Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Florida for that statement. I absolutely believe that, deeply. I think one of the important things is that we educate the young people on what the Constitution says and what it means. We have a President of the United States who was a professional Constitution teacher, who we know knows the history and the text of the Constitution and takes his oath to preserve, protect, and defend it and take care that the laws be faithfully executed and explains it in stop after stop succinctly, in ways that I agree with this President, and then he turns around and, by his own definition--and by his definition is all I am referring to here, Mr. Speaker--breaks his own oath. So we are here now trying to restore the knowledge base of America. Members of Congress arrive here as freshmen, and they take an oath to the Constitution. They don't know what it means anymore. The Supreme Court thinks they can amend the Constitution; they can manufacture new commands in the Constitution; they can violate Article I authority. And the President can do so at will. But I would point out that, 13 times, the President of the United States' position has been unanimously reversed by the United States Supreme Court--President Obama, 13 times, unanimously reversed. Another 11 times, he has lost on a 5-4 decision. So he has stretched this Constitution beyond that. Even his own appointees in the Supreme Court can't stomach it; that is how bad this is. But I want to see the right appointments to the Supreme Court so the whole Constitution is revered, respected, and we see cases go before the Court and, once again, we can predict the Court will rule on the Constitution rather than their political whims.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank, again, the gentleman from Florida. I appreciate you coming to the floor with this leadership that is here. If no one stepped forward in leadership and we just went along as if somehow the Constitution were going to be restored, it would never be restored. And I would remind people, Mr. Speaker, that it is one thing to give lip service to the Constitution; it is another to exercise it. Freedom of speech is being exercised here right now. Freedom of assembly is being exercised across this country right now. The right to keep and bear arms, if it were never exercised, the liberals would define it away from us. Any one of these rights that we have that come from God, defined by our Founding Fathers, is also something we have got to exercise and utilize; if not, over time, the enemies of freedom will find a way to say: Well, it is just an artifact of history. If we stop exercising our right to keep and bear arms, in a matter of a generation, someone will say it is just an artifact of history. We are going to confiscate your guns. And after a while, they will zip your lip if you don't watch it. We can't let that happen. So I appreciate this Special Order here tonight with the gentleman from Florida's leadership, and I appreciate my Constitution and the rights that come, especially from God.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to have the opportunity to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. I listened to a lot of discussion here with which I disagree, of course; but I keep hearing this term ``do your job'' that seems to echo out of the left constantly. ``Do your job.'' One of the arguments is that the President of the United States has a constitutional right to nominate to the Supreme Court. He does. That is pretty clear in the Constitution. However, the Senate determines what advice is, and the Senate determines that which is consent, and no nomination to the Federal court can move forward without the Senate's advice and consent. It is the Senate's job then to evaluate the President's nominations, and they can do so with or without hearings, with or without interviews. The Senate writes its own rules just like the House writes its own rules, Mr. Speaker. I would like to put this back in perspective here. We have a lameduck President who has made appointments to the Supreme Court, which seems to believe that the Constitution means what they want it to mean, and they want to read it to say what they want it to say rather than what it actually says and rather than what it actually was understood to mean at the time of its ratification. When you have Justices on the Supreme Court who embody that belief, who act on that belief, then we here who take an oath to support and defend the Constitution--and that is, actually, all of us here in the House of Representatives, Mr. Speaker, and everyone in the United States Senate for that matter--recognize that, if we are going to support and defend the Constitution and encourage the nomination and the advice and the consent and the confirmation of the Senate and encourage then a Presidential appointment to the Supreme Court of someone, we know the President is incapable of nominating anyone to the Supreme Court who actually believes what the Constitution says and what it was understood to mean at the time of its ratification. He has demonstrated that in the past with his appointments to the Court. He will demonstrate that again. We have a Constitution to preserve, protect, defend, and support and defend, so our obligation then is to say: Mr. President, you are a lameduck. Let's stick with the tradition; let's stick with the practice; let's stick with the statements that have been made by a number of Democrats in the past when the shoe was on the other foot. People like Joe Biden and Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer all would agree with Senator Chuck Grassley: no hearing, no confirmation in the Senate, no vote in the Judiciary Committee, and no vote on the floor of the Senate for this lameduck President's appointments because we have a Constitution that has got to be restored, and instead of being restored, it would be destroyed by another Presidential appointment. We were sitting with a deadlocked Court that sat 4\1/2\ to 4\1/2\ out of a 9-member Court, and you could kind of toss a coin on whether you would get a decision that came down on what the Constitution said and what the law said or what they preferred the policy was. There are a couple of bad examples of that. This is even with the stellar Justice Scalia's sitting on the bench not even a year ago on June 24 and June 25. On the 24th of June, the Court came down with a decision in King v. Burwell, in which the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court decided that he could write words into ObamaCare that didn't exist. They were not passed by this Congress--not by either Chamber of this Congress, as a matter of fact. It wasn't a phrase that was conferenced out or was something that was contested. It was never in the bill. It was the phrase that read, ``or Federal Government.'' Had that component been in ObamaCare, then the Federal Government could have gone into the States and established the exchanges in the States that refused to establish exchanges to comply with the suggestion that came from this Congress, by the way, by hook, by crook, by legislative shenanigans, just to quote some Democrats who lamented at the methodology they had to go through to push ObamaCare down the throats of the American people. In any case, the law never enabled the Federal Government to establish exchanges in the States, and the Constitution doesn't allow that authority. In my opinion, there is no enumerated power for the Federal Government to create exchanges for health insurance policies within the States; but the Supreme Court ruled with the majority opinion, which was written by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, that they could add words into ObamaCare. Where it reads that the States may establish exchanges, they added that the States or Federal Government may establish exchanges. They made it up, and they wrapped themselves in the cloak of constitutional authority in Marbury v. Madison and in a whole series of, presumably, precedent cases along the line. That was June 24, on Thursday. That would kick the breath out of your gut to hear that, if you are a constitutionalist, and it would bring you to a sad state of mourning. You would lay your head down on the pillow at night, having trouble sleeping, thinking: What am I going to do tomorrow? I couldn't react today. What am I going to do tomorrow? Lord, wake me up with an idea on how to preserve our Constitution. The Supreme Court of the United States believes that they can write law when here, in Article I of our Constitution, Mr. Speaker, it reads: ``All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.'' That is here, in the House and the Senate. Article I, which are the first words of our Constitution, reads: ``all legislative powers''; but the Supreme Court, wrapped in the cloak of Marbury v. Madison and their imagination of what ``precedence'' and ``stare decisis'' might mean to them decides that they can write words into the law. A Supreme Court writing law. Then the next morning--that morning that I was hopeful that I would wake up with an idea on how to address a Supreme Court that has overreached--there came the next decision at 9 my time, 10 D.C. time. It was the decision of Obergefell, in which the Supreme Court created a new command in the Constitution. Not just discovered a right that never existed--they manufactured a command. There is no right in the Constitution for a same-sex marriage. There is no reference in there at all. There is not one single Founding Father who would have ever accepted an idea that they had founded a nation that embodied within our Declaration or our ratified Constitution or the subsequent amendments that there was some right, let alone a command, to a same-sex marriage. That is a completely manufactured--not just a right but a command--by the Supreme Court of the United States. I have some history with this. The Supreme Court of the State of Iowa did the same thing to Iowans in 2009. I sat in the legislature and was an author of the Defense of Marriage Act in about 1998. One of the pieces of debate was why do we need to bother to do this. Yes, it would make sense if marriage were threatened. But it was so far beyond the pale that why would we bother to do this. We saw litigation coming in Hawaii at that period of time that was trying to force same-sex marriage on America. We wrote--and I was one of the authors of it--the Defense of Marriage Act and put it into Iowa law. And from 1998, 11 years later, the Supreme Court of the State of Iowa created a command for same-sex marriage in Iowa. Iowans rose up and threw three of them off the bench the following election in November of 2010 not because of the policy decision, but because they had not kept their oath of office to support and defend the Constitution. They are obligated to read and understand and believe the Constitution and then issue their judgments based upon the law, the text of the law, and, as an ancillary component of this, the intent of the legislature itself. Because, after all, the legislature is the voice of the people. The judges are not. They are unelected. They are appointed for life. They are unaccountable. So there it was on June 25, 2015, on Friday, that the Supreme Court manufactured a command for same-sex marriage. Now, this is appalling to me, Mr. Speaker, because I can read this Constitution and understand what it means. I could read the precedent cases along the way that have flowed from Marbury on down to today. It is no longer possible to look at this Supreme Court and discern what a likely decision of the Court might be by studying the text of the Constitution and the text of the law because we have a Court that will make it up as they go along, write law as they go, and discover what they would call a new right in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, equal protection under the law. There is equal protection already. There has long been equal protection. That amendment was about making sure that babies who were born to the newly freed slaves post-Civil war would be American citizens and they would enjoy all of the rights and all of the privileges of being a citizen of the United States. A person that enjoyed personhood in good standing, that is what the--the 13th Amendment ended slavery, and the 14th Amendment guaranteed equal rights. Now this Court has twisted it into a command that there is not a difference between a man and a woman when it comes to joining them together in matrimony. Well, there is a difference. It has been husband and wife in every one of these States until such time as the activists got busy. Those are the kinds of things that, if the States want to establish same-sex marriage, so be it. That is the voice of the people. It is constitutional, and it fits the structure of our United States Constitution, along with the various State constitutions and the structure of the rule of law. But if a court wants to manufacture a new right, let alone a new command, that is wrong. And this Congress ought to speak up. We need a President that will appoint Justices to the Supreme Court that will rule on the text of the Constitution, its original meaning, and on the understanding of what the text of that Constitution says. So I would back up to the King v. Burwell decision, Mr. Speaker, and add this for the benefit of those folks that are listening in. And maybe there are some staff at the Supreme Court that are listening. If you discover a law, if it is a law like ObamaCare that comes before the Supreme Court and you the read the text of that and it doesn't include ``or Federal Government'' and you believe that Congress wanted the Federal Government to be able to establish the exchanges or intended to write that into the law, you don't get to just write it in and say that is what they really meant. You have to remand it back to Congress and tell us: This is what the law says. So, therefore, if Congress wants the law to say something different, we have to amend it here in the House and the Senate and get a Presidential signature on it. That is the constitutional structure of this government that we have, Mr. Speaker. It is a bit frustrating for me to listen to the dialogue otherwise that the Senate is not doing their job because they withhold a Presidential appointment when you have a President that has proven that he is not going to put up an appointment that will protect our Constitution. This is the time we must defend our Constitution. We must nominate and elect a President of the United States who will make those appointments to the Supreme Court, who believe the Constitution means what it says. Mr. Speaker, I didn't actually come here to talk about that. That is my rebuttal to what I have listened to for the last 40 minutes or so. Immigration

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I came here to talk about the rule of law, for sure. Part of this is stimulated by an immigration hearing that we had yesterday in the House Judiciary's Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee. This is the type of hearing that I have listened to too many times. It was one of the hardest hearings I have sat through in my time here in this Congress, Mr. Speaker. This was a hearing that had witnesses, such as Sheriff Jenkins from Frederick County, Maryland, who has been enforcing immigration law and standing up for the rule of law. He has been prudently using the legal and justifiable evidence that he had before him, and he has been criticized for his effectiveness by the people that don't want to enforce the law. He is a good witness, Sheriff Jenkins. Additionally, we had witnesses from two families that were suffering tragically. One of them was the mother of Joshua Wilkerson. Her name is Laura Wilkerson. She has testified before the Judiciary Committee in the past at least once. I have met her at an immigration event in Richmond, Virginia, on another occasion and listened to the tragic, tragic story of her son, Joshua, who was essentially abducted from his school--he was about a sophomore in high school or so--and hauled outside of town where he was beaten mercilessly and bludgeoned and finally murdered. The perpetrator, an illegal alien who law enforcement had encountered and released onto the streets of America, who had no business being in America in the first place and who law enforcement already had picked up at least once--this illegal alien beat this boy to death. Then he went and bought gasoline and burned his body. He hauled his body out and poured gasoline on it and burned Joshua Wilkerson's body. Then he went and took a shower and went to a movie, as if it was just another day in the life of. Well, Mr. Speaker, it was another day in the life of America and Americans. It was another life lost to an illegal criminal alien who was unlawfully present in America and who had no business to be here, one who had been encountered by law enforcement officers in the past, one whom I believe ICE declined to pick up and place into removal proceedings. This happens every day in this country. It happens hundreds of times in this country each year. These incidents of illegal aliens that are arrested and turned loose on the street because the President has this idea of prioritization or prosecutorial discretion are costing lives in America. They are costing, in the end, thousands of lives in America. It was a sad, sad story told by Laura Wilkerson yesterday. She had the courage and the heart to come here and share her story with us and to place that awful, brutal, ghastly memory again into her mind's eye and pour that forth into the Congressional Record so that some of us will soak that up and be mobilized to do something more, to do something more to resist the President's policy of amnesty, de facto amnesty, amnesty by executive edict, that has been part and parcel of the Obama policy since the beginning of his time here in office, and it has been getting worse and worse every month. I thank God for Laura Wilkerson. I ask God to bless the life and the memory and the soul of Joshua Wilkerson, who has paid a tremendously high price because we have an ideological President who, I would say to the other side of the aisle, is not doing his job. In fact, he is ordering law enforcement officers not to do their job. Federal law requires that, when immigration law enforcement officers encounter an individual who is unlawfully present in the United States, ``he shall be placed in removal proceedings.'' That is the law. Our Border Patrol officers are told that, if you are here to enforce the law and you are determined to do so, you better get yourself another job. They have become the welcome wagon on the southern border. Now, most anybody that crosses that border and makes it across the Rio Grande River or across the land border that stretches from Texas all the way across through New Mexico, Arizona, California, to the Pacific Ocean knows, if you just claim asylum, you can be a refugee and this Federal Government will roll out the welcome wagon. Former Member of Congress Michele Bachmann and I stood on the banks of the Rio Grande River at Roma, Texas, here a summer and a half or so ago and watched as they inflated a raft on the other side of the river, two coyotes. It was a fairly good size raft. They helped a lady into that raft on a Sunday afternoon in broad daylight exactly at the shift change for the Border Patrol. They helped a pregnant lady into the raft. She had two little bags of her property. They brought that raft across the river, brought it up to the shoreline under the eyes of the city police and the Border Patrol, but it was shift change. One of the coyotes got out of the raft while the other one stabilized it. They helped the pregnant lady out of the raft and onto U.S. shores and then handed her two little ditty bags. He then got back into the raft. The two coyotes went back across the river, deflated the raft, folded it up, put it in the trunk of their car. It was a car that we had watched go around and around over there, knowing that it was a coyote car because they recognized it from the U.S. side of the river. The lady stood there. She and her unborn baby and her two ditty bags were waiting for the Border Patrol to show up. It takes a little longer during the shift change, but they show up, no doubt. I didn't follow this case any further, and they would have preferred that I didn't. Here is what I will predict happened: She applied for asylum, the baby is now born, and the baby is an American citizen. She is the parent of an anchor baby. Well, that is the kind of person that Barack Obama has granted a de facto, at least a temporary, amnesty to for the Deferred Action for Parents of--I keep wanting to tell you what that word means to me, but the parents of Americans is what the President would like to call it-- Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, DAPA. Well, I watched one of those parents of Americans--a parent now--come across the border in an inflatable raft with two coyotes. They got paid something to do that. I don't know how much. Now the President has issued the edict that we grant this de facto permit, this amnesty, for the parents of anchor babies to be staying free in the United States. That suspends the rule of law. It defies the rule of law. It defies the very law, the specified law, itself. That case was heard before the Supreme Court this week, Mr. Speaker. The question is: Does the President have prosecutorial authority, prosecutorial discretion? Well, the precedents along prosecutorial discretion--and I don't know that the Supreme Court has ever heard and ruled on a case of prosecutorial discretion. I believe they have not. But the precedents that are out there in the lower courts and the practice has been that, if a chief executive officer can project his policy through his subordinates, they have to pick and choose which cases they will prosecute. Well, when they do that, that is called prosecutorial discretion. It has to be on an individual basis only, and that is by the words of the former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, who testified before the Judiciary Committee to that extent. In the first Morton memo that brought out this prosecutorial discretion, it creates four different categories or groups of people. So they are utilizing categories or groups of people, declaring it to be prosecutorial discretion, when, in fact, it is not prosecutorial discretion because it applies to groups of people. It created four different groups of people. That is the story of Joshua Wilkerson. The witness sitting next to Laura Wilkerson is Michelle Root of Modale, Iowa. Michelle Root is the grieving mother of a 21-year-old daughter who was a 4.0 student at Bellevue University. She wanted to become a law enforcement investigator. She had the best grades that you could possibly have, living and loving life. She had graduated and enjoyed the graduation ceremonies the day before when an illegal, criminal alien, drunk-driving perpetrator, ran her down and rear-ended her in the street and killed Sarah Root. Sarah Root was a 4.0 student with the world ahead of her, wanting to contribute to this country, to life, to society, living and loving life. Her life was abruptly ended by a criminal alien who had been encountered by law enforcement before whose immigration attorneys knew him. Two of them have been quoted in the newspaper at this point. He had been released. He had been released onto the streets where he now had three times the blood alcohol content allowable by law, drag racing in the streets, killed Sarah Root. Her mother, Michelle, told the story yesterday of her daughter, whom she loved so deeply, and all through the rest of her life and her family's life, they will carry this hole, this ache in their heart that didn't need to be. Sarah Root would be alive today if the President had done his job, if law enforcement had been allowed to do their job, if ICE had responded when local law enforcement called them, and if ICE--and on top of that, sometimes ICE issues a detainer, and local law enforcement releases them from a sanctuary city. This is mixed up both ways. We have ICE, who is prohibited from doing its job, who sometimes won't when they want to; local