debate, the regular order that we ought to structure here and keep, to the extent that it is possible, then those ideas get written into bills and those bills need to go before subcommittees for hearings, and then they need to go before the subcommittee and the full committee for markup so that the people in the committee that presumably have the most expertise on the topic have an opportunity to perfect that legislation. Then out of committee it needs to come to the floor where the Rules Committee should be allowing the maximum amount of input from the Members. There is not one single Member of this House of Representatives that has the market cornered on all the good ideas; and there is not one single Member here that represents enough more people within their district that they ought to have more leverage than anybody else. There has to be a leadership structure, that is true, but that doesn't mean that there is only one or two or three places where the ideas can be approved. It needs to be the best ideas that can come from the people of the United States of America. That is the structure in our constitutional Republic, and we should have the closest thing to regular order that we can maintain. If it means we work longer, if it means we work harder, we should do that. And we should send our best ideas over across the rotunda to the Senate. There in the Senate, they can generate some ideas, too, and bring those ideas from the States. But they are only up for election once every 6 years, which means, Mr. Speaker, that they have a little bit different attitude about what they can vote for, what they are willing to support, and where the leverage might be over there. But in the end, this is about bringing the best ideas that exist in America, process them through this competition of ideas in this great debate forum that we have, and let those best ideas emerge to the top. Mr. Speaker, sitting here in this place, we have a President that thinks that he does all of that. We have a President who thinks that, even though he lectured on the Constitution and the separation of powers and understands that all legislative power and authority exists in the Congress, not in the President of the United States. It exists in the Congress of the United States. When you look at our Founding Fathers, they had a habit of putting things down in priority order. One of those examples that I would place into the Record here, Mr. Speaker, is in the Declaration of Independence. That is not an independent document from the Constitution. The Declaration is the promise; the Constitution is the fulfillment of the promise that is in the Declaration: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, in that order. They didn't say, pursuit of happiness, liberty, then life. They didn't say, liberty, pursuit of happiness, then life. It is life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. That is because they are prioritized rights. Life is the paramount right. It takes precedence over any other right. The second that was established in the Declaration was liberty, God-given liberty. Our Founding Fathers are the ones that articulated that, put it on the parchment, and pledged their lives, their fortune, and their sacred honor to that cause. Pursuit of happiness, by the way, is not just envisioned by our Founding Fathers to be what I think some people think it is, like this endless tailgate party in this pursuit of happiness. Pursuit of happiness is the development of the whole human being. Some pronounce the Greek term for that is ``eudemonia.'' That means the development of the whole human being--physically, mentally, spiritually, intellectually, knowledge-based, all of those things put together--as someone who, enjoying the rights of life and liberty, is contributing back to that society and civilization and to the government of, by, and for the people. That is what pursuit of happiness is. But it still is trumped by liberty, and liberty is trumped by life. No one in the exercise of their liberty can take someone else's life, and no one in the exercise of their pursuit of happiness can take away someone else's liberty or life. That is the order; that is the priority. So, with that in mind, Mr. Speaker, I would point out that our Founding Fathers envisioned--and they wrote it in the Constitution, to put it bluntly--article I. They didn't start out with article II or article III. If they declared article I to be the executive branch of government, one might be able to read into this that the President has a little more power than he does. They wanted to make sure the people had the power. So they wrote in article I, the very first sentence, article I, section 1: All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives. That is an irrefutable first truth in the Constitution of the United States. That is what Barack Obama taught at the University of Chicago. That is the foundation of article I. The President of the United States, he is the embodiment at the top of the executive branch of government. And it says in the beginning of article II: The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of 4 years, and, together with the vice president, chosen for that same term, be elected, as follows. It doesn't actually say that the President, in the first sentence, has this massive power. In fact, nowhere in article II does it say that the President has this massive power to legislate