Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

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

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the esteemed chair of the Judiciary Committee for yielding time to me, and I appreciate this issue being brought to the floor. I would announce, Mr. Speaker, that this is a subject matter, the full 100 percent repeal of ObamaCare, that I have worked on now for over 2 years on the repeal. When we saw this pass, it passed the House for the first time on November 7, 2009. That was a long and difficult day here in this House of Representatives. It came back through for a final passage by legislative shenanigans, by packaging up the reconciliation along with an earlier piece that went through by requiring a 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority that took place for a time in the Senate and came to this House under unprecedented terms, Mr. Speaker. We saw the American people rise up. They didn't just jam this Capitol. It wasn't just 10,000 plus or tens of thousands of people that came here to say, Keep your hands off of our individual American freedom and liberty and health care. It was tens of thousands of people that came here that said, Let's respect the Constitution; let's respect fiscal responsibility; let's respect individual rights; and let's respect the American people. Through that period of time, over this last 2-plus years, and a night I couldn't sleep after this finally passed on about March 21 or so, I got up and wrote a repeal. The language for that is in this bill, most of it intact. I'm glad we're at this point, Mr. Speaker, because it says that this House of Representatives has reflected the will of the American people. It reflected the will of the American people in the elections a year ago last November when we saw 87 new freshman Republicans come here to this House of Representatives, and every single one of them ran on the full 100 percent repeal of ObamaCare. Every single one of them voted for the full 100 percent repeal of ObamaCare, and every single Republican Senator, 47 of them, voted for the full 100 percent repeal of ObamaCare. Mr. Speaker, the next step is this next November when I believe there will be a change-out in the United States Senate that reflects what happened here in the House so that the full will of the American people can be worked in this body that is to be responsive to the American people. While that's going on, this terminology that began the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, always understood to be ObamaCare, referred to himself as ObamaCare by President Obama on February 25 in the Blair House in the health care discussion that took place when the President interrupted Republicans 72 times--not that that's an issue, Mr. Speaker, but just for the record, he referred to it as ObamaCare. Many of the Democrats have believed that it's pejorative, so they changed the name of it because nobody knew what the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was. They changed it to the Affordable Care Act. Well, we know it is the Unaffordable Care Act. It's a couple of trillion dollars stacked on this heavy burden the American taxpayers have today of nearly $16 trillion all together. It's the Unaffordable Care Act and, in fact, what it does is it reduces care and it reduces American freedom and liberty. When you think about the American people, how distinct and unique it is to be an American, what makes us different? We come from a lot of places on the planet. We have the vigor of the American people here, and it's totally unsuitable to be saddled by this unconstitutional takings of American liberty.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Madam Speaker. As always, I'm privileged and honored to be able to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. And having heard some of the dialogue of the gentleman from Georgia just preceding me, it transitions in a way that I think it is fitting, and his focus on the 10th Amendment and the limitations of the Constitution that don't seem to be felt by many Members of the Congress that serve over on this side as a rule and the debacle that's been brought upon us, and now we've called upon the Supreme Court to unravel, and anticipate a decision as early as next week, no longer this week, I'm told, Madam Speaker. As I watched this administration unfold, and we're into 3\1/2\ years or a little bit more into the Presidency of Barack Obama, I'm extremely troubled by the constitutional aspects of this administration. I would frame this with the understanding that the President of the United States is a former adjunct law professor at the University of Chicago who taught constitutional law. He taught constitutional law to students that were to learn about this document that I carry with me in my jacket pocket every day, this Constitution that has, as essential components, article I, article II, and article III of this Constitution. Article I sets up the legislature--that's us, Madam Speaker, here in the House of Representatives and down the hallway to the other end of the Capitol, the United States Senate. It invests in us all legislative authority. That's article I. It sets up the legislature, and it gives us our authority. And I'll talk about that a little bit more in a moment, Madam Speaker. Article II sets up the executive branch of government. It establishes that there shall be a President who is the Commander in Chief of all of our Armed Forces and a Vice President. Beyond that, there's not a requirement that this Congress establish any other parts of the executive branch of government. It just says that we may, not that we shall. That is in the enumerated powers that this Congress has. The third branch of government, of course, is the judicial branch of government. It wasn't originally established for the purposes of determining the intent of the letter of the Constitution. It did emerge, and for more than two centuries the landmark precedent case of Marbury v. Madison has not been