law enforcement who won't cooperate with ICE because ICE sent out a letter a year-and- a-half ago or so that said ICE detainers are a recommendation, they are no longer mandatory. Congress passed a law and directed the Department of Homeland Security to establish the rule that would have the force and effect of law that ICE detainers are mandatory. They wrote the rule that ICE detainers are mandatory, and Dan Ragsdale, the interim director of ICE, issued a letter that said to all local law enforcement: no, it is a recommendation, it is not mandatory. Now we have in this confused, jumbled-up mess of the refusal to enforce the law, to take care that the laws are faithfully executed--we have the deaths of our children--our children--Joshua Wilkerson, Sarah Root. And while Sarah Root's mother is in transit to come here to testify-- by the way, this drunk driving, illegal alien, homicidal accident that killed Sarah Root, the 4.0 student happened--I keep hearing about the valedictorians that come across the river. Sarah was very close to being the valedictorian of her college class. She didn't get a chance to live and love life beyond 1 day after her graduation. While her mother is here with tears in her eyes, flying from Omaha where this tragedy took place, to testify before the United States Congress, there is another incident in Omaha, this time a very similar incident, another illegal alien who had been incarcerated before or picked up before and released again. This illegal alien killed Margarito Nava-Luna, a 34- or 35-year-old man who was walking down the streets of Omaha. This driver, this illegal, had three times the blood alcohol content as well, as was the driver who killed Sarah Root. Now, every one of these are preventable. They are preventable. Whether they are a willful homicide or whether they are preventable, but these are the cities, Mr. Speaker, where the Obama administration has released these criminals into. They have released over 30,000 of them. These are where their reoffenses have taken place, in multiple cities around, obviously, California and on up along the Pacific Coast. Where there is a lot of illegal immigration, that is where you see a lot of the recidivism crime. Here is Arizona. Here is Texas. You have got it in the heart of the heartland, though. That is Colorado. Over along the East Coast, something has happened in most of the States, and this is because of the prosecutorial discretion. This President, his administration has released over 30,000 criminals, criminal aliens onto the streets of America. And of those that they released, there have been at least 124 of them who have been charged with homicide for 135 murders. That is 135 dead Americans who would be alive today if the President didn't have the policy of releasing criminal aliens onto the streets. Those are the ones we know of, those are the ones that are the recidivism within a 5-year window of time whose names we know, whose incidents we know, but that doesn't include anywhere near all of them, Mr. Speaker. This is the locale. This is the face of one of these perpetrators, Mauricio Hernandez. What did he do? Mauricio Hernandez, a sexual predator who impregnated the 13-year-old daughter of his live-in girlfriend and repeatedly had sexual relations with her in ways that I won't repeat here on the floor, took her off to soccer games where he also gave her an abortion-inducing drug, and she went into a porta-potty and had a baby who was alive. He went in and saw that baby, and this girl was then hauled home. The baby was left to die. That baby died. Mauricio Hernandez was the perpetrator. He is another illegal alien, another one who had been encountered by law, another one who had been granted this de facto amnesty because of the President's policy. Mr. Speaker, I can stand here every night. I could come here and give you these stories, and I can give you the data on the thousands of Americans who are dead at the hands of the criminal aliens who have been incarcerated for a temporary period of time and released by multiple jurisdictions across this country, and every American who dies at their hands is a life that could be saved if we just followed our laws. That is what is at stake here. But we are going to have to personalize it because people over on this side of the aisle have their fingers in their ears on data, but when they see the faces, when they hear the anguish in the voices, especially of the mothers--I will conclude with this, Mr. Speaker--or the voice of the father, Scott Root, who said when they arrested this perpetrator who killed his daughter, he was out before they could bury his daughter, he was out on $5,000 bail, which was less than it cost him to bury his daughter, and that individual absconded back out of the United States now, not to be reached again by the arm of the law, which is not long enough because they put him out on bail. I don't want to see any more bail to criminal aliens. I want to see law enforcement. I want an expectation that when the law is broken in the United States, that there is going to be an enforcement, that it be applied equally without regard to any of these categories that the President encourages us to be members of, that being one of God's children is good enough to be protected by the law, but everybody treated equally. Secure our borders. Restore the respect for the rule of law. Save these lives. Send these people into prison, and when they are done, send them back to the country that they can live in legally for the rest of their lives if they don't stay in our prisons for the rest of their lives. Mr. Speaker, this is an infuriating topic that America needs to know a lot more about. I would ask, Mr. Speaker, that this country keep the families of these victims in their prayers every day until such time as we restore the respect for the rule of law again in America. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Florida for organizing this Special Order, for his leadership, for his constitutional convictions, and for the opportunity to address you tonight, Mr. Speaker, here on the floor of the House of Representatives. I am listening to this dialogue that is taking place here on the floor, and this thought occurred to me that, several years ago, our borders are so open and our borders are so porous, and we have a President who has refused to enforce the law. In fact, he sends the message through his executive branch, if you are determined to enforce the law and you are a member of the Border Patrol, you had better find another job. I mean, that came out of the President and his leadership team all the way on down to our Border Patrol agents. I have been down to the border a good number of times, and I have watched as people come across the border in broad daylight, float across there in a raft. They get unloaded, stand there on the grass on our side of the river, and wait for the Border Patrol to come down with a welcome wagon and say: Would you like to apply for asylum? And, by the way, one of them was a pregnant lady, and so I am sure by now she has her asylum, or at least that baby is an American citizen. Our borders are so porous that, in order to illustrate how bad they are, we had James O'Keefe, who went down and put on an Osama bin Laden mask and walked across the border. Nobody bothered him. There was another individual that thought: I will make a bigger show of it. I will hire a mariachi band, and he rode a circus elephant across the Rio Grande River. That is how bad our border is. Now, here is how bad our law and our Constitution are. The mariachi band was serenading the Supreme Court today, Mr. Speaker, to try to convince them that we ought to see the Supreme Court rewrite law that Congress has written, that has been signed by a previous President, and every President since then has taken the oath to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. This constitutional balance that we have has seen a Supreme Court rewrite ObamaCare. So now they have the audacity to rewrite the law, and they are the ones that are deciding today, with eight Justices, sadly--sadly, not 9--as to whether or not the President of the United States can do what the Supreme Court did, in other words, rewrite the law. The President of the United States, 22 times, as the previous speaker, Mr. Brat, said, told America he doesn't have the constitutional authority to grant the amnesty, the executive amnesty that he did, whether it be DACA or whether it be DAPA. But then, after he deliberated for awhile, he checked his conscience. That didn't bother him. We shouldn't be amazed at that, Mr. Speaker. He already knew the Constitution. He lectured it to us. But what he checked was his politics, and his question was: Can he get away with it? Is there an enforcement capacity that could stop him? Well, he hadn't met yet Judge Hanen in Texas who, if these Justices in the Supreme Court deadlock 4-4, the President's executive amnesty, at least for DAPA, is going to be stalled for the duration of his administration. And so this prosecutorial discretion argument before the Court today that the Obama administration very well knew was the center of this case--and that prosecutorial discretion can be conferred on an individual basis only. That was the testimony of Janet Napolitano; and in the first Morton memo document, there were multiple references to an individual basis only. Her testimony was an individual basis only. But even the first document set out four categories, groups of people, whom the law would be waived for, and that is what we are talking about here. Who writes the law? If the President writes the law, how could we write one that would restrain this President that is out of line? Let's preserve our Constitution, and let's look forward to an appointment to the Supreme Court that actually means it when they take their oath as we do ours.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I.would like to recognize Matthew Rumeliote, Pam Bartholomew, Cindy Papouchis and Donna Meacham with Northwestern Steakhouse, Mason City. These four outstanding individuals are recipients of the Iowa Restaurant Association's First Quarter 2016 Stars of Hospitality Program. The Iowa Restaurant Association's Stars of Hospitality Program celebrates individuals who have made a career in the restaurant by working at a single establishment and/or for a specific company for more than 20 years. The Program recognizes the importance of these team members to their employer, while also celebrating the professionalism they display daily. In a meeting in my Washington, D.C. office, I was told about the perseverance and work ethic of the recipients. The stories brought a smile to my face because wherever we go, in-state, out-of-state or abroad, Iowans are well-known for their hard work and pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality. I am also grateful to the numerous restaurants across our state and our nation that provide varied opportunities, good-paying jobs and upward mobility for millions of Americans. The contribution these businesses make to our market and culture should be acknowledged by all and remembered by lawmakers when we craft policy that impacts the restaurant industry. Overly zealous regulation that harms hardworking business also diminishes opportunities for hardworking individuals, those like Matthew, Pam, Cindy and Donna. Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for these individuals, businesses and the opportunity to recognize American success. In our nation, if you work hard, you can accomplish much. We need to make sure it stays that way.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize a very important day in U.S.-Taiwan relations. April 10th marked the 37th anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA). This important statute has been critical in defining the diplomatic, economic, and strategic relationship we have enjoyed with Taiwan over the last four decades. In 2015, Taiwan became the United States' ninth largest trading partner. The TRA has strengthened our relationship and helped to encourage a particularly strong economic partnership. On March 30, 2016, Taiwan President Ma gave a speech at the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei (AmCham) Hsie Nian Fan celebration. In his speech, President Ma pointed out that, in the U.S.-based Global Finance magazine's ratings of the world's richest countries from November of last year, Taiwan ranked 19th out of 185 countries worldwide. That put Taiwan right behind Germany, and far ahead of countries like France, Great Britain, Japan, and South Korea. And in the 2015 global competitiveness ratings published by the Institute of Management Development (IMD), based in Lausanne, Switzerland, Taiwan ranked 11th in the world, and third in the Asia-Pacific Region. Taiwan has created a thriving and innovative economy that most countries envy. The growth of Taiwan is a living, breathing example that trade benefits humanity--and not just economically. President Ma highlighted the East China Sea Peace Initiative, which aimed to address sovereignty disputes in the region in 2012. Subsequently, in 2013, Taiwan signed a fisheries agreement with Japan. Both nations maintained their sovereignty while enhancing fishing rights, which resulted in a triple yield of catches. And that's good for a world in which the demand for fish keeps rising. Mr. Speaker, I look forward to a continuing successful cooperation between the United States and Taiwan. I am also confident that if we continue to enhance our economic relationship, this dynamic partnership that we've built together will not only last but also thrive in the future, working alongside one another to, as President Ma quipped, realize the day in which ``The only one party which is not happy is the fish.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to be recognized by you to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. I come to the floor here today with an issue that I think is important that America have a dialogue on the topic, and some of that is going on. It is going on in the Presidential races across the country and in the coffee shops and at work, at play, at church, and around the country in the things that we do. But when a moment in history comes along that shocked a lot of us to the core--and that was the abrupt and unexpected loss of Justice Antonin Scalia, a person whom I got to know. I would like to say that I called him a friend. He was a person whose personality I enjoyed a lot, his robust sense of humor, his acerbic wit in the way that he conveyed his messages, especially when he wrote the dissenting opinions for the Supreme Court. He found himself occasionally in the minority, but I think he was almost always right in those constitutional decisions. When Justice Scalia wrote those minority opinions, he realized that-- and he just thought in advance--that the students in law school would have to read the dissenting opinions as well as the majority opinions. So he made sure when he wrote especially his dissenting opinions that they were engaging, they were entertaining, they were provocative, and they were challenging. It caused the law school students to read those and remember the points that Justice Scalia had made. That is a legacy of the 30 years of Justice Scalia that will live within the annals of the history of the United States of America, especially those who are studying constitutional law and those that are in law school. The constitutional law students around America too seldom are taught constitutional law out of the Constitution itself. We have a President of the United States who spent 10 years as an adjunct professor teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago. I have met with a good number of the students that he taught. The ones that I met with, at least, said that, whenever they laid out a conservative principle and made a constitutional argument based upon those conservative principles, that then-adjunct professor Barack Obama would always turn that around to the activist side, to move the needle hard to the left. It is my position--and I believe it is also the position of the chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the House and especially the chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate--that the Constitution must be read and interpreted to mean what it says. It would mean precisely the text of the Constitution as it was understood to mean at the time of ratification. The Constitution itself, Mr. Speaker, is the equivalent of--and I would say literally is--an intergenerational contractual guarantee from one generation of Americans to the next, to the next, to the next. Our Founding Fathers understood that, and they so carefully crafted this Constitution. The language in it reflects their convictions and their guarantee to each generation. If it were to be anything else, if it were to be a living and breathing document, as too many of our Justices on the Supreme Court and far too many on our Federal bench today, that 40 percent or so that will have been appointed by Barack Obama by the end of his term--those Justices, by and large, don't believe what I've just said, Mr. Speaker. They generally believe that the text of the Constitution is something that they can massage, that they can manipulate, that they can interpret and reinterpret to mean that which they would want it to mean if it were written by them today. Of course, the words wouldn't be the same, but the ideology that grows from many of these precedent decisions shows that and is proof of it. If anyone wonders, Mr. Speaker, I would take them back to the Court last June 24 and 25. On one day, the Supreme Court concluded that they could rewrite law. On the next day, the Supreme Court concluded that they could create not just new rights in the Constitution, but create a command in the Constitution. Now, I hope to return to that topic in a little bit, Mr. Speaker. What we have in front of us is this: The loss of Justice Scalia leaves an empty seat on the Supreme Court. It is an intellectual hole, not just a voting hole. But it is an intellectual hole left by the towering legal intellect of Justice Scalia. In times throughout history--there are conflicting reports--one can make the political argument and one can make the traditional argument as to whether a President should be able to make an appointment to the Supreme Court and have that appointment ratified and confirmed by the United States Senate. Under these circumstances that we have today--this is an election year, and the loss of Justice Scalia and the creation of that empty seat on the Supreme Court has brought about a nomination for the Supreme Court that has been produced by President Barack Obama, even though the majority party in the Senate, concurring with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, as well as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Charles Grassley, have said: We are not going to take up a nominee and we are not going to have hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee. That means that we won't have a debate on the floor of the Senate for confirmation because they believe--and it is their prerogative to do so--they believe that the next Justice on the Supreme Court should be a reflection of the voice of the people who will go to the polls this coming November and an elected President of the United States who more accurately reflects the will of the people rather than a President who is a lameduck President. I agree with Senator Grassley and I agree with Majority Leader Senator McConnell that this is a decision that is too big to be made by people who are on the way out the door. The President is on the way out the door. There are Members of the Senate that are on their way out the door. We need the fresh faces that have the freshest support of the American people making these decisions, particularly the next President of the United States. Now, predictably, when an argument like this comes up, each side seeks to gain a political advantage. Yes, this is a political decision. It is a political decision that needs to be based on the foundation, however, of the Constitution and the text of the Constitution and the understanding of the Constitution to mean what it says and mean what it was interpreted to mean at the time that it was ratified. Our Founding Fathers gave us a means to amend the Constitution. So they didn't intend our Constitution to be a living, breathing document, as the people on the left say. They intended it to be fixed in place, an intergenerational contractual guarantee, so that my grandchildren and great-grandchildren and each succeeding generation can count on this Constitution meaning what it says. I have watched it distorted. I have watched it usurped by decisions made in our Federal courts and by our Supreme Court and a people and a public that will honor those decisions because they are made by the judges, not because they are constitutionally grounded decisions. So this appointment that comes before the Supreme Court--first, I will go to this. In our Constitution, Mr. Speaker, Article II, section 2--the authority of the executive branch of government must be here somewhere. Article II, section 2: This is the text we are working with, Mr. Speaker. This is the language that governs the nomination, the advice, the consent, and the appointment to the Supreme Court in this fashion. I will read this verbatim from Article II, section 2: ``He''--meaning the President of the United States--this is executive branch authority--``He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to . . . nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint . . . judges of the Supreme Court . . .'' Now, he shall have power to nominate and, by and with the advice and consent, appoint judges of the Supreme Court. That is power to nominate and appoint by and with the consent, Mr. Speaker. So the language here is clear, ``by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.'' The advice and consent of the Senate is determined by the Senate. The consent of the Senate is the confirmation vote. The advice would be that the President is to go to the Senate and say: I have got an appointment here to the Supreme Court. You all know that. Do you have some names you would like to offer? What is your counsel here? Look at the makeup of the Court. What is missing? Who do we have on the bench today? How are they contributing? What kind of job are they doing in ruling upon the supreme law of the land, the Constitution itself, and the text of the statutes that Congress has passed that go before the Court for evaluation as to their constitutionality? I will go further than to suggest, Mr. Speaker. I will assert that we have a Court today that too often reaches outside its bounds. And if I had a criticism of Justice Scalia, it would be his deeper respect for stare decisis that I happen to see in a Justice such as Clarence Thomas. But when a decision is made by the Court, there has been essentially a consent of the Court to accept that decision, to build on it, rather than to go back and reevaluate afresh, anew from the text of the Constitution. I think we need to go back and refresh anew and take a look at the text of the Constitution with each decision of the Supreme Court with less deference to stare decisis. The activists on the Court, on the other hand, are the exact opposite. They want to build these leftward precedents along the way so that, in the end, the Constitution would be obliterated. That is the direction that President Obama has gone. It is the direction he seeks to go. I would submit that I don't expect that he is going to be able to make an appointment to the Supreme Court that would reflect a Justice on the bench whose interpretation of the Constitution would be to the text and the original understanding and meaning of it, but, instead, activist judges. That is the history that he has produced. I have not evaluated Judge Garland. I don't have a comment on his work except that this is not the time to confirm an appointment for Barack Obama and let him shape this Court for the next generation or so. If we get this wrong, Mr. Speaker, we lose our Constitution for the next generation. No matter how