because it is exclusively reserved for the Congress of the United States in the very first sentence, article I, section 1. So this little lecture that I have provided here, Mr. Speaker--and I know you know all of this to be fact--it is pretty similar to the lectures I imagine the President delivered at the University of Chicago, and it reflects the expressions that he has made of his constitutional understanding at least 22 times into the public record when he said: I don't have the authority to grant amnesty. Now, I am summarizing this, of course. He wouldn't use that word himself. He said he didn't have the authority on March 28, 2011, at the high school here in Washington, D.C. He said: I know you want me to pass the DREAM Act and establish it, but you are studying. You are smart students. You are studying the Constitution. You know that I don't have the authority to do that. The Congress writes the laws. The legislature writes the laws. I am head of the executive branch as President. My job is to enforce the laws, and the judicial branch of government's job is to interpret the laws. That is a pretty concise description of what this Constitution does, that statement, and at least 21 other statements by the President of the United States, in his declaration--his declaration--that he didn't have the authority to legislate. Then, lo and behold, the President of the United States had a change of heart. He stopped saying he didn't have the authority for several months, didn't seem so curious because he was floating trial balloons about advancing an executive amnesty. Those trial balloons floated out June, July, August, September, October. He announced at some point--or leaked it out--that he wouldn't commit his executive amnesty until after the election for fear there would be consequences for such a thing, and so he held back. Then a couple of weeks ago, on a Thursday night, he gave an address at 8 on a Thursday night to a national audience that more or less laid out his executive amnesty, which as many times has been characterized as ``unconstitutional.'' The President then decided he could write immigration law and he could waive the application of the law and the enforcement of the law for vast classes and groups of people that he defined in his executive edict. That number of people may be 5 million. We know historically whenever there has been an amnesty, there has been a massive amount of fraud and a significant amount of underestimation of the real numbers, whether it is 5 million or it is a multiplier of 5 million. I don't think anybody thinks it is going to end up being less than 5 million people. Now we have a bunch of people that came into America that many of whom committed the crime of illegal border crossing. There are some who overstayed their visas, and they are not technically criminals. They have committed a serious misdemeanor overstaying their visa. In both cases, the law removes them from the United States. That is what the law is. But the President has decided that he can create these classes of people, exempt them from the law, reward them with a permission slip to stay in the United States and a work permit. Some of it is going to turn into green cards. So this has been a massive effort to usurp the authority of the United States Congress to pass laws. And for the President to give his oath of office and take that oath of office to take care that the laws be faithfully executed--preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help him God--he is obligated to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. Instead, he has taken the Constitution--figuratively speaking--separated out article I of the Constitution, torn it out, and said: I do the law, too. Folded it, put it in his shirt pocket, and walked away from the podium in the East Room that night. Now here we are. We are a Nation thrown into a constitutional crisis, a Nation that was struggling to restore the respect for the rule of law as far back as Ronald Reagan's 1986 Amnesty Act. I remember what that was like. I remember what I thought. I am not Monday morning quarterbacking that. I believe Ronald Reagan would stand the principle and veto the '86 Amnesty Act, because anything less meant that there was an implicit promise that there would be another amnesty, another amnesty, and another amnesty; and when you reward lawbreakers, you get more lawbreakers. I have been working since '86 to restore the respect for the rule of law, and I have watched it be eroded since, one might say by each succeeding President, Mr. Speaker, but no one has eroded the respect for the rule of law from the White House nearly to the extent as this President. So as I see what is happening in America, I have been wanting to, working here in this Congress, to restore the pillars of American exceptionalism, those pillars, many of which you find in the Bill of Rights, the first ten Amendments to the Constitution, but just in the first one: freedom of speech, religion, press, the right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances. The Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms. It goes on and on. The Bill of Rights is replete of pillars of American exceptionalism, any one of which, if you pulled it out, this giant shining city on a hill that is built upon those beautiful marble pillars of American exceptionalism, that are drilled down to bedrock, that seek this country and its