astute our Presidents have been, no matter how deeply they have been committed to the Constitution itself, we have still seen that, even under Ronald Reagan, he got about half of his appointments to the Court right. We need a President coming around the pike that gets every one of them right. I wouldn't be happy and satisfied until all nine of the Justices on the Court reflected that they are traditionalists, that they are textualists, that they are originalists in the Constitution, and that the judges that are coming up on the Federal bench would also meet that same standard. I am not in the United States Senate. We don't have a vote on the confirmation of appointments to our Federal courts over here in the House. I do serve on the Committee on the Judiciary, and this is the end of the 14th year that I have done that, Mr. Speaker. And so the voice of time and observation and reading and consideration and experience, especially as a member of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice of the House Committee on the Judiciary, yes, I have deep convictions on this issue and considerable experience and knowledge base on it. I am suggesting, Mr. Speaker, that this House of Representatives evaluate the arguments that I am making here and the arguments that Senator Grassley is making on the other side of the rotunda, and these arguments say we take an oath. This will be my argument. Mr. Speaker, we all take an oath here to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. So do the Justices of the Supreme Court take that oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. The President of the United States takes an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. These are serious oaths. When you stand up before God and country and say ``so help me God,'' you better mean it. That means that the Constitution isn't a malleable document. When you take an oath to support and defend it, that doesn't mean you can take an oath to support and defend the Constitution as, let's say, amended by a Supreme Court. I would support and defend a Constitution amended constitutionally only. The Supreme Court Justices are the last people on the planet that ought to be engaged in amending the Constitution of the United States. But if I could take you back to those dates I mentioned--June 24, June 25, 2015--June 24, if you want to look at the calendar, is going to be a Thursday. That was the date that the decision came out on ObamaCare. That was King v. Burwell. That decision, Mr. Speaker, a majority opinion written by the Chief Justice, boiled down to this: Congress passed a law in two different components. I call it ObamaCare. They called it the Affordable Care Act. I have said that George Washington could not utter those words in referencing that legislation because it is not affordable and George Washington could not tell a lie. But it was actually the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. That long lingo threw people off. So they boiled it down to the Affordable Care Act. We boiled it down to ObamaCare. ObamaCare is far more descriptive than the Affordable Care Act and far more honest. But that legislation came in two packages. It was passed by hook, by crook, by legislative shenanigan, and that wasn't just me saying that. There was at least one Democrat here on the floor who used the term ``legislative shenanigan'' in reference to the passage of ObamaCare. It was passed in that fashion. Yet, when it began to be implemented, they wrote thousands of pages of regulations that could not have been imagined at the time that that bill passed the floor here. There was a massive amount of arm twisting and leverage like this country has never seen. We had tens of thousands of people that surrounded this Capitol and pleaded: Keep your hands off of our health insurance. Keep your hands off of our health care. They wanted their freedom. The people who came here understood this, that the most sovereign thing that we have is our own soul. And the Federal Government hasn't figured out how to tax it, how to nationalize it, how to take it away from us. We are in control of our eternal salvation--that is our soul--and we manage that. Each one of us manages it. But the second most sovereign thing we have is our health, our skin, and everything inside it. Yet, this Congress, House and Senate, together with the President of the United States--on March 23, 2010, he signed into law the combination of the two bills that became ObamaCare that I said were passed by hook, crook, and legislative shenanigan and have their own constitutional problems. I would argue the Supreme Court at least twice has ruled outside the Constitution in order to get ObamaCare implemented, and one of those was the State exchanges. The statutory authority for the States to establish insurance exchanges under the auspices of the State exists within ObamaCare, but the language that empowers the States to do so does not include the Federal Government. The Federal Government did not have the constitutional authority to establish exchanges, and it needed the language. If the Obama administration had been astute, they may well have written into ObamaCare legislation three words, ``or Federal Government,'' so that the States or Federal Government would have the legal authority to establish the exchanges. The Federal Government went ahead and established exchanges within the multiple States that refused to do so, and the Supreme Court's job is to read the text of the language and rule on the text of the language and the law. But, yet, in a 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court written by the Chief Justice, they decided that, if the Congress really might have at that time passed legislation with the language in it that would have said ``or Federal Government,'' that they would just go ahead and interpret that it really means: Well, okay. It was an oversight on the part of Congress. They might have slipped that in there if they had just known that they needed to write it in there. But it was maybe an oversight by staff in the middle of the night because, after all, the then-Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said we have to pass this legislation in order to find out what is in it. Well, she didn't say we had to pass it to find out what wasn't in it. But what wasn't in it was the authority for the Federal Government to go into the States and intervene and establish their own exchanges within the States. But this Obama administration did that with the people's tax dollars, and I will say in violation of the law. When it was appealed to the Supreme Court to assert just that, the Supreme Court ruled, well, it would have been better for the policy, in their judgment, if the language had been in there, ``or Federal Government.'' But it wasn't in there. So they deemed it in. That is a legislative decision made by a 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court that came down on us June 24, 2015. That is appalling to me. I am aghast at the idea that a Supreme Court could be ruling upon the supreme law of the land and come down with a decision that they are now the legislative body to completely alter legislation that was the due decision of, I think, an erroneous decision, but a majority decision of the United States Congress. Now, in any other world, in any other time, in any other kind of a decision that would come down, a Supreme Court could, should, has, and would justly send it back to Congress with this directive: We can't find in here the language you may have wanted to pass. If you want this language in this bill, Article I says all legislative authority is vested in the Congress of the United States. So the only right choice for a Supreme Court faced with this kind of a decision was to not remand it back to a lower court for a decision, essentially and, I will say, virtually, remand it to Congress and say to Congress: If you want to have federally established exchanges within the States, you have to pass a law that says so. That is not what they did. They decided that they could change the law over at the Supreme Court building. Now, if that can be done, if the Supreme Court of the United States can take on the trappings of a legislature and become a super legislature--and, by the way, they are appointed for life, for life. So there is no consequence for people who can't be voted out of office. You can't even replace them for the duration of their life. But they made the decision that they were the super legislature, and 5-4, under King v. Burwell, they put three words de facto, three words into the ObamaCare legislation, ``or Federal Government.'' Now, I am barely up off the floor from reading this on that Thursday, June 24, 2015, and, as the Sun comes up on me on the following morning, I am contemplating: What do we do about this? How does Congress react? What should the public messages be in one part? At 9:00 in the morning in Iowa, 10:00 D.C. time, I am rolling into St. Anne's Catholic Church in Logan, Iowa, to do an event there with a visiting priest and with the parish there at St. Anne's in Logan, Iowa. And who merged together--at the same time we pulled in and parked essentially simultaneously--was the vehicle of former Senator Rick Santorum, one of the leading constitutionalists in this country, one of the strongest people in defense of life and defense of marriage and defense of the Constitution that we have seen--and I will say within a generation--with deep convictions, a clear understanding, and a very articulate voice. As we got out of our vehicles, each of us had been listening to the news report of the decision that came down from the Supreme Court that day. That was a decision on marriage. I pronounce it Obergefell decision. But that decision on marriage that came down on Friday, June 25, 2015, where the Supreme Court--I mentioned in the earliest part of my conversation, Mr. Speaker, the Supreme Court would legislate from the bench, and the Supreme Court not only created what would be a new right from the bench, but they created--they manufactured out of thin air a command, a command to every State in the Union. That command that they created without any constitutional basis whatsoever was to the States this: If you are to have civil marriage in your State, it shall include same-sex marriage on equal standing with a man and a woman joined together in matrimony. No matter what your State laws, no matter what your State constitutions say, we usurp it from the Supreme Court with an edict, a directive, a command, that you shall conduct same-sex marriages on equal standing and you shall recognize same-sex marriages from other States with reciprocity as well. Now, this is not a decision that could have been made by the United States Congress and not had it challenged. And I would say the Congress does not have the authority to impose same-sex marriage on the rest of the country. If we had had the audacity to make such a decision in the House and the Senate and signed by the President, somebody would take that to the Supreme Court and say: Show me the enumerated power that Congress has to regulate marriage in such a fashion. I would argue that we don't have that constitutional authority, but I would submit that the States do have. The States under the Ninth and Tenth Amendment do have the authority. If they decide to establish same-sex marriage in their State legislatures and they can get their Governor to sign the legislation or override a veto, any one or any combination of or all of the States could pass a same-sex marriage law, I would respect that as a constitutional decision made by we, the people, whether it is we, the people of Iowa, or we, the people of another State, or all other States, for that matter, but not the Supreme Court, Mr. Speaker. The Supreme Court of the United States didn't just manufacture a right, they created a command to the States, and that is constitutionally offensive to me to read a decision like that. By the way, I had a preview of it because the State Supreme Court in Iowa did just that in about 2009 and some of us dug down into that decision. That was about a 63- or 64-page decision, and it was an appalling, sloppy piece of legal work that was written with, I believe, a conclusion. And then they had to go through a lot of legalistic and mental and logical contortions to get to their conclusion. I would invite anybody to read that decision. I believe that an objective reading of that decision brings them down with the same characterization that I would have. I want judges who read the Constitution and literally interpret the Constitution. And the judges who understand, as Justice Scalia did, that when he makes a decision based on the Constitution and the letter of the law--if he is uncomfortable with the policy decision that emerges with that, that tells him that he can be very comfortable with the constitutionality of the decision that he has made because, on policy, he disagrees, but he knows that he is not there to determine policy. He is there, as Justice Roberts said in his confirmation accurately, I think, to call the balls and the strikes, not to be the one that is a player in that arena. So we have Senator Chuck Grassley, the man who is standing in the gap and a man who is the chairman of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee who has the control over the agenda of that committee and decides whether there will be hearings before the Judiciary Committee on this appointment of the President or whether there will not be--and he has said in conjunction with Majority Leader McConnell, that there will not be hearings in the Judiciary Committee. And Chuck Grassley is right, Mitch McConnell is right. This argument gets cast back and forth--and it will be cast back and forth--and the amperage of this will go up and up and up between now and the election. They will turn that into a political football. For me, I say: Take Chuck Grassley's word to the bank and we are done talking about it. But they want the political leverage. So they will be pressuring Chuck Grassley. Mr. Speaker, here is a little bit of what is going on. Here is my public position on the issue. And it had to do with a press conference where I said, ``There is no reason to have that hearing. The simple answer to it is this: It's inconceivable that he''--President Obama-- ``would nominate someone to the Supreme Court who believes in the Constitution. If we're going to save our Constitution, we can't have an Obama nominee on the court.'' Mr. Speaker, that is maybe a blunt statement, but I have watched the history and the pattern of Barack Obama and appointments that he has made to the court. There is no question that they are liberal, leftist activists who want to come down with decisions that are more in the direction of the leadership of the ideology on the left and with very little deference to the Founding Fathers and anchored to the text of the Constitution. And I have given what the Constitution says about nominations by advice and consent. Again, the President ``shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint.'' In other words, the President can't make an appointment to the Supreme Court unless he has the advice and consent of the Senate. Now, advice could be fairly loosely interpreted, but consent is a different story. That takes a vote to do that--judges to the Supreme Court. That means the President nominates, the Senate can provide the advice before the nomination--that would be the best--and perhaps some advice after. But the consent of the Senate is required or there won't be a seat in the Supreme Court that is filled by Barack Obama. Now, I point out also that there is nothing in this Constitution that says that there has to be nine Justices on the Supreme Court. This is where the House could actually weigh in on this, if we decide to do this. The Constitution of the United States requires that the Congress establish a Supreme Court. And then it is up to our discretion as to what other Federal court we might want to establish. Mr. Speaker, I actually had this debate with Justice Scalia. One of the things I enjoyed about him was little banters along the way and how these arguments came out. And I made the point to him that the Constitution only requires that the Congress establish a Supreme Court, not all the other Federal courts. So we could--Congress--abolish all of the Federal districts that are there. We could say there will be no Federal courts. It will all be handled through the Supreme Court itself. That is not a practical application, but it is from a constitutional perspective. Then I said to Justice Scalia that we could eliminate all the Federal courts except the Supreme Court. And over time, we could reduce the Supreme Court. There is no requirement that the Supreme Court have nine Justices or seven or five or three. We could reduce the Supreme Court of the United States down to the Chief Justice. There is no requirement that we build or fund a building or heat it or wire it for electronics or anything. There is no requirement that we have staff for any of the Supreme Court. The Congress could crank all the Federal courts down to just the Supreme Court, reduce the Supreme Court down to just the Chief Justice at his own card table, with candle, no staff, and no facility. That is the argument I made to Justice Scalia. Some of this I do for entertainment value because he always was an engaging fellow to have these conversations with. Mr. Speaker, I don't know if you ever heard this point made to him before, but Justice Scalia's response to it was: I would argue that there is a requirement that there be three Justices on the Supreme Court; otherwise, there is no reason to have a Chief Justice. I thought that was a pretty astute response, Mr. Speaker. But my response to that was: we have always had too many chiefs and not enough Indians. So we had a little fun with that and moved on, but that is the leverage that the House and the Senate has together. There is not a requirement that there be a ninth Justice on the Supreme Court. I am comfortable with that and supportive of that, but I want to fill that seat with someone that reflects the values of Justice Scalia and perhaps one that will reflect even more closely the values of Justice Thomas, in particular. And there are a number of other Justices that I admire on the Supreme Court, but another activist on the Supreme Court is not what this country needs. This country needs to have a constitutionalist, an originalist, a textualist on the Supreme Court that will reflect the meaning of this Constitution at its time of ratification. And that is why our Founders gave us a means to amend the Constitution. They didn't intend for the Supreme Court to be taking on the trappings of a super legislature and legislating on one day by adding words to ObamaCare, and then the very next day create the new command in the Constitution that the State shall conduct same-sex marriages and honor same-sex marriages in other States. That is over the top. That is beyond the pale. If you can imagine what our Founding Fathers would say, how about the signers of the Declaration of Independence? If we could bring them to life today and walk them out here into Statuary Hall and say: take a look at this painting up here where you are all signing this Declaration of Independence. Or better yet, go over to the Archives, where they pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, and you can still see John Hancock's signature there almost as clearly as the day that he may well have signed that. What would those Founding Fathers say if they knew that within a 24- hour window or maybe a 25-hour window, the Supreme Court of the United States said, We are going to confer national health insurance on everybody in America, and the Congress didn't write the law right, so we wrote it for them; and then the next day, same-sex marriage? You wouldn't find a single Founding Father that would agree with either one of those decisions, Mr. Speaker. We are on the cusp of making an appointment to the Supreme Court that would feed this back to us and do more and more and more. How do you possibly teach the Constitution to young people? How do you teach civics to young people if the Constitution itself is moving in such a way that no one can predict what would happen? I am very pleased to see that I am joined by another constitutionalist out of the State of Florida, who is a clear thinker and has a good understanding. I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Yoho), my friend and a doctor.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time and thanking very much the gentleman from Florida for the compliments and the input here, too. I learned something in this discussion and listening to Mr. Yoho from Florida, and that is, when he spoke of divine intervention in our Constitution, the answer required divine intervention because men just aren't that smart. I hadn't heard that expression in this town or anyplace. That explains it in a lot of ways. I have long said that I believe that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are written with divine guidance. I choose those terms because the Bible was written with divine intervention and divine inspiration. That is up here. Divine guidance is just a little click below that. I don't want to claim Biblical standards, but it is really close. We would not have this country if it were not for God's guidance of our Founding Fathers, and so I tuned my ear to that. I would say also, whose advice should the Senators listen to on the other side? Well, they should listen to Ted Yoho's advice. I hope they are listening to my advice, Mr. Speaker. But those on the Republican side of the aisle, they are pretty solid. I want to publicly and personally thank my friend, whom I appreciate and respect a lot, Jerry Moran, who has been in a difficult place in Kansas. He is a terrific friend, and I served with him here in the House of Representatives. His position is shored up in opposition to having hearings in the Judiciary Committee and trying to move this. I think the reconsideration that he has done is a good thing, and I hope the people of Kansas understand and appreciate Jerry Moran in the fashion that I do as well. I would suggest that maybe Jerry Moran and some of the Democrat Senators, in particular, may have been listening to this advice, Mr. Speaker. This would be advice from the Vice President himself, Joe Biden, advice that he gave on June 25, 1992. So it has sustained the test of time in this fashion. It is called the Biden Rule. Quote, from Vice President Joe Biden: It is my view that if a Supreme Court Justice resigns tomorrow, or within the next several weeks, or resigns at the end of the summer, President Bush should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not-- repeats it--and not name a nominee until after the November election is completed. That is Joe Biden, and, at that time, he was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Speaker. Again, that was June 25, 1992. We are only a couple of months away in proportion to that in this period of time. So if our friends over on the Senate side are not listening to the Vice President, I would suggest they might listen to the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, the former majority leader in the Senate. This is Harry Reid's statement made in 2005. You will note that this was back when George W. Bush was President. Harry Reid, minority leader today in the Senate: The duties of the United States Senate are set forth in the Constitution of the United States. Nowhere in that document does it say that the Senate has a duty to give Presidential nominees a vote. It says appointments shall be made with the advice and consent of the Senate. That is very different than saying every nominee receives a vote . . . The Senate is not a rubber stamp for the executive branch. That is Harry Reid, 2005. Both of those gentlemen, I would say today, would argue against their previous arguments. I am reinforcing their arguments today on the floor of the House of Representatives. We are not finished, Mr. Speaker. Who is another strong, influential voice over there in the Senate Judiciary Committee? Senator Schumer of New York. He wanted to block the Bush nominees, and here is what he had to say. He said: We should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court except in extraordinary circumstances. Senator Schumer cited ideological reasons for the delay, and I begin another quote: They must prove by actions, not words, that they are in the mainstream, rather than we have to prove that they are not. Well, there is a statement of ambiguity for you, Mr. Speaker, requiring an appointment to the Supreme Court to prove that they are in the mainstream. What is the mainstream? That would be what Chuck Schumer would define as the mainstream, depending upon whether or not he supported the candidate that was speaking to present themselves to be in the mainstream. I would argue that mainstream is not a requirement for an appointment to the Supreme Court. The requirements for the appointment to the Supreme Court are determined by the discretion and the judgment of the confirming Senators over on the other side of this Capitol Building, and they should be obligated to only confirm Justices who interpret the Constitution to mean what it says. To mean what it says. Is that too much to ask? Why, then, do we have a Constitution if it can't mean what it says? Senator Schumer wasn't done, however. He argued again in 2007: We should reverse the presumption of confirmation. The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts, or a Justice Ginsburg by another Alito. That was 2007. Well, I think the Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance precisely because of the Justices that Senator Schumer supports and because there are not enough Justices on the Supreme Court that he has opposed, because I believe that the Justices need to reflect and protect the text and the original understanding of the Constitution. Every Founding Father believed that as well when they went to their grave; and they would be rolling over in it if they saw a Supreme Court that was writing law on one day, manufacturing commands the next day, and now hearing an argument that the President of the United States has a right to his appointment to the Supreme Court, no matter what kind of activist he might serve up, that is going to visit upon the American people, for at least the next generation, decisions that usurp the authority of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate and commandeer the legislative authority away from Article I and commandeer some kind of authority to manufacture commands, as they did last June. Then, we are not done yet. In case this argument isn't strong enough at this point, Mr. Speaker, here is another. The very individual that made the appointment to the Supreme Court, that would be then-Senator Barack Obama, now President Obama, he filibustered the Alito appointment--the Alito nomination. Excuse me. Here is what then-Senator Obama argued in 2006. Well, they say this now. This is his spokesman today: ``President Obama regrets filibustering the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in 2006''--this is from his top spokesman who said, just a week or so ago, ``though he maintains that the Republican opposition to his effort to replace Justice Antonin Scalia is unprecedented.'' No, the President of the United States' opposition to Justice Alito was unprecedented, not the opposition created here by Chairman Grassley or Majority Leader McConnell and almost every Republican over there in the United States Senate; and I don't know any Republicans in the House who think they ought to move this appointment now. So, here are some other positions along the way, Mr. Speaker, regarding Senator Grassley's comments. Senator Grassley made some strong positions on the floor of the Senate a little over a week ago, and they were published in Politico, as I recall, where it would be this. The Supreme Court has weighed in on this nomination, and that would be Chief Justice Roberts has intervened and made comments in this way: that before Scalia had passed away, he argued that the confirmation process is not functioning very well, that it has gotten too political. I was very proud of Senator Grassley when he stepped up on the floor of the Senate and rebutted that argument and he made the case that, no, the confirmation process in the United States Senate has gotten political precisely because the Court itself is making political decisions rather than decisions based upon the law and the supreme law of the land, the Constitution. So when you see political decisions come out of the Court--and those decisions, I have described some of them; there are many others--that means that the confirmation process itself is political. And when I sat before the Supreme Court and heard the oral arguments before the Court--and I hope to do that again next week--I was amazed. I expected that I would hear profound constitutional arguments before the United States Supreme Court. I mean, I grew up, I guess, naively believing that those were the arguments made before that Court. I think the Warren Court had already turned that thing in the other direction, and I didn't realize it. But when I first sat before the United States Supreme Court and listened for those arguments, thinking it was going to be an amazing educational experience for me, what I found was there weren't any profound constitutional arguments made. Those arguments, instead, were being made to the swing Justice on the Court to try to get to that individual's heart, because they understood the various proclivities in the thinking and the rationale that might come. They went back and looked at the lives, the lifestyle, the history of the Justices and wondered what moves their heart rather than what moves their rationale. We should only have Justices whose rationale is moved by constitutional arguments before the Court. Let's see. Who else do I have? President Obama, who made the argument that he wants appointments to the Supreme Court who have--what is the word?--compassion, empathy. President Obama's word is ``empathy.'' We are not looking for empathy on the Supreme Court. We are looking for Justices that can rule on the letter and the text and the original meaning and understanding of the Constitution, and the letter and text of the law here in Congress that we passed. And, yes, they can take into consideration congressional intent, but they can't amend the language. If the language says one thing, they don't get to add words to it. They should ship it back over here and tell us what they have interpreted that it said, and then the Congress can decide whether or not we want to act. We take an oath to support and defend the Constitution. That doesn't mean we are bound by a decision of the Supreme Court that turns the Constitution on its head. So this fight that is going on in the Supreme Court with the nomination to the Court now is one that will turn the destiny of the United States of America. Depending on who ends up as the next President of the United States, I have every confidence that Senator Grassley holds his ground, that there will not be hearings before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, that the Senate prerogative will prevail, and that the people will go to the polls in November and elect a President. Part of that decision will be: Will that President make the right appointment to the Supreme Court? In the meantime, Chuck Grassley, the man who is now the chairman of the committee, stands in the gap in the same way that Leonidas stood against Xerxes at the Battle of Thermopylae when he led the 300 to stand in that gap and face 300,000 Persians. He is holding his ground. He is holding his ground nobly. He is holding it with conviction. He is holding it with determination. And we need to stand with him, beside him, and behind him in every way that we can and understand that this is a political assault that is going at him. We should reward him for his convictions by electing a President who will make that appointment to the Supreme Court who reflects the will of the people. And the will of the people, I trust, will still want to see an appointment to the Supreme Court of a Justice who would stand up and say this Constitution means what it says. The text of this Constitution has to mean what it says, and it has to be interpreted to mean that which it was understood to mean at the time of its ratification. And if you don't like what it does for our policy, then get to work and amend the Constitution. That is why that provision is there. That is why we have the amendments to the Constitution today. So I thank Senator Grassley for his strong stand. I thank Mitch McConnell for his leadership in the Senate. I thank everyone over there who holds their ground, and everyone here in this Congress who takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution and means it. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I was unable to vote on March 15, 2016. Had I been present, I would have voted as follows: NO on Roll Call Number 118.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman from Texas for yielding and for leading on this issue. As I sit and listen to this debate, a number of things come to mind, and they start with this: I am hearing a lot of policy discussion over on the other side of the aisle, but this is about a constitutional question. We have just said good-bye to one of the great, great Justices in the United States Supreme Court, Justice Scalia, who often said that, when he made a decision based on the Constitution and he was uncomfortable with the policy that resulted from that constitutional decision, he was most comfortable that he had made the right constitutional decision when he disagreed with a policy result of that decision. That is also how we should view this case. Every one of us that has the privilege to speak and address you on the floor of this House has taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. This is about the President's oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, except his says take care to ``preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,'' and it is referenced in the Take Care Clause in the Constitution that requires him to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Now, I don't know that there is a schoolchild in this land that is going to get that wrong. They don't think that the President should execute the law itself and then conduct himself in the fashion that he sees fit. I think they understand that the President, multiple times, has lectured the country in his adjunct constitutional law professorship that he didn't have the constitutional authority to do what he did. So this issue is about the Take Care Clause, the President keeping his oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, and it is about prosecutorial discretion, as the gentlewoman from California said; except that, it was a clear understanding, when they wrote the Morton Memos, that they were creating groups of people, classes of people, and categories of people, and the Morton Memos were the beginning of this. They created four different categories of people, and as far as I know, anyone who fit into those categories was essentially maybe individually dealt with because they processed their paperwork, but they were automatically exempted from the application of the law. That is when this began. We should not think, Mr. Speaker, that the House hasn't weighed in on this. It goes back to this. March 2, 2011, was the introduction of the Morton Memos. That was the first executive overreach on immigration that is starkly on paper. The first opportunity to push back on that was a hearing in which Janet Napolitano asserted that it was on an individual basis only and repeated herself. And Morton Memos themselves have several references to an individual basis only, except that they create four categories of people. So the words don't mean what the rules do. They abuse prosecutorial discretion by granting it to vast groups of people that were defined first in the Morton Memos. So I brought an amendment June 7, 2012, that cut off all the funding to the Morton Memos. That passed 238-175 on a bipartisan vote. The next opportunity was the Morton Memos in DACA, another King amendment, June 6, 2013, that passed 224-201, another bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas. So we addressed the Morton Memos in this House and voted to defund them in 2012. That was the first opportunity. The next opportunity was 2013. We addressed the Morton Memos in DACA and defunded them in this House of Representatives. That was also a bipartisan vote. Then August 1, 2014, we addressed DACA alone, defunded it, a vote of 216-192, another bipartisan vote, Mr. Speaker. Not to be completing it there, January 14, 2015, the House addressed, separately, DAPA and Morton Memos in an amendment to defund. That passed 237-190. And we picked up the DACA in a separate amendment, same day, and that passed 218-209. The House has voted time and time again. And if that was not enough for the voice of the House to weigh in on this, we came back again on June 3, 2015, another King amendment, and defunded the DOJ lawsuit we are talking about here now because we said: Step back, Mr. President; keep your oath of office. We stood up, and we defended ours. I will say this. Despite all of these votes, the government and Democrat Members claim Congress has acquiesced to the unconstitutional actions when the House has a clear voting history of opposing each step in the President's path to amnesty. So the House has now exhausted our remedies, with the exception of the omnibus spending bills, where everything gets packaged up in one vote. Except for that, the House has done all it can, Mr. Speaker, except for this opportunity to introduce an amicus brief that will be the voice of the House keeping our oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I yield to the gentlewoman from California.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I am asserting that the House needs to do all it can to keep our oath to support and defend the Constitution, and we are doing this today with this endorsement of the Speaker's amicus brief so that the House can weigh in in defending our constitutional obligation. I thank the gentlewoman from California and the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following: [From FoxNews.com, Sept. 16, 2015] Elusive Crime Wave Data Shows Frightening Toll of Illegal Immigrant Criminals (By Malia Zimmerman) The federal government can tell you how many ``Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders'' stole a car, the precise number of ``American Indian or Alaska Natives'' who were arrested for vagrancy or how many whites were busted for counterfeiting in any given year. But the government agencies that crunch crime numbers are utterly unable--or unwilling-- to pinpoint for the public how many illegal immigrants are arrested within U.S. borders each year. In the absence of comprehensive data, FoxNews.com examined a patchwork of local, state and federal statistics that revealed a wildly disproportionate number of murderers, rapists and drug dealers are crossing into the U.S. amid the wave of hard-working families seeking a better life. The explosive figures show illegal immigrants are three times as likely to be convicted of murder as members of the general population and account for far more crimes than their 3.5- percent share of the U.S. population would suggest. Critics say it is no accident that local, state and federal governments go to great lengths to keep the data under wraps. ``There are a lot of reasons states don't make this information readily available, and there is no clearinghouse of data at high levels,'' said former Department of Justice attorney J. Christian Adams, who has conducted exhaustive research on the subject. ``These numbers would expose how serious the problem is and make the government look bad.'' Adams called illegal immigrant crime a ``wave of staggering proportions.'' He and other experts noted that the issue has been dragged into the spotlight by a spate of cases in which illegal immigrants with criminal records killed people after being released from custody because of incoherent procedures and a lack of cooperation between local and federal law enforcement officials. The murders, including the July 1 killing of Kathryn Steinle, allegedly by an illegal immigrant in San Francisco, have left grieving loved ones angry and confused, local and federal officials pointing fingers at one another and the voting public demanding secure borders and swift deportation of non- citizen criminals. ``Every one (of the recent cases) was preventable through better border security and enforcing immigration laws,'' said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. ``They should have been sent back to their home country instead of being allowed to stay here and have the opportunity to kill Americans.'' A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement told FoxNews.com that comprehensive statistics on illegal immigrant crime are not available from the federal government, and suggested contacting county, state and federal jail and prison systems individually to compose a tally, a process that would encompass thousands of local departments. FoxNews.com did review reports from immigration reform groups and various government agencies, including the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Sentencing Commission, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Government Accountability Office, the Bureau of Justice Statistics and several state and county correctional departments. Statistics show the estimated 11.7 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. account for 13.6 percent of all offenders sentenced for crimes committed in the U.S. Twelve percent of murder sentences, 20 percent of kidnapping sentences and 16 percent of drug trafficking sentences are meted out to illegal immigrants. There are approximately 2.1 million legal or illegal immigrants with criminal convictions living free or behind bars in the U.S., according to ICE's Secure Communities office. Each year, about 900,000 legal and illegal immigrants are arrested, and 700,000 are released from jail, prison, or probation. ICE estimates that there are more than 1.2 million criminal aliens at large in the U.S. In the most recent figures available, a Government Accountability Office report titled, ``Criminal Alien Statistics,'' found there were 55,000 illegal immigrants in federal prison and 296,000 in state and local lockups in 2011. Experts agree those figures have almost certainly risen, although executive orders from the Obama administration may have changed the status of thousands who previously would have been counted as illegal immigrants. Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant criminals are being deported. In 2014, ICE removed 315,943 criminal illegal immigrants nationwide, 85 percent of whom had previously been convicted of a criminal offense. But that same year, ICE released onto U.S. streets another 30,558 criminal illegal immigrants with a combined 79,059 criminal convictions including 86 homicides, 186 kidnappings, and thousands of sexual assaults, domestic violence assaults and DUIs, Vaughan said. As of August, ICE had already released at least 10,246 criminal aliens. David Inserra, a policy analyst for Homeland Security and Cybersecurity at The Heritage Foundation, said letting illegal immigrants convicted of crimes go free while they await deportation hearings is putting the public at risk. ``While it is not certain how many of these individuals were here illegally, most of these individuals were in deportation proceedings and should have been detained or at least more closely supervised and monitored until their deportation order was finalized and executed,'' Inserra said. Adams opened a rare window into the dearth of public data when he obtained an internal report compiled by the Texas Department of Public Safety and revealed its contents on his Pajamas Media blog. The report showed that between 2008 and 2014, noncitizens in Texas--a group that includes illegal and legal immigrants--committed 611,234 crimes, including nearly 3,000 homicides. Adams told FoxNews.com that other states have also closely tracked illegal immigrant crime, especially in the wake of 9/11, but said the statistical sorting ``is done behind closed doors.'' States closely guard the statistics out of either fear of reprisals from the federal government or out of their leaders' own insistence on downplaying the burden of illegal immigrant crime, he said. ``There are a lot of reasons states don't make this information readily available and there is no clearinghouse of data at high levels,'' Adams said. ``These numbers would expose how serious the problem is and make the government look bad.'' A smattering of statistics can be teased out of data made public in other states heavily impacted by illegal immigration, although a full picture or apples-to-apples comparison remains elusive. In Florida, there were 5,061 illegal immigrant inmates in state prison facilities as of June 30, but neither the state Department of Corrections nor the Florida Department of Law Enforcement track the number in county prisons, spokesmen for those agencies told FoxNews.com. In Illinois, where state prisons house 46,993 inmates, some 3,755 are illegal immigrants, according to Illinois Department of Corrections figures. Once again, state officials do not compile figures for county jails, although a Cook County official estimated that nearly 6 percent were illegal immigrants. In Arizona, neither state public safety officials nor the governor's office could produce figures showing the number of criminal illegal immigrants held in county jails, but state prison figures released by the Arizona Department of Corrections show out of 42,758 prisoners held in state facilities in July, about 10.8 percent were illegal immigrants. In California, there were 128,543 inmates in custody as of Aug. 12, but the state, which has been criticized for its leniency toward illegal immigrants, no longer keeps track of the citizenship status of inmates. As of July 31, 2013, the last time figures were documented, there were as many as 18,000 ``foreign-born'' citizens in California state prisons of 133,000 incarcerated. The Board of State and Community Corrections provided figures to Fox News from 2014, showing there were 142,000 inmates in 120 county prisons, but while everything from mental health cases to dental and medical appointments are closely tracked, the number of illegal aliens--or even non citizens--is not. ``Frankly, this is something every state should track, but they don't. Not even ICE publishes this much information on offenders and immigration status,'' Vaughan said. Several pro-immigration groups contacted by FoxNews.com declined to comment on the outsize role illegal immigrants play in the U.S. criminal justice system. One group that did insisted that even illegal immigrants provide a net benefit to the U.S. ``Immigrants, regardless of their legal status, make valuable contributions to our economy as workers, business owners, taxpayers and consumers,'' said Erin Oshiro, of Asian Americans Advancing Justice. ``We need an immigration system that keeps families together, protects workers, and prioritizes due process and human rights.