greatness and the greatness of people that are here, you pull any one of them out, we don't become the great country that we are today. But the rule of law, Mr. Speaker, the rule of law, the essential pillar of American exceptionalism, that idea that no man--meaning also in this world, no woman either--is above the law. We get equal protection under the law, and we are all treated equally before the law. That rule of law is an essential pillar of American exceptionalism without which we could not have become this great Nation, neither can we sustain ourselves as a great Nation. But I am watching as it is torn asunder by a willful act of an individual that knows better. We know he knows better because he lectured for 10 years better. And he gave us 22 speeches across the country that told us that he knew better, and then flipped and did this to throw this America into a constitutional crisis. Then what are our alternatives here in the House of Representatives and in the United States Senate? We have a majority in the Republicans coming into the United States Senate. It will soon be nine freshman Republicans that will arrive on the floor of the United States Senate to take their oath of office in January of 2015, not that long from now. Here in the House, we are going to end up with 247 Republicans, which is a pretty good-sized majority here in the House of Representatives-- the largest majority we have had since sometime back in the Roaring Twenties. That is 15 new Republicans seated in the House of Representatives. Some say: Well, why don't we just wait and we'll pick up better ground to fight on. We can fight better maybe in January. So let's do a continuing resolution. Maybe we'll just kick the whole omnibus can all the way down the road until September 30. But we surely can't do this. We surely can't let the President shut the government down. So we'll say there won't be a government shutdown, which is a promise that we're not going to defund the President's lawless act. Now, if we announce that we are not willing to use the tools that are here in this Constitution in my jacket pocket, carefully given to the House of Representatives especially, but also the Senate, that gives the power of the purse to the Congress, in the Federalist Papers it is very clear that our Founding Fathers intended for this Congress to have the power of the purse because with the power of the purse comes the authority to control everything the executive branch does, if we so choose. We can write language that is limiting language. We can write language that says: Here's all the money you want, Mr. President. You've already soared through $17 trillion in national debt--and now, $18 trillion in national debt. We'll scoop you up a few hundred more billion dollars. In fact, we'll scoop you trillions of dollars over there. And you can spend whatever it is that we have agreed in the discussions with Senator Reid and the President of the United States. We are going to provide for money because we don't want to fight. We don't want to fight. Yes, we do. We have an obligation. And we have to. Money can be compromised if money is not a principle. The Constitution of the United States cannot be compromised; it is a principle. And we take an oath to uphold the Constitution here, 435 of us standing in this same place next January, again. It doesn't mean you get this caveat that says I don't like the politics of defending the Constitution. It doesn't mean that this is too painful for me so I am not going to do it. It doesn't even mean I disagree with the policy so I am not going to defend the Constitution. What it means is you take an oath to uphold the Constitution, come what may, without regard to political consequences, without regard to policy implications, with complete regard to the oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That is our oath. And if the President doesn't keep his, we are ever more obligated to keep ours. That is what we must do. And the most reasonable tool that we have is the tool that defunds the President's lawless executive edicts. That is what must be done, and it must be done on appropriation bills that are must-pass, that the President wants, which means now, given an understanding that they continued to issue permits throughout the government shutdown 14 months ago. That is under USCIS. They functioned during a government shutdown, issuing DACA permits--the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals--and they continued to exercise these nonprosecutorial discretion Morton memos. They were doing those things, Mr. Speaker, during a government shutdown. So they declared it, apparently, to be an essential service, or they went off on the loop of it being fee-based. We can write language into the next appropriation bill--and it should be a very short CR that gets us into next year--and that language must shut off the funding to the President's lawless act that he committed and knew what he was doing. We need to do it now. It is a matter of principle. When you are called upon to keep your oath of office, you don't get to decide that there is going to be another time, a better time. If we vote to fund the President's lawlessness, Mr. Speaker, we don't get our virtue back in January, February, and March of next year. We must uphold the Constitution now. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

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