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Wyoming for yielding to me on this important topic. I am privileged to be here on the floor listening to this discussion that we have today. I think of the many, many hours that roll back as far back as 2009, when the healthcare debate began to get intensified here in this Congress. From the beginning, for me, it was about freedom. I often say to people that the most sovereign thing that we have is our soul. We are in charge of that. We are in control of that. With God's help, we are in the management of our own soul. The Federal Government hasn't figured out how to tax it, how to nationalize it, or how to manage it. That may be a point of profundity, but what is the second most sovereign thing that we have, aside from our soul? Number two is our skin and everything inside it, our bodies. The Federal Government has figured out under ObamaCare how to nationalize that, how to do--I call it a hostile takeover of our skin and everything inside it--and tell us: We are going to tax your paycheck and we are going to command you to take that money and pay a health insurance premium, not the policy of your choice, but the policy of Uncle Sam's choice. Then that policy, the rules written within it and the thousands of pages of rules that have been written on ObamaCare since, will determine whether you get health care or at least whether you get it paid for out of your health insurance policy or not. That I call a hostile takeover of my skin and everything inside it. It is abhorrent to me for a free people to be subjugated to such a law. Yet, the other side of this is that we have had elections in 2010, 2012, 2014, and now an election coming up in 2016. The results of this upcoming election might be the one where we finally set the full 100 percent ``rip it out by the roots as if it had never been enacted'' ObamaCare. ``Repeal it completely and entirely as if it had never been enacted'' actually are the last words of the repeal bill that I wrote in the middle of the night after it passed here on March 22, 2010, a sleepless night, I might add. The question was: What is the other side of the glorious repeal of ObamaCare? A number of really good things that we would have done by now if it weren't obstructed by the policy that exists in front of us that is named after our President. The first and I think most important one is to provide for selling insurance across State lines. There is legislation there that has existed for years called the McCarran-Ferguson Act. It is legislation that enables the States to write the mandates and the specifications in such a way that the States can be lobbied by large health insurance companies whose goal is to have a monopoly within each of those States. That is trade protectionism that is allowed. It is in violation of the Commerce Clause in the Constitution, I might add. But the McCarran- Ferguson Act enables that. We need to repeal the components of the McCarran-Ferguson Act so that a young man, while at the beginning of this dialogue in 2009 or 2010--a 23-year-old young man would be paying about $6,000 a year for a typical health insurance policy in New Jersey, but a young man, same age, similarly situated in Kentucky, would be paying about $1,000 a year. This would let the young man from New Jersey buy the policy from Kentucky, which, eventually, the competition would bring the price down in New Jersey, probably wouldn't bring it up in Kentucky, and we would see that the opportunities we would have as Americans we could trade for health insurance in any State. Free trade zones on health insurance, what a wonderful thing. Then the Federal mandates would be gone. They would be away. That would mean that especially young people that could wisely manage their investments would be able to buy a health savings account. The way they were set up in 2003, a couple at age 20 could have invested $5,150 a year. That was the max-out in an HSA. If they spent about $2,000 a year for normal medical costs and accrued the balance of that at the 40-year average of interest rate, they would arrive at 65 Medicare eligibility with approximately $950,000 in their health savings account. Uncle Sam's interest in that HSA at that point, that nearly $1 million, would be to tax it as real income when it comes out of the HSA. Well, I would say instead, if you could buy a Medicare replacement policy in the dollars, when we did the math on this, for the couple for $144,000, the government would tax the balance. I would say keep the change tax free. If you take yourself off of the Medicare rolls, the entitlement rolls, by buying a replacement annuitized, paid-up-for-life policy to replace the Medicare liability, keep the change tax free, say, $150,000, around $800,000 tax free, that becomes your retirement account. The HSA has become now a life management account where you would be planning your health insurance. The more money you had in your HSA, the more deductible you could sustain, the higher deductible and the higher co-payment. With that nest egg of an HSA, you could negotiate the health insurance premiums down. You would manage your way, get your exercise, get your check-ups, because you would want to be able to live long and healthy to spend all of that mad money, if you choose, that balance of $800,000. That is the kind of thing that is in front of us if we can get ObamaCare out of the way. Sell insurance across State lines, expand HSAs, address the tort reform piece of this, which is billions of dollars a year that is unnecessarily spent on tests that are done to protect from the liability that is there. With these packages, other good ideas that come from other Members doing this in the fashion and vision by our Founding Fathers, we go out to where all of the solutions are, out to the voices and ideas of the people, bring those ideas here. Each of us, our job, the gentlewoman from Wyoming's job and mine, is to sort through the good ideas, bring the best ideas here to Washington, let our best ideas compete with the other good ideas, and put that out on the President's desk for the solutions that we really need. I appreciate the attention and the opportunity to speak.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives and to continue the deliberation here that makes this the most deliberative body anywhere in the world. I understand that the Senate might take issue with that. However, I am always happy to engage in debate with the Senators as well. I came to the floor because I wanted to speak, Mr. Speaker, about an issue that has cost scores and scores of American lives. Since the time I came into this Congress, I was surprised and, you might say, shocked and appalled that so few Members were paying attention to the reality of what is happening in the streets of America over the years. I think of a school bus that was run off the road up in Cottonwood, Minnesota, a few years ago. Four of the children in that school bus were killed. Two of them were siblings. Three families were hit with that terrible tragedy. The cause of that accident was a vehicle that ran the bus off the road that was driven by an illegal alien that had been interdicted multiple times and turned loose on the streets to recommit again and again. I recall that discussion. It brought home to me something that I knew logically, but I hadn't felt emotionally at that point, Mr. Speaker. If there are people in this country who are unlawfully present and the law directs that, when encountered by law enforcement, they shall be placed into removal proceedings, if we enforce the law when we encounter people that are illegally in America, then, by the very definition of following the law that requires that they are placed in removal proceedings, they are no longer on the streets of America, they are no longer driving vehicles that are running school buses off the road or bringing about head-on crashes or being involved in vehicular homicide or driving while under the influence because, by definition of enforcement of the law, they are not here to do that. They might commit these crimes in other countries, in their home country. That is the issue for the countries that they can be lawfully present in. But here, when I see the funerals of four children that come about because we had an opportunity to enforce the law and, instead, we decided that our compassion for the law breaker was greater than our compassion for the victim of the crime, you end up with four funerals of children that were riding home from school in a school bus that day. Now, it shouldn't take very much for people who are professionals that deal with this every day to understand that, that if the law says that they shall be placed in removal proceedings--you have a President who says to them instead, through Jeh Johnson, who is now the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, to the law enforcement officers who have pledged and take an oath to support and defend the Constitution--which, by the way, the President takes an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. The very definition in the Take Care Clause of the Constitution is that he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Well, instead, the President has decided to essentially execute some of the immigration law that exists. That doesn't mean enforce it. When I say that, I say that facetiously, Mr. Speaker. He has ordered the law enforcement officers to not enforce the law. And the advice that came from Jeh Johnson to the law enforcement officers of the Border Patrol was, if you came into this job and put on this uniform and took your oath to support and defend the Constitution and you thought that it meant that you are going to enforce immigration law, if you think that is what you are going to do, you had better get another job. That was the message to them that came out here about 10 days ago-- get another job if you came here to enforce the law--if you are working for the Border Patrol or for ICE or for Customs and Border Protection. It is an appalling thing, Mr. Speaker, to think that we have a President who has taken an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States and to take care that the laws be faithfully executed and, instead, he is taking care that they not be enforced in case after case after case. And this poster I have, Mr. Speaker, is the bloody result. The title says ``Free to Kill: 124 Criminal Aliens Released By Obama Policies Charged With Homicide Since 2010.'' Now, that is not all of the homicides. Here is where they are. A lot of them are in California. A good number of them are in Arizona, Texas, and up along the East Coast. They are in Council Bluffs, Iowa, or in Omaha. Yes, they are in my neighborhood as well, Mr. Speaker. Now, that is 124 killers. These are criminals that had already been prosecuted, already been convicted. These are felons that had been released on the streets of America because of a policy that the President seems to think is a discretionary policy. That is not 124 graves only. That is at least 135 graves because of the multiple murders that have taken place after they are convicted. At least two of them that were released on the streets in the past were already convicted of homicide-related charges. That is how bad this is. The idea that we shouldn't enforce our laws even against people that are illegal in the United States, unlawfully present in America, out of some sense of compassion, and they might say that they don't have the room and they don't have the budget, well, that is not so either. I would just note some of the statistics that I have pulled down here over time. In 2012, ICE reported that there were 850,000 aliens present in the country who had been ordered removed or excluded, but who had not departed. That is 850,000. Now, they tell us that there are 11.2 million illegal aliens in America. Well, I don't actually accept that number. That is a number that has been constantly and commonly used here. I arrived here in 2003. I swore in here in January of 2003. At that time, the immigration debate was talking about 12 million illegals in America. 12 million. 12 million. The drum of 12 million was beat for several years. Then it drifted down to 11.5. Now it is 11.2 million. We are thinking that we have a crisis with illegal immigration coming into America. But the number hasn't increased? Have that many gone back home? Have that many died? If not, that number is growing, and I think it has grown substantially more. The data we are looking at is 11.2 million, and that is from the Pew Research Center. I think they do a good job. I do disagree with them on that number. If that is the case, out of 11.2 million illegals in America, 850,000 aliens are present in the United States of America who had already been ordered removed. We call that law enforcement? Just about anybody in the world that has ever looked across and thought about coming to America knows that your chances of being sent back to your home country, if you succeed in getting into America, are nil. They are almost nothing. If you embarrass the administration, if you are such a violent criminal, perhaps they will find a way to send you back. But even this administration, when they want to send them back, the few that they do, doesn't push hard on those other countries to take them back. Now, every country in the world that refuses to take their illegals back, we have the leverage to convince them, I believe, to take those illegal aliens back, 850,000 of them. I didn't divide that out, but it is roughly 1 in 12 of the illegal aliens in America have already been adjudicated for deportation, but they don't go, and we don't do anything about it. Here is another statistic. For every 10 Americans detained in Federal court--that's Americans--173 illegal aliens are detained by a Federal court. So I don't know why they gave me 10 of 173, but I can divide that out in my head. Federal court deals with 17.3 illegal aliens for each American--that would be an American, lawful, permanent resident or an American citizen that they deal with. That is a high, high volume of illegal aliens going through our Federal court system. Here is another piece of data that emerged from a study that I requested in 2005. This was a GAO study that shows that 27 percent of our Federal prison population is criminal aliens--27 percent. So more than a fourth of the inmates that are housed in Federal penitentiaries are criminal aliens. That is a huge percentage. If you would think that they are in there for immigration crimes, for overstaying their visa, or for crossing the border, no. That is highly, highly unlikely that they are incarcerated for what this administration would call minimal offenses. They are in there for other things. Here is another example. The illegal aliens represent 5 percent of the population, 27 percent of the Federal prison population, and presumably 27 percent of the Federal crimes that are committed as well. So that is a proportion of more than five times their representation in the population they are represented in prison and they are represented by the crimes that are committed. Now, we should not think that these are just data, Mr. Speaker. Crimes aren't just data, because for every crime, there is at least one victim. The victims pay a huge, huge price that is not compensated by the taxpayer. For example, our criminal laws are descended from old English common law, and old English common law recognizes this, that everything was the product, the property, of the sovereign, the king. If you went out and poached a deer, the crime was against the crown, because the king owned the deer. The king owned everything. So if you poached a deer, you killed the king's deer, and the king is going to have his justice. If you killed one of his subjects, one of his serfs, if you committed murder, the crime was against the crown. That is why, today, the crimes that we have are against the State, whether it be the nation-state or whether it be the State that we happen to be abiding in. So when you go to criminal court, they will say this is the case of the State versus whoever has the charges brought against them, John Doe, criminal. You will hear that announced at the beginning of the criminal case: This is the case of the State of, say, Iowa, against John Doe, criminal. The victim, if the victim is alive and survives and is in that criminal courtroom, they are going to be looking back and forth listening to the prosecution and then the defense go back and forth, and they are going to be wondering: Where am I in this equation? The victim is not in the equation because, if the State believes that they get justice, then justice is served, and the victim is essentially out of that equation with the exception of a few little things we have done such as to allow for and provide that the victim or the victim's family have an opportunity to face the accused and, actually, face the convicted. So we are descendants from that, Mr. Speaker. When the crimes are committed against individuals, the victims of these crimes are paying the price. They are paying the price with their lives. They are paying the price with their bodies. They are paying the price with whatever their treasured products might be. If they are a victim of assault and battery and grand larceny, then they have been beaten up, they have been pounded, they have been bruised and bloodied and maybe bones broken. Maybe they have survived an attempted homicide, and maybe their wallet was lifted and their credit cards or their car. The things that they owned, the things that they cherished are lost, and they have to heal up. We don't compensate them for their loss even though the State is an intervenor in a criminal crime. So the case of the State v. John Doe, criminal, should tell us that the loss of life is not compensated either. It is not measured. It is not quantified. The 124 criminal aliens released who have committed murders during this period of time is a small portion of the overall number of criminal aliens who were released who did commit homicides. But what are those lives worth? We just heard the gentleman from Minnesota lament the loss of two lives. It is tragic. I am sorry he comes here to this floor. I am sorry that he feels that pain. I am sure the families feel the pain. But these are mostly anonymous victims, the four children in Cottonwood, Minnesota. Kate Steinle--the story that I pulled here, her name is now a household name, Mr. Speaker--was murdered in San Francisco on July 1, 2015. Now when I see an attractive young lady with brown hair, immediately the picture of Kate Steinle flashes into my mind's eye, standing there innocently and shot and killed by a criminal alien who had been ordered deported, I believe the number would be at least twice before, on the streets because San Francisco is a sanctuary city. Well, the sanctuary city isn't just exclusive to San Francisco. All over this country there are sanctuary jurisdictions. There are sanctuary jurisdictions in Iowa, at least 25 of them that I can identify, and they exist across the country, local jurisdictions that have decided they are not going to cooperate with Federal law enforcement officers. And furthermore, when ICE puts out a detainer order, Federal law requires that an ICE detainer order is mandatory. The statute that was passed directed the rules to be written in such a way that the detainer orders are mandatory. A year ago, February 25, I believe that day would be--I remember my date is right, but I am not certain on my year. It could be 2014 rather than 2015. But the ICE Acting Deputy Director, Dan Ragsdale, sent a letter out to hundreds of political jurisdictions, law enforcement jurisdictions, and said to them: This ICE detainer order that you have been getting, that you have been complying with because it is an order, it is really not an order. It is just a suggestion. So we are not going to enforce that, and neither are we going to protect you if you are sued for detaining someone that ICE has put a detainer order on. They essentially said: We don't have your back at the Justice Department, even though the law directs that we do have. And so that brought about more sanctuary cities, more sanctuary jurisdictions, entire counties that have decided they are not going to cooperate with ICE. So when ICE sends an ICE detainer order to a sanctuary jurisdiction--often, a city--their policy is: We aren't going to turn this criminal over to ICE. We are going to turn him loose instead. Well, when they turn them loose instead, they do so by the tens of thousands. And, you know, Mr. Speaker, that Americans are the victims of homicide as a result, some of it first-degree murder, second-degree murder, negligent homicide, vehicular homicide. Americans' graves are scattered all over this country at the hands of illegal aliens, criminal aliens, not only those that came across the border illegally-- that makes them criminals, Mr. Speaker--but those who are in this country even legally. When they commit a crime, they become a criminal alien. There are graves in every single State in this country, multiple graves in every single State in this country that didn't need to be. There are grieving families all over this country in every single State that didn't need to grieve. They didn't need to see their loved one killed, whether it was a car accident, whether it was a bullet, whether they were bludgeoned, however it might have been. Those lives could have been saved by enforcing the law. But, instead, the Obama administration does the opposite. They set up an affirmative plan to start turning loose illegal aliens who are felons, who are criminals. Here is some more data. In 2014, according to a U.S. Sentencing Commission report, it shows illegal immigrants represented 36.7 percent of Federal sentences, 36.7 percent of their sentences. I have already said that 27 percent of the inmates are criminal aliens. Then, again, it is about roughly half or a little bit more of them are from Mexico. The Obama administration, in 2013, released--and this number has been committed to my memory for some time--36,007 criminal aliens turned loose on the streets, and that represented 88,000 convictions, more than 88,000 convictions among those 36,007 criminal aliens. Of that, 193 had been convicted of homicide. Now, when do you turn murderers loose on the streets of America, especially if they are deportable? If they serve their time--they might be second-degree murder, maybe they serve their time, maybe they get an early out--they go home to their home country. They are deported at the end of their sentence. That is how our law reads. But the Obama administration said: No, we are going to turn 36,007 of them loose: 193 homicides represented by them, 426 sexual assaults, 303 kidnappings, 1,075 aggravated assaults, all of that packaged up in the 36,007. That was just 2013. That was the beginning of this mass release of criminals who are criminal aliens, deportable criminal aliens out of our prisons. In 2014, they slacked off a little bit. They only released 30,558 criminal aliens, and they represented 79,059 convictions. That is the work that is being done by the Obama administration. I could go on with data after data. Here is one. ICE had been claiming to have removed record numbers of unlawful or otherwise removable aliens from the United States. Well, they counted their deportations differently than any administration before. So those that said they will accept a voluntary return when they are caught at the border, they will say: Well, we can put you in the van and haul you back to the port of entry and turn you loose to walk back across the bridge. If you will do that, we will count you as deported. That used to be just voluntary return. Now the Obama administration has admitted that they have essentially jiggered the numbers and changed the category. But even still, even if this isn't accurate in comparison to previous administrations, those numbers have gone down, from along the way, 389,834, fiscal year 2009. It did go up a little bit the next year, 392,000 and change, then up to 396,000, and then going back. The number in 2012 was almost 410,000. So you can see, Mr. Speaker, that number has dropped off by tens of thousands. Then ICE has since admitted to dropping in removals clear down to 368,000 in 2013, 315,000 in 2014. This number continues to go down, from up to nearly 410,000 down to 315,000, almost 100,000 fewer deportations when they are counting the voluntary returns in that list. That means we don't have a lot of immigration enforcement going on, and the message and the signal is: Come try to get into America. We are not going to do a lot about that in this Obama administration. And what happens? Well, what happens is we have a Presidential nomination process that has emerged. Out of it comes, who got the first big bounce and spark off of making the pledge that he would build a wall, a beautiful wall, and he would return the people and end illegal immigration residence in America and put them the other side of the wall? That was Donald Trump. If Donald Trump doesn't have that issue, Donald Trump doesn't probably have a campaign. I am sure that it is a big part of what motivated him to run for President. Ted Cruz also, Mr. Speaker, has the most solid and cleanest record on immigration policy. It is complete; it is inclusive; it is anti-amnesty all the way. And, by the way, he doesn't make provisions for inviting people back in after they are removed. I don't think that takes a whole lot of prudence to hold that position. Why would you reward somebody that you needed to go to the trouble to adjudicate them for removal, deport them back to their home country, and then do as they said in the Gang of Eight bill? They have a provision in that bill that thankfully the House didn't take up. It is the ``we really didn't mean it'' clause in which they say, written into the Gang of Eight's bill, if you have been deported in the past and you are in your home country today, after the Gang of Eight bill presumably passed, you can apply to come to the United States. We deported you before, but we really didn't mean it. We can bring you back in here. If we hadn't caught you in America and you had been here when the Gang of Eight bill would potentially become law, then, if you get to stay under those provisions, then you get to come back to America if you have previously been deported. I think that is lunacy, Mr. Speaker, to be going to all the trouble to enforce the law and then to reverse course with that and provide the ``we didn't really mean it'' clause. That bill, by the way, had in it prospective amnesty. In other words, it didn't deal with people who would come in after it became law, so, presumably, they would be treated with the same kind of amnesty or pass for those who were in America; and those that had been deported from America get to come back to America, too, with some exceptions if you are a bad enough criminal. The logic of this is beyond my ability to reason with it, Mr. Speaker, but the logic that this country needs to reason with is the logic of the rule of law. We have to be a Nation of laws--not of men-- and the laws need to apply to everyone equally, not applied differently to different people. There has to be an expectation that the law will be enforced. If we don't have that, then we devolve into a Third World country. In a Third World country, you can get pulled over not even for not speeding, but you might have to pay off the officer in order to be able to drive on down the road. In this country, if that ever happens--I wouldn't say it never happens, but where I come from, it doesn't happen and I never hear of it--that would show a digression from the rule of law. We have to all respect the law. The law has got to be enforced against everybody equally. There has to be an expectation that the law will be enforced. Any country that has any value to protecting its own sovereignty has to have borders. We have borders. We know what they are: 2,000 miles on the southern border, roughly 4,000 miles on the norther border, oceans on the east and on the west. Those are the borders of the United States of America. We have water all the way around Hawaii. We know the lines in Alaska. We don't dispute them with Canada. We get along just fine agreeing on what our borders are. But if we don't enforce them, if we don't protect them, we are no longer a sovereign Nation. We allow people to stream across the border. We have had Border Patrol testimony here in this Congress within the last decade where they testified that they believed that they interdicted perhaps 25 percent of those that attempted to cross the border. When you looked at the numbers of those interdictions and did the math on that, it turned out to be 4 million illegal border crossing attempts in a single year. That is roughly at the peak of this. That has diminished by a few million. But think of that: 365 divided into 4 million works out to about 11,000 a night. About 11,000 illegal aliens come across our southern border at night. Maybe that number could be as far down as perhaps 6,000 or so, but that is still the size of Santa Anna's army. The size of Santa Anna's army comes across every night. Coming across, sure, there are some decent people that are looking for a better life--maybe a lot of them--but 80 to 90 percent of the illegal drugs that are consumed in America come from or through Mexico. It is the demand in the United States that brings those drugs in here. We have a culpability in this, too. But just the same, the violence in Mexico, the murders--over 100,000 people have been killed in the drug wars in Mexico--is all part of an open border situation that we have here in the United States, costing Mexican lives, costing American lives. Graves are scattered in every single State in the Union because we have an administration that decided not to enforce the law, even though the President takes an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and take care that the laws be faithfully executed. We have got executive overreach time after time after time. He has reached into the constitutional authority of this Congress. Time after time, I brought an amendment to this floor, Mr. Speaker, that has cut off all funding to implement or enforce the President's lawless, unconstitutional amnesty actions, to cut off all funding under the Morton Memos, to cut off all funding to DACA, to cut off all funding to DAPA and shut down those operations that are outside the constitutional authority of the President, by my definition, by the definition of the majority vote in this Congress, and also by the definition of the President himself, who said multiple times--and we have him on videotape at least 22 times saying he didn't have constitutional authority to--I will put it in shorthand--grant amnesty. He didn't use those words, but it certainly is the paraphrase of what he had to say. After multiple times of telling us all the proper constitutional interpretation, he decided to do it anyway. The President of the United States' restraint factor is not giving his word, putting his hand on the Bible, and raising his right hand and taking an oath to the Constitution. His restraining factor is not his word. It is what he can get away with. He demanded that Congress pass the Gang of Eight amnesty bill, and Congress said: Nuts, we are not doing that. We are not going to see the demographics of America forever altered by bringing in millions of undocumented Democrats in order to play into the hands of Barack Obama and the Democrats in the Senate and the House. We have a responsibility to the American people. We the people need to decide. That is why our Founding Fathers wrote in the enumerated powers in the Constitution the responsibility of Congress to establish the naturalization laws and, by inference, to write the immigration laws. That immigration policy is not to be set by the President of the United States. It is to be set by Congress. Congress wrote the law in 1996, the Immigration Reform Act, which Lamar Smith of Texas was so instrumental in, as a large body of the immigration law that we have to follow. That was the considered will of the people. It was the bipartisan, considered will of the people, signed by the President of the United States. Gee, that would be Bill Clinton back then, wouldn't it? So we have a country that is the unchallenged greatest Nation in the world. We have a lot to be proud of. We have a destiny, an arc of history that has been flattened. It has been descending for a lot of reasons--economic reasons, cultural reasons, failure to adhere to our oaths to uphold the Constitution reasons--but in a large way, it is diminished because we have so little respect for the rule of law. Of all of the things we can talk about with regard to immigration policy--securing our borders, ending sanctuary cities, making sure that local law enforcement works again in cooperation with Federal immigration officials, ending this idea that detainer orders are voluntary, not mandatory--piece after piece of this--an entry/exit system that tracks the people in the country and when they leave so we know what the balance is of those visitors who are here, and an E- Verify system that I will say the New IDEA Act, my bill--all of that put together brings America to the right place. We have an obligation to turn this into an upending arc of history, not descending. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following letter: Congress of the United States, House of Representatives, Washington, DC, February 12, 2016. Hon. Ambassador Shen, Washington, DC. Dear Ambassador Shen: I write to you today to send my condolences for the loss of precious human lives and destruction caused by the earthquake in the city of Tainan on Saturday, February 6, 2016. Our nations share a long and rich relationship that makes our respective nations stronger, and facilitates the spread of the benefits of liberty throughout the world. Through trade and the promotion of peaceful resolutions in the Asia-Pacific region, Taiwan has become a trusted ally of the United States. I firmly believe that our bond is stronger than ever. In this time of tragedy and loss, know that our citizens grieve with yours. Our hearts and prayers are with you, and we stand ready to offer assistance and our continued friendship as you mourn and recover. Sincerely, Steve King, Member of Congress.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I was unable to vote on 2/3/2016. Had I been present, I would have voted as follows: NO on Roll Call Number 58; NO on Roll Call Number 59.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. I appreciate your attention to these matters that come before the House and the House Members that are in attendance, observing in their office, and all the staff people around. Mr. Speaker, it is important that we carry these messages out. I come to the floor tonight to raise a topic that is important to all Americans, especially the Americans who take our Constitution seriously, and even more importantly, those Americans who have taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution, and that would include all of our servicemen and -women along with many law enforcement officers and officers of the article III courts, the entire House of Representatives, the entire United States Senate, and, to my knowledge, the entire body of legislators across the country and the State legislators. I have many times--a number of times--taken an oath to support and defend our United States Constitution but, in the State senate, also the constitution of the State of Iowa. Our Founding Fathers structured our Constitution so that we would have three branches of government, and some say three equal branches of government. I do not completely agree with that assessment, Mr. Speaker. Instead, I contend that the three branches of government were separate, and they are separate. But the judicial branch of government was designed to be the weakest of the three. Our Founding Fathers understood that there would be competition between the branches of government. So as part of this discussion, I would like to announce into the Record here, Mr. Speaker, that our chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Chairman Goodlatte, has initiated a task force--a task force--that is designed to address the article I overreach of the President of the United States and the executive branch--not only this President, but previous administrations as well. I appreciate and compliment Chairman Goodlatte for his insight and foresight for taking this initiative. I thank him for suggesting and then ratifying today that I will be chairing the Task Force on Executive Overreach. It will be comprised of members of the Judiciary Committee, Republicans and Democrats. It will be bipartisan. I had hoped that it would be nonpartisan. Judging from some of the tone in the debate today, there could be a little flavor of partisanship in there, Mr. Speaker. That is fine, because that is how we bring about our disagreements. In any case, a task force has been set up, and it will function for 6 months. Some time in August its authorization will either expire or it will be reauthorized and extended for another period of time. The theme is, again, restoring the article I authority of our Congress and to address the executive overreach. The circumstances that bring us to this point are myriad. The objectives of the task force, as I would design them, and the object of a chair of a committee is to bring out the will of the group. I would point out, Mr. Speaker, that the object, the plan, and the strategy is this: First, it is my intention to intake all of the input that we get from Democrats and Republicans from the bipartisan side in the committee and to build a rather expansive list of the executive overreach that we have seen from the article II branch of government. I say it that way so that we bring everything into our consideration. Then once that expansive list is made, then we will pare it down to those things that can be sustained as the authority of this Congress versus the authority of the executive branch of government. I would point out that the executive overreach isn't only about the unconstitutional overreaches that have taken place, especially recently within this administration, but it is also, Mr. Speaker, about the constitutional overreach when a President will act under authority that maybe has been granted to the executive branch of government by the legislative branch of government, or an authority that has been expanded off of an authority that was granted by the United States Congress. A big piece of this will be the rules and the regulations that are the authority that we have granted to the executive branch of government over the Administrative Procedures Act. We know that when the executive branch publishes rules, we have been getting more and more rules that are published. Once they are published for the prescribed amount of time, and the comment periods for the prescribed amount of time are allowed and the American public is allowed to weigh in, at a certain point they have complied with the requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act and then the rules go into effect. Often the rules that are written by the executive branch of government are without the purview of Congress, but they have the full force and effect of law. That is troubling to me. Our Founding Fathers envisioned this. They gave us the republican form of government and a constitutional Republic. This constitutional Republic is designed to be a limited government, Mr. Speaker. They didn't envision that the Federal Government would grow to the expansive lengths that it has. They thought that they would be able to keep it in a narrow limited form and that the States would be dealing with the more detailed issues that the Federal Government was not the benefit of. We have the enumerated powers. They intended for us to stay within the enumerated powers. The definitions that have come forward here by Congress, they reached out and stretched the limits of the enumerated powers. They didn't imagine that there would be speed limits on the dirt trails that had horses and buggies on them, and they didn't imagine that the Federal Government would be subsidizing roads in a way that would allow the Federal Government to set speed limits across this country. That is an example of events that have given the Federal Government--this Congress--some authority tied to the dollars that our Founding Fathers didn't envision, and it is one that I think simply we can understand. There is a proper role for the Federal Government. There is a proper role in requiring conditions that go along with Federal dollars. I illustrate that point, though, to illustrate how far we have diverged from the intent of our Founding Fathers. As our Founding Fathers framed the Constitution and established that all laws would be passed here in the United States Congress and not by the executive branch of government and not by the judicial branch of government, that separation of powers was envisioned to be this: Congress has the legislative authority. It is article I. It is article I for a reason, because the voice and the power of the people is vested in this Congress. Our Founding Fathers envisioned that the policy would come forth here from the various populations of the Thirteen Original Colonies and the States that later joined. Today, if we applied the vision of the Founding Fathers, we would look at 50 States and the territories, and we would imagine that there are--and this is simply close to a fact-- 320 million people across those 50 States and the territories. Out of those 320 million people would be generated ideas. There would be grievances that would be brought forward and brought to the Representatives of Congress, and there would be ideas generated to solve the various problems that we have in our country. There might be a consensus that might be formed what the tax rates should be, what the debt burden should be allowed to be, what the size of government should be allowed to be, and what kind of policies might come out of this Congress. Our Founding Fathers envisioned that. They envisioned then that the voice of the people would be transferred and translated up through and out of the population into the mind and the heart, any activity of their elected representative. They envisioned also that, out of the corners of the country, the Thirteen Original Colonies--and now from as far away as Guam to Washington, D.C., the corners of the United States, Alaska to Hawaii, to Florida, to Maine, and down to California certainly--that all of the ideas within that would have to compete with other ideas, and that their elected representatives in this republican form of government that is guaranteed in our Constitution would bring the best of those ideas. Not all of them, not the clutter of bad ideas, but sort the clutter of the ideas so that just the cream of the crop, the best ideas, would come from the corners of the United States and be brought here into this Congress, that an individual Member of Congress, one of the 435, would bring those ideas into the competition of the ideas of the marketplace here. The ideas of the marketplace here would have to compete against each other. Of the now 435 Members, there would be various ideas that would compete with other ideas. The best ideas that could develop the consensus out of the voice of the people would be sorted here in this Congress, and we would advance those ideas that reflected the will of ``we the people.'' That is the vision of this republican form of government. That is the vision that required that the Congress be established by article I. The vision for article II was that the executive branch would be headed by a President of the United States, who is the Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces. We wouldn't have any Armed Forces if it weren't for Congress having the enumerated power to establish a military--an Army, a Navy, and, subsequent to that, an Air Force. So the Founding Fathers envisioned the executive branch and the President of the United States--the President, specifically, the Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces--and that his oath is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States-- that is the oath, so help him, God, today, as is in his oath, although it wasn't in the original oath--and that he take care that the laws be faithfully executed. That is the Take Care Clause. Some of us say somewhat facetiously that the President of the United States took that wrong and decided to execute the Constitution instead of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed. That is something that we will debate and discuss in the task force that addresses the executive overreach, Mr. Speaker. Our Founding Fathers also established article III, which is the courts. I will speak to that briefly in this segment, Mr. Speaker, because most of the focus of this task force is on the executive overreach. We do need to look into the judicial overreach as well. I believe that there is an effort to give that a review as well. But the Constitution requires that there be a Supreme Court, that they establish a Supreme Court, and then the various other courts are at the discretion of Congress. I have made this argument to Justice Scalia in somewhat a semiformal setting--I might say an informal setting--a few years ago. I would argue that under the Constitution, if you read article III, the only court that is required by the Constitution is the Supreme Court. It is required that it be led and headed by a Chief Justice. As you look at the language in the Constitution, I argued that the Supreme Court is not required to be--well, first of all, there are no other Federal courts that are required. The authority to establish them is granted in article III to Congress. Congress could develop all the Federal courts that they choose to, or they could decide to, essentially, abolish any of the Federal districts. In theory, at least, they could abolish all the Federal districts. The only Federal Court that is required under the Constitution is the Supreme Court. Under constitutional authority, Congress could eliminate and reduce the Federal Court system all the way down to the Supreme Court. There is no requirement that there be nine Justices or seven or five or three. There is a requirement that there be a Chief Justice. In the end, if Congress wanted to control the judicial branch, they could reduce their judicial branch down to the Chief Justice, and he is not required to have a Supreme Court building or a budget. They could reduce the Chief Justice down to himself or herself, as the case may be, with his own card table, with his own candle, and no staff. That is how narrow and small the judicial branch of government could be if Congress decided to utilize its constitutional authority. Of course, we don't do that. But there is a history of two judicial Federal districts being abolished by this Congress back in about 1802. It was debated in the House and the Senate and successfully eliminated a couple of Federal districts--I don't suggest that we do that at all, Mr. Speaker, for those who would get on their Twitter account-- illustrating the function of the Constitution itself. But the judicial branch of government has now defined it down to that. It explains that the third branch, article III, the third branch of government, was not designed to be a coequal branch of government. It was designed to be the weakest of the three branches of government. Then Marbury v. Madison came along that established judicial review, and off we are to the races and the growth of the judicial branch of government. That can be shrunk or it can be allowed to grow, and its influence can be allowed to grow or it could be shrunk. But I would make the point, Mr. Speaker, that it isn't only the Supreme Court that weighs in on what the Constitution says. It is each one of us here in this Chamber and each Senator down at the other end of the United States Capitol Building. We all have our obligation to interpret the Constitution because we all take an oath to uphold it. We are not taking an oath to uphold it the way the Supreme Court would amend it. In fact, the nine Justices of the Supreme Court--or five, as the case may be--are the last people on the planet who should be amending the Constitution of the United States. Whether it is a literal amendment or whether it is a de facto amendment is what has taken place with regard to the Obergefell case, for example, Mr. Speaker. The judicial branch of government, article III, is designed to be the weakest of the three branches of government. If it stayed that way or if it becomes that again, we still have the conflict, the struggle for power that is going on between article I, the Congress; article II, the President and the executive branch; article III, the courts; and that static balance that is there between the three branches of government. There is a little tug-of-war going on for the balance between each of those branches of government. Our Founding Fathers envisioned that it would be impossible to precisely define the differences, the power structure, among the three branches of government. They did, I think, a really good job given the limits of language and imagination, and also the limits of not having a complete crystal ball on what would happen here in this country. But they understood that even though they defined it as precisely as I think was humanly possible in that period of time, or even now today, they understood that each branch of government would jealously protect the authority granted to it within its particular article within the Constitution. For a long time that is what happened. Even now we have debates about what authority the Congress has versus what authority the President has. That is the heart of the executive overreach task force that was established today in the Judiciary Committee, I would say the brainchild of Chairman Goodlatte. I don't believe that the Congress has done a very good job of defending and jealously protecting its constitutional authority. It started a long time ago--someone today said 100 years ago--as Congress began delegating authority to the executive branch of government. It was accelerated with the passage of the Administrative Procedures Act, which sets out the parameters for the executive branch of government to write the rules and regulations that have the full force and effect of law. That came about, I think, Mr. Speaker, because this Congress was overwhelmed with all of the functions of a growing Federal Government. The various committees and the various task forces that are established here in this Congress grew and emerged out of the duties that this Congress recognized. But at a certain point, Congress was bogged down with the details of governing. Willingly, to take some of that workload off of their back, they delegated it to the executive branch of government. In doing so, they had to delegate authority to the executive branch of government, too. Not only was it the workload, in my opinion, Mr. Speaker, but it also was sometimes the political heat that is required to do the right thing. I have seen this in the State legislature, and I have seen this in Congress multiple times. Issues come up. You can't reach agreement. One side or the other is scoring political points, sometimes it is both sides scoring political points, and the heat of that gets so great sometimes it brings about a decision here. But also, the heat of that might cause the legislative branch of government to pass that responsibility over to the executive branch, take the heat off, and let them make the decision. The result of executive decisions taking authority might be--let me pick an example--the waters of the United States rule, where this executive branch, during the terms of this President, President Obama, decided that they wanted to regulate a lot more of the real estate in the United States of America. I looked back at a time in about 1992 when I saw another effort to do the same thing as there was a designation in my State that was driven by the EPA to designate 115 streams in Iowa as protected streams. Looking at that list of protected streams, I began wondering why would they call some drainage ditches protected streams. I read down through the rule. In there, it said, in order to preserve the natural riparian beauty, these streams, according to their geographically defined boundaries in the rule--which I never actually saw the geographically defined boundaries. They just said they were there. I don't know that they were. But according to their geographically defined boundaries, these streams shall be protected streams, and these streams and waters hydrologically connected to them. I will put that in quotes, Mr. Speaker, ``and waters hydrologically connected to them.'' When I read the language and I saw that that was the rule that was published, I began to go and deliver the public comment. I asked the representatives of the rule writers: What does ``hydrologically connected to'' mean? Their answer was: We don't know. And I said: Then take it out of the rule. No. We can't. Do you mean you are representing something, and you do not know what it means, but you just know you can't take it out? That's right. We can't take it out. This is the published rule, and now we have to get this rule passed. In any case, that brought about a battle within the State of Iowa. Eventually, they got the rule in that said these streams and waters hydrologically connected to them will be regulated by the regulators and that they will decide what practices the rightful property owner can implement on that real estate that they have now defined to be within the regulation of the government. The phrase ``waters hydrologically connected to'' thereby became the target of years and years of litigation--of, perhaps, nearly 20 years of litigation or of maybe even more than 20 years of litigation. I guess we would be at 25 or so years of litigation. Finally, the courts concluded that the phrase ``hydrologically connected to'' was too vague to be able to enforce it, and the collection--the menagerie--of the article III Court's ruling on an initiative that was brought forward by the executive branch of government that was not the intention of the legislative branch of government tied all three branches of government together in confusion that eroded the property rights of people who were guaranteed those property rights under the Fifth Amendment. All of that was being litigated through that period of time when we saw the Kelo decision when the Court decided they could amend the Constitution, and the minority opinion was written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. I stood on this floor and almost unknowingly quoted her minority opinion because we had come to the same conclusion independently that the Court had taken three words out of the Fifth Amendment, and those three words were ``for public use.'' So now, effectively, the Fifth Amendment reads: nor shall private property be taken without just compensation. We know a little about that debate taking place in the Presidential race because we have a candidate who believes that that is the right thing--to take people's private property for private use if you can convince the government that would be confiscating it, that it is of better use if it pays more taxes. I disagree with that, Mr. Speaker, and I believe that the Kelo decision will be reversed one day when we appoint constitutionalists to the judicial branch of government. I believe also in the result of that, over a period of time, if we get the right President who will make the right appointments to the Supreme Court. What I have illustrated here is how the three branches of government can get involved in a convoluted conflict, and in that convoluted conflict, the tension between the three branches of government was designed to get sorted out so that we would be back to the Constitution, itself, and that the Constitution would rule. But when the Supreme Court effectively strikes three words out of the Fifth Amendment to our Constitution, then we have the Court's ruling without the will of the people, and the will of the people is going to be reflected through, especially and first, the House of Representatives--the quick reaction strike force. There is a reason we all take the oath to uphold the Constitution. It is so we understand it, and we define it. We take our oath seriously, and we defend it. In the other two parts of that, when you had an executive branch that initiated a policy--protected streams--that wasn't the initiative of the legislature, then you have a superlegislature outside the purview of the legislative body. My detractors will turn around and say: But any rule that is passed can be nullified by the United States Congress. So why do you worry about that? Why don't you just do your job in Congress and nullify the rules if you don't like them? Mr. Speaker, it works a little bit differently than that, of course, especially when you have a President of the United States who will veto that legislation that would be nullifying the rule; so we are back into the circle again. If the President initiates a rule without regard to whether there is a court ruling on that rule, the legislature then would be obligated to nullify the rule. The difficulty of that is it takes a supermajority here then to undo something that appointed--but not elected--executive branch officials have initiated often without the knowledge of the President of the United States, himself. That is an upside-down way to get things done. It is supposed to be and is designed to be the will of the people-- the voice of the people--of the United States. They initiate the policy. They send that policy up through Congress. Congress is to bring it before our committees. It evaluates the various ideas, competes, and debates those ideas. It votes them through the various subcommittees and committees after having hearings so that the public can see what is going on--all out in the open, all out in the sunlight. We bring it here to the floor of the Congress and vote on it; and if the Senate agrees, it becomes law. There was not designed to be a superlegislature within the executive branch; but, Mr. Speaker, that is what we have today. We have thousands and thousands of pages of regulations that are initiated by a robust executive branch of government. I expect that, in the duration of this administration, as we have heard from the President of the United States, he intends to make his days count as we count down to the end of his Presidency. I take him at his word. He has had a robust approach to stretching the limits of the executive branch of government throughout all of his time in office. Now he is sitting in a place where he has the appropriations he needs for the functioning of the Federal Government all the way up until September 30. By September 30, this Congress is going to be in a place where they are seeing the last weeks of a Presidential campaign play themselves out in October and then in early November. So we are probably right at 5 weeks. Let's see. Five weeks from the end of the fiscal year will be the vote for the Presidency, and absentee balloting will be taking place at the same time. The President of the United States has all of the levers that he needs, he has got all of the tools that he needs, and he has got the funding that he needs. He also has the robust idea that the executive branch of government should be stronger, not weaker, and that it should do more, not less. If we wonder about that, Mr. Speaker, we can look around at some of the President's actions and those of the executive branch of government that I take great issue with. Many of them are tied up in the development, in the implementation, of ObamaCare. ObamaCare, itself, Mr. Speaker, was legislation that was passed by hook, by crook, by legislative shenanigan. March 22, 2010, was the final passage, and it was a sad day for America because the will of the people was not reflected in this Congress that day. It was a dramatic time to be here. Those who will argue will say: Oh, the House passed this legislation, and the Senate passed this legislation, and it actually was a function of the legislative body. I repeat again--hook, crook, legislative shenanigan. It is not only I who says that, Mr. Speaker. There have been Democrats who have voiced the same thing, but there are far fewer of them these days as a result of force-feeding ObamaCare to the United States Congress. As the President began implementing ObamaCare, he began changing the law. He made some changes along the way. For example, the employer mandate was delayed. The individual mandate was delayed. Some of it was litigated over to the Supreme Court. Some of these changes were not. He decided which components of the law he wanted to ignore and which ones he wanted to enforce. He took an oath, though, to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. That is all of them. That is not part of them. Yet, as we went through ObamaCare time after time after time, there were changes made along the way in the implementation and enforcement of ObamaCare, and that brought about a great deal of confusion in this country, and it upset a lot of people. It disadvantaged a lot of people, and it advantaged some people. He granted waiver after waiver for his favorite groups and entities that were, I will say, people who were typically considered to be his supporters. I didn't see much relief for the people who were typically not considered to be his supporters, such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, for example. They are in the business of having to litigate their religious freedom versus an imposition of the Federal Government's that, under all of their health insurance policies, they are now commanded to fund contraceptives, which violates their religious freedom. By the way, it violates my religious convictions as well. So we have a very robust President who has laid out a whole series of demands not only through ObamaCare legislation, but also we have seen this happen with immigration. The President has said publicly 22 times ``I don't have the constitutional authority to do what you want me to do'' when he has been talking to illegal immigrants who are in America and are pressing this government to change the policy to accommodate them in the form of amnesty, which I have described on this floor many times, Mr. Speaker. The President said 22 times: ``I don't have the constitutional authority to do this.'' After he was well vented in his position of explaining the Constitution right out here at a high school in Washington, D.C., the President answered a question from one of the students at the high school. He said, ``I used to teach the Constitution,'' which he did for 10 years as an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago. He taught constitutional law. He said that the job of Congress is to write the laws, that the job of the President and of the executive branch is to enforce the laws, and that the job of the judicial branch of government is to interpret the laws. I would bring this back to Chief Justice Roberts, who said clearly in his confirmation hearing some years ago that his job as a Justice is to call the balls and strikes. I agreed with that, and it was very encouraging to hear that, and I certainly supported his confirmation. Yet I see that on June 24 of last year--that would be a Thursday--in the opinion on ObamaCare that was written by Chief Justice Roberts, in a narrow majority opinion where Chief Justice Roberts joined with four other Justices, they decided they could write words into ObamaCare, itself. ``Or Federal Government'' would be the three words. Maybe the three words they took out of the Fifth Amendment, ``for public use,'' they get to put in a bank somewhere, and when they need to add some words into law, they can just borrow them from that little word bank. If they strike them out of the Constitution, maybe the three words would be left in the word bank, and the Supreme Court could then pull three words out by choice and say, ``or Federal Government.'' Now ObamaCare reads, ``an exchange established by the State''--insert ``or Federal Government.'' Now, that is what happened as to that decision on ObamaCare on June 24, Thursday, the following day. The Supreme Court announced that they had created a new command in the Constitution. It is not just a new right. Remember, I said the Justices of the Supreme Court should be the last people on the planet to amend the Constitution or to discover any new language in it. They are to call the balls and strikes. That is what I agree with, and that is part of my oath, to defend the Constitution in that fashion. The Supreme Court, instead, inserted those words into ObamaCare, ``or Federal Government.'' The following day, they created a command that says not just that there is a new right to same-sex marriage, Mr. Speaker, but that there is a command that, if the States are to conduct or to honor civil marriage, they shall conduct and honor also same-sex marriages without regard to the convictions of their people, who no longer enjoy the 10th Amendment authority to establish that policy on marriage within the States. The Federal Government took that onto themselves, and they issued not just a right to same-sex marriage but a command that everyone, especially the States and the political subdivisions thereof, shall honor same-sex marriage. That is a breathtaking overreach of the Supreme Court. It would be worse than the worst nightmare that any of our Founding Fathers ever would have had with regard to the limitations of this government. So we are sitting here today with a Federal Government that has been distorted beyond what would be the belief of our Founding Fathers, and they had their share of fears. This Congress needs to reassert itself. It needs to reestablish its constitutional authority. It needs to take a good, hard look at the article I authority that is vested to it in the Constitution, itself, and recognize that all legislative powers exist here in the House and in the Senate. The overreach of the executive branch takes place sometimes because Congress wanted to take the heat off of us, and we gave that responsibility over to the executive branch of government. Sometimes the President decides he wants to do things outside the bounds of his constitutional authority. Sometimes it is a mix of the two, and sometimes it is the President who enjoys the majority support of his party in the House and/or in the Senate. It is more likely that in this Congress that the Members of his party will accept an overreach of a President of their own party than they will an overreach of a President of the opposite party. It is also true, Mr. Speaker, that we have different views on what is executive overreach and what the Constitution says. In fact, in some of the debate today, I said that the Constitution has to mean what it says. The very literal words that are in the Constitution have to mean what they say and they have to mean to all of us what they were understood to mean at the time of ratification of the base document of the Constitution and, also, of the various amendments as we move along through the amendments in the Constitution. We need to have enough history to understand what those amendments and what the Constitution meant to the people that ratified it, and then we need to recognize that the Constitution itself is an intergenerational guarantee, an intergenerational document signed off on by our Founding Fathers with their hand and agreed to in an oath to that Constitution by millions of Americans over time. Many of them pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to preserve, support, and defend the Constitution of the United States. It is a document that is fixed into the letter of the words that are there in the Constitution and the understanding of those words, not living and breathing, but an intergenerational contractual guarantee from our Founding Fathers down to our descendants, as far as they shall go to the end of the Republic, should it ever end. I pray it does never end as long as this Earth exists. So the multiple generational great-, great-, great- --many times great-grandfathers all the way to the Founding Fathers said: Here is a contract, and I am going to pass this contract on to the next generation. The next generation has to preserve, protect, and defend it and then pass it to the next generation and the next generation and the next generation. As Ronald Reagan said, freedom is not something that you inherited. It is something that has to be preserved and fought for each generation and defended each generation. So if we lose the understanding of what the Constitution means, we also have lost our Constitution itself, Mr. Speaker. This task that we have is to preserve this language: ``All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.'' It is simple, pure, beautiful, worth preserving, protecting, fighting for, bleeding for and, if need be, dying for. That is why our honorable and noble military men and women take an oath to support this Constitution, because it is worth defending. They are not defending the President of the United States specifically. They are defending this Constitution when they go into battle. We need to defend it here in the House of Representatives. We have a task force now to address the executive overreach and will be defining the unconstitutional overreach. I am willing to accept the President's definition on the constitutional limitations with regard to immigration. When the President said he doesn't have the authority to establish and pass amnesty legislation, I agree with him. It is an enumerated power here in this Constitution that is preserved for the Congress to establish a uniform naturalization, and that has been defined by the courts to mean the immigration policies of the United States. If we get this right, we will have a Congress that is empowered more, but also an empowered Congress that is more accountable to we, the people. As Congress steps up and says let's claw that executive overreach power back into the House of Representatives and back into the United States Senate, what we are really saying, Mr. Speaker, is let's claw that executive overreach power and authority back here and hand it back to we, the people. Now, let's go back and turn our ear to we, the people, so that this republican form of government that is guaranteed to us in this Constitution can gather the best ideas from all across this land and bring those ideas here to Washington, D.C., where the ideas compete with each other. The best ideas float to the top like the cream rises to the top, and the public can look in and they can weigh in. Additionally, Mr. Speaker, we need more oversight into the executive branch of government. I have drafted and introduced legislation that addresses some of this in a way, I will put out here, to perhaps be a little provocative to start some ideas. Then the competition of ideas, the best ones, as I said, need to float to the top. That would be legislation that does this: It requires of this mountain and myriad of regulations that we have that go on in perpetuity, that can't be practically reduced or shrunk down or nullified by this Congress--as long as the President is willing to veto a nullification bill and push it back at us, the legislation that I am proposing that sunsets all of the regulations over a period of 10 years sunsets any new regulation at the end of 10 years and it requires Congress to have an affirmative vote before any regulation can have a force and effect of law. We have passed out of the floor of the House here once, perhaps more than that, what we call the REINS Act. This comes from a retired Member of Congress, a friend, a former ranger, Jeff Davis of Kentucky, who initiated the legislation that there would be a requirement of an affirmative vote of Congress before a regulation that had more than $100 million of impact on our economy could take effect. That addresses this. It addresses this going forward with new regulation. It doesn't go backward to other regulations. All of the old regulations are essentially de facto grandfathered by the REINS Act. The legislation that I had put together before he introduced the REINS Act was more detailed. This legislation is called the Sunset Act. It sunsets all regulations, but it sunsets them in increments of 10 percent of the regulations from each department each year for 10 years. The departments have to offer up their regulations. They can sort which ones they want to expose to Congress for a vote over a period of 10 years. But over 10 years, they have to offer up their regulations here to Congress. Congress then evaluates those regulations. Any Member of Congress can come in and offer an amendment to those regulations, maybe an amendment to strike, maybe an amendment to add. Maybe there are people in this Congress that want more regulations, not less, and they would like to write them into law and affirmatively vote them in. Well, Mr. Speaker, that idea of sunsetting all regulations--10 percent a year for 10 years incrementally--is coupled with the idea of sunsetting any new regulation, also, at the end of 10 years and requiring an affirmative vote on any regulation before all new regulations of any kind. Doing so then restrains the executive branch of government and makes the legislative branch of government responsible to the people. Our regulators that are writing these rules will know that, if they write a rule that is egregious to the people, the people that have not been heard from the executive branch of government, when they go into the office of, say, the EPA and they press their case to Gina McCarthy, for example, and her people, they don't have a motive to listen because they are insulated from the accountability to the people. If they knew that those same individuals that are aggrieved by the proposed regulation can come to visit their Member of Congress and press their demand on their Member of Congress, they have to know that that Member of Congress will come forward, come down here to the floor of the House of Representatives and offer an amendment to strike those regulations or amend those regulations so that it is acceptable to we, the people. That is a vision to restrain an overgrowth of the executive branch of government, Mr. Speaker. I advocate that as one of the things to consider, but neither do I think that I have all the good ideas. There are 435 Members of the House of Representatives and 100 Members of the Senate. There are good ideas that come into every one of our offices from the 750,000 or so people that each of us represent. With the ideas that come from the public, if we sort them in the fashion envisioned by our Founding Fathers, if we limit the overgrowth of the executive branch of government, we take the responsibility back to us, it will press on us, Mr. Speaker, the kind of changes that are good for the people in this Republic, that are good for the responsibilities of the Members of the House and of the Senate. We can take America, and we can take America onwards and upwards to the next level of our ascending destiny. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your indulgence and your attention. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I was unable to vote on February 1, 2016. Had I been present, I would have voted as follows: YES on Roll Call Number 46; YES on Roll Call Number 47.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor and privilege to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding and for her presentation here tonight and the collection of people who came down to support her initiative and her agenda. I thank the men and women who have stepped up and put on the uniform and actually those, also, who have risked their lives who were not formally wearing the uniform to defend our country. I am one who, I think you know, Mr. Speaker, has great reverence for our constitutional values and the pillars of American exceptionalism, the underpinnings that make this a great nation. One of the things that we have been able to do as a great nation is be able to inspire others. If we look around the world, there are those who think that the only thing that could happen that is good to somebody is if we just bring them into America and give them access to our welfare benefits and maybe they will become good Americans and all will be right with the world, but I don't know if they have done the geography very well, Mr. Speaker, and recognize that we can do a lot more good by helping people where they are so that they can help themselves. One of the most important things we can do is not send the wealth of America over to give people money and food and housing. That goes on from time to time, and there is a good number of times it is very well justified. But the best thing we can do is inspire others to live and model after the freedom of the United States of America. Then they can help themselves, Mr. Speaker. I think of a time I sat down with several Ambassadors to the United States from Israel. We had a meeting over here in a room just off the House floor. They were explaining to me that they had adopted Hebrew as their official language. They did that, I believe, in 1954. They formed their country in 1948. And I said: ``Why did you establish an official language and why did you resurrect essentially a dead language''--Hebrew--``that had not been used in common discourse or business or politics''--except for prayer--``for 2,000 years?'' And they said they saw the success of the United States with the common language that we have. English is our common language. They wanted a common language for Israelis. They wanted something that would be unique, something that would bond and bind them together, because they had seen the successful model here. They were inspired by the successful model of assimilation that came about because of a common language. So they adopted Hebrew as their official language in Israel. I was quite impressed, Mr. Speaker. I was quite impressed that America would inspire a country that had all the world history to draw from, yet they look at the model we have here to make such a definitive thing as to bring back a language that had not been utilized in common discussion for 2,000 years. I give you that example, Mr. Speaker, because I come here tonight and I want to talk about Egypt and how it is that the United States of America inspires people around the world in ways that we may not realize. I come to the floor tonight, Mr. Speaker, to commemorate and celebrate and give notice to and congratulate the Egyptian people. Yesterday they swore in and convened their parliament. That is Egypt's first parliament in nearly 4 years. It is a great day for Egypt, and it is a great day for liberty worldwide. It is a great day for the United States to see that there are others around the world who are inspired by our system of a representative form of government. I extend my congratulations to President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and to the new speaker and drafter of Egypt's Constitution, Ali Abdel-Al, but also to Mr. Moussa, whom I met with on at least two occasions as he chaired the committee to draft the Egyptian Constitution. The citizens of Egypt have achieved an important foreign policy milestone, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday was that day. I was curious that they would convene on a Sunday. Only under extreme circumstances would we start our day here on a Sunday. However, Egypt is a Muslim country. It is about 95 percent Muslim--it has got a higher percentage of Christians than people might think--and they go to mosque on Friday. In fact, I learned that the Christians have their services on Friday as well. That way, Sunday is a workday. But, in any case, the short history and the most recent history of Egypt is really astonishing. I point out that it seems as though our administration has missed the importance of this. So, Mr. Speaker, I will just go through some of the history of Egypt as we commemorate and congratulate them for convening their Parliament now under a legitimized constitutional government of the sovereign nation-state of Egypt, a country that we need to expand and strengthen our relations with and a country that can be a central player in stabilizing the instability all throughout the Middle East. It is important that Egypt be a significant component of that effort that is going forward not just in this administration, but into the next administration and for a long time. Back in 1981, President Mubarak took power. He held power for 30 years. In that 30-year period of time, some people thought that he was a strong man and that he dealt harshly with some of his opposition that was there. It may be true. I am not here to defend President Mubarak. When President Obama took office, it was clear that he had a different view of President Mubarak than I have expressed here. He went to Cairo to give a speech in Egypt on June 4, 2009. And I remind the body, Mr. Speaker, that President Obama, then- Senator Obama and a candidate for President, in the spring of 2008 made a statement roughly similar to the fact he believed his middle name means something to the rest of the world. And when they recognize and see his middle name, they all know that he can communicate with them in a certain way that someone who doesn't have that middle name doesn't have that particular tool. And so shortly after that--being elected President and then armed with that conviction--President Obama traveled to Cairo, Egypt, and gave his speech on June 4, 2009, at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Now, Al-Azhar University is essentially the global center for Islamic thought. They have Islamic scholars there that are respected worldwide within the world of Islam. So to send a message to the Muslim world, there wasn't a place that was more effective than going to Al-Azhar University to give his June 4, 2009, speech. It happens to be a fact, Mr. Speaker, that the seating arrangement was arranged, we have to presume, with the approval of President Obama. And who sat in the front row, Mr. Speaker? The leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood were seated in the front row when President Obama gave his speech at Al-Azhar University. That sent a powerful signal to the Egyptian people, a signal that the President of the United States supports the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, I don't bring this up as speculation, Mr. Speaker. I bring it back to the floor of the Congress because I am speaking from hands-on, eye-to-eye experience in talking with the Egyptian people and some of their leadership and some of their press. They say to us: ``Why does President Obama support the Muslim Brotherhood?'' That is a bit of a tough question and is a hard one to rebut when they are seated in the front row at Al-Azhar University. Well, this brought about a significant amount of unrest. It contributed to the unrest, is probably a more reasonable way to describe this, Mr. Speaker. As the unrest grew in Egypt, we also heard messages coming out of the State Department. For example, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a statement very similar to: Mubarak needs to be gone yesterday. And so the push from the Obama administration, the push from the State Department, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and others, began to put pressure on Mubarak. While this is going on, the Arab Spring erupted about January, February 2011. Of course, it was multiple countries throughout the Middle East that had unrest. And there was significant unrest in Egypt, as we know. Well, Mr. Speaker, the pressure built and the demonstrations that took place in Tahrir Square were intense. Some of them were violent. We saw on television the massive amounts of people that were on the square and weren't going to leave. With the trouble that was there, finally, on February 11, 2011, Mubarak stepped down. When he stepped down, that left a bit of a void that was still wrapped up in the chaos. During that chaos, there were primarily Muslim Brotherhood activities consisting of mobs that were attacking Christian churches, attacking the Evangelical churches that are there, and attacking the Coptic Christian churches that are there. In fact, the persecution went on in multiple cities around Egypt. There were multiple churches that were burned and razed to the ground. Some were just gutted by fire. Well, in June 2012, Mohamed Morsi came to power. He is the face and the voice--and may still be--of the Muslim Brotherhood. As Morsi came to power, they began to see how the Muslim Brotherhood would rule Egypt. The protests died down for a while, and then they ramped back up again, Mr. Speaker and got worse and worse and worse and more intense. And so the protests accelerated up to January 25, 2013. There were many protests. Egypt was more or less very difficult to govern and rule because of the protests against Morsi and because of the way that Morsi had mishandled government and the way that the Muslim Brotherhood, with their heavy hand, had worked against many of the Egyptian people. Morsi was the duly-elected President. And I believe the number was 4.6 million Egyptians that came to the polls out of 83 million Egyptians altogether. So it was a low percentage of turnout, but they saw him get elected. And then, as he essentially disempowered the legislature and disempowered the judicial branch of government, there was a democratic election for Morsi, an election one last time. The dictator had taken over, and the Egyptian people knew it. And they began to push back, Mr. Speaker. So the protests accelerated from January 25, 2013, on throughout that spring. And then, as we watched, there was a funeral at the main Coptic church in Cairo. The Muslim Brotherhood mobs attacked the funeral and killed people. And so that is a brutal division within the society that took place. That was April 7, 2013. Throughout that summer, the Christian groups were gathering together, Mr. Speaker, and during that period of time they would have regular prayer meetings to pray that God would bring relief to Egypt and turn the country back over to the Egyptian people and let them govern their country and have their country back, take it away from Morsi. As I sat and listened to Pastor Maurice, who leads a 4,000-member Evangelical church in Egypt, as they were gathering for prayers on the night of June 29, he said to the other pastors who had been regularly coming together to pray: I am going to lead the prayer tonight. I am going to be in charge of the prayer tonight. So they agreed. They gathered together and Pastor Maurice offered this prayer. He said: God, we have been praying daily for relief from Egypt. I am tired of waiting. I don't want to wait any longer. I want this relief tomorrow.'' It is the night of June 29, 2013. ``God, bring us this relief tomorrow.'' That was the eve of the relief that came. By June 30, the following day, the streets and every city began to fill in Egypt. Tahrir Square became full again. People poured into the streets of Egypt, and they poured into the streets on June 30, July 1, July 2, and July 3. The numbers of people in the streets in Egypt that came out to protest were estimated at 33 million people out of 83 million Egyptians. Now, think of that. If we had that same percentage come out in the streets of America, we would have 125 million people in the streets of America, Mr. Speaker. It was a massive turnout in Egypt. And something had to happen. They pleaded with General el-Sisi: Will you take over in this country? We can't take this any longer. We have got to have some leadership. We have got to have somebody in charge of our country, Egypt. General el-Sisi demurred. He said: No. I don't want to do this. I don't want to step in. Finally, by the 3rd of June, he relented and stepped in with the military to bring order in Tahrir Square. That turned out to be a move that stabilized Egypt. Shortly after that, they stabilized Egypt. They had more peace in the streets. There was still trouble. The Muslim Brotherhood was still attacking people. There were still arrests of some of those who had been violent take place in the square that had been attacking people. But they installed an interim President and put some stability into the government. This is early July of 2013. Myself and a couple of other Members went to Egypt over the Labor Day break in September 2013. We met with the interim President in one meeting, in a different meeting with the Pope of the Coptic Church, in a separate meeting then with General el-Sisi, and in a separate meeting with Mr. Moussa, who was the chairman of the committee that was writing a Constitution. I remember each of those meetings in a distinct way. The Coptic Pope said: We are praying for the people who are killing us. We are not going to be sucked into a civil war in Egypt. We are praying for them and are asking God to forgive them, which I thought was a very high level of faith that I don't know that I could reach, Mr. Speaker. I was very impressed with the Coptic Pope. We met with Mr. Moussa, who described the Constitution they were drafting, but he said it is up to the Egyptian people. They have got to ratify it. And as we met with General el-Sisi, I recall asking him a series of questions: If this Constitution is ratified and a legitimized civilian government takes charge in Egypt, will the military take orders from a civilian President or a civilian prime minister and a civilian parliament? He looked me in the eye and he said: Yes. The military will. So I didn't know at the time--and I don't think he knew at the time-- that he would eventually become a candidate for President and actually be the one issuing the orders to the military. But he has kept his word. As he promised to me and others promised to me, they would ratify a Constitution, they would elect a national leader or President, and once the Constitution was ratified and the President was elected, they would then have elections and seat a parliament or a legislative body. Within their Constitution they wrote the language that said, of the roughly 100 churches that have been destroyed--mostly by the Muslim Brotherhood--they would use Egyptian tax dollars to rebuild those churches. I am here tonight, Mr. Speaker, to say thank you to President el-Sisi of Egypt, thank you to Mr. Moussa and those others that worked on the Constitution, and to congratulate the Parliament in Egypt that is now seated as of yesterday. Their country is put in place now so that the Egyptian people are finally in charge of their country again. And when I am asked why does our administration support the Muslim Brotherhood, I am going to continue to give the same answer: The American people support the Egyptian people. The Egyptian people don't support the Muslim Brotherhood. They have proven that over and over again. The leadership that the Egyptians have elected has proven that they have given their word, they have kept their word, they have performed in the fashion that they said. And as I have gone back now a couple of times since then, most recently last spring, in about March or April, at some significant expense, I might add, I remember sitting down with President el-Sisi, and he said a couple of things that I think that we should remember, and I believe he wanted me to convey them here on this floor, Mr. Speaker; and that is that, he gave a speech January 1 of last year at Al-Azhar University, in the center of Muslim thought, and here is the message that he delivered. The message was this, he is asking a rhetorical question, and it was: Is it possible to accept the idea that the whole world must die so that Muslims can live? That is verbatim, Mr. Speaker. It is a rhetorical question. It is the most powerful rhetorical question that I believe that I have heard. And, of course, he rejected that idea. He understands that Muslims and Christians and Buddhists and atheists and agnostics and all the religions need to live on this world together, and he is looking for that kind of peace and stability, so that no religion is persecuted, no religion is being murdered while they are going to someone else's funeral, or their wedding. And that happened also in Egypt, Mr. Speaker. So I want to thank President el-Sisi for his commitment. And I would add, also, that he made another statement that I think we also need to think about, Mr. Speaker, and that is, he said they, speaking of the Muslim Brotherhood, they are trying to establish and impose divine law on all the world. When he looked at me he realized it didn't quite register, and he said, sharia law. They want to impose sharia law on the entire world. And he put his head down, almost between his knees, as he sat there, and shook his head in rejection. I am convinced we can work with this man. He is a dedicated Muslim who is a peaceful leader, who understands this picture of the world the way it sets. When I look at the work that was done by Ataturk in Turkey, how he provided a bridge between the East and the West, and that has been drifting back a bit the other way under Erdogan, but I believe that President el-Sisi has the skill set, the convictions, and the foundation to, one day, with the right kind of support, the support of the United States of America and the free world and the Middle East, could become the Ataturk for the world to bring about that bridge between the Muslim world and the Christian world and the West. If we fail in that effort to do that outreach and tie these bonds together, these bonds that go back through history, a long ways back, Mr. Speaker, if we fail, then I am afraid there will be a tremendous amount of bloodshed. If we succeed, I believe we can eliminate and forestall a significant amount of bloodshed and bridge over this division that is coming at us. And he deserves and needs our help to defend himself from terrorists that are attacking from all directions, from Sinai and everywhere else. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your indulgence here tonight. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr Speaker, I was unable to vote on Wednesday, January 6, 2016. Had I been present, I would have voted as follows: ``yes'' on rollcall Number 2 (Previous Question); ``yes'' on rollcall Number 3 (Adoption of the Rule for Reconciliation); ``yes'' on rollcall Number 4 (Previous Question); ``yes'' on rollcall Number 5 (Adoption of the Combined Rule for H.R. 712 & H.R. 1155); and ``yes'' on rollcall Number 6 (Concur in the Senate Amendment to H.R. 3762).

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I was unable to vote on Thursday, January 7, 2016. Had I been present, I would have voted as follows: No on Roll Call Number 47 (Johnson Amendment); No on Roll Call Number 98 (Cummings Amendment); No on Roll Call Number 9 (Lynch Amendment); No on on Roll Call Number 10 (Johnson Amendment); No on Roll Call Number 11 (Democrat Motion to Recommit); Yes on Roll Call Number 12 (Passage of H.R. 712); No on Roll Call Number 13 (Johnson Amendment); No on Roll Call Number 14 (Cummings Amendment); No on Roll Call Number 15 (Cicilline Amendment); No on Roll Call Number 16 (DelBene Amendment); No on Roll Call Number 17 (Cicilline Amendment); No on Roll Call Number 18 (Pocan Amendment); No on Roll Call Number 19 (Democrat Motion to Recommit); Yes on Roll Call Number 20 (Passage of H.R. 1155); Yes on Roll Call Number 21 (Previous Question); and Yes on Roll Call Number 22 (Adoption of H. Res. 581).

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means--and I am delighted he is the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means--for yielding. I rise in support of the conference report of the Customs bill. It has got many provisions within it which I am happy about and happy to support. The currency manipulation provision is one of them. I am pleased to be here to be able to say that there were those that had significant heartburn over trade promotion authority. I am one of them. There were two provisions that I so badly wanted to be included within the TPA legislation, because I have a bit of a history of working to keep the immigration components out of trade deals. Congress needs to be passing immigration law, not trade negotiators. Well, that language is an amendment that is in here in the conference report, along with language that prohibits the negotiations under trade promotion authority on climate change. So we are protected from executive decisions imposed upon this Congress and a usurpation of article I authority by two pieces of language in here: No negotiations under TPA can include climate change under this language; and no negotiations under TPA can include immigration. Congress can speak to that, but they cannot negotiate that under TPA. That is very important to me. It is important to a lot of people across this country. I am standing here saying thank you to now-Speaker Ryan, who negotiated this with me and others. He regrets that he wasn't able to shake my hand as chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means. That is fine with me, Mr. Speaker. I am happy to shake the hand of Kevin Brady as chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, and say to a number of people who had significant apprehension about whether this would come together on all of the language necessary to get support for trade promotion authority, to say to them upon the passage of this conference report here today and the anticipated signature, merry Christmas to all of you who wanted to step down the line to preserve article I authority for the United States Congress.