successfully challenged, although occasionally it's been argued. So I concede to the Marbury decision. I look over to the Supreme Court and look to the United States Supreme Court to be the branch of government that determines what the laws mean, that identifies and defines the laws that we pass here. But my disagreement--although I've had some with the Supreme Court in the past, Madam Speaker--is not with the judicial branch of the government. I'm looking for them to grant us a decision next week on perhaps two large cases that have come before the Court, the ObamaCare case and also Arizona's SB-1070 immigration case. I'm hopeful that they will read this Constitution and understand it as I do and as most of us that take an oath to this Constitution do. But I'm very concerned about the President of the United States, the former adjunct law professor who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. When I had a speaker on this Wednesday morning at a breakfast that I host each week on Wednesdays--what goes on in that room is Members only, but it's the Conservative Opportunity Society--when the speaker that I introduced announced that he received his law degree from the University of Chicago's School of Law, it was a bit of an apology for the President's interpretations. I'm hopeful that the very fine and excellent University of Chicago School of Law doesn't have now a bad reputation it has to peel off that comes from the interpretations of the Constitution that the President is making these days--who taught law there, of course I would remind you. So I'm very troubled by the actions of the President of the United States. The most recent action that I'm troubled by is, let me say, the amnesty memorandum that he has directed Janet Napolitano to issue. This amnesty memorandum establishes several classes of people. One of those classes they've defined as this: if they were brought into the United States--or came into the United States is a more accurate way--if they arrived in the United States illegally from a foreign country before they were 16 years old and if they are still under 30 years old, and if they continuously resided in the United States for 5 years and if they received a high school degree, a GED, or were honorably discharged from the military--there are a couple other criteria there--then the President has directed Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, who has in turn directed her subordinates--that being the Acting Director of Custom Border Protection, David Aguilar, and the Director of ICE, John Morton, and also the USCIS, Mayorkas--to recognize this memorandum and act as if the President had issued an edict that is actually a law. Now, as Mr. Woodall from Georgia spoke about the Constitution and what's happened to our 10th Amendment, I would suggest that the President seems to be usurping nearly all of article I, section 8 of our Constitution, the enumerated powers. Now, I came here to speak of these enumerated powers in this way: if the President can manufacture law out of thin air--not whole cloth, Madam Speaker, but out of thin air--we get things like the immigration law that the United States Congress has established. It has defined categories of people, it has established numerous visas, it allows for the most generous legal immigration of any country in the world--and some say more legal immigrants coming into the United States every year than are allowed in all other countries in the world put together. I haven't seen that data to my satisfaction. That gets repeated here in this Congress so fairly often. I am very confident that the United States is the most generous nation on Earth when it comes to legal immigration. A number between 1 million and 1.2 million legal immigrants come into the United States. That number of people happens to be something that would establish workers for every job that's been created for more than a decade here in the United States. I have tracked the U.S. Department of Labor's Web site and I evaluated that, and I'll see that anywhere between 1 million and 1.2 million jobs have been created by this economy, and they're all taken up, at least in theory, by new legal immigrants. Then we have 12 million to 20 million illegal immigrants, seven out of 12 of whom are out working, and the other five out of that 12 are presumably not working, or in the home perhaps. Those jobs are maybe not recorded by the Department of Labor because they aren't legitimate jobs from their statistical standpoint. But imagine this, imagine an economy that generates over 1 million jobs a year, and imagine a country that would open its doors to over 1 million immigrants a year. Watch the economy create these jobs and watch those jobs being used by legal immigrants, and then turn a blind eye towards the illegal immigrants that are coming into the United States. The people on the other side of the aisle see illegal immigrants as undocumented Democrats. It is a political equation for them. It's not an equation of what's good for America's economy, what's good for America's culture, what's good for America's society. It's what gives them political power. So they cynically turn a blind eye and encourage that laws not be enforced, erode the rule of law; and in the process of expanding their political base they're eroding the core of America and creating a greater and greater disrespect for the rule of law. That's chiseling away at one of those beautiful pillars of American exceptionalism; and the President leads the charge, Madam Speaker. This lawless memorandum that was issued by Secretary Napolitano at the direction of President Obama has no basis in constitutional authority. The President of the United States does not have the authority to create law. He has no authority to pull it out of thin air. He cannot simply announce that he is going to require us to follow some directive, some executive edict and expect us to follow it. It is an unconstitutional overreach and a violation of the separation of powers. Now, I have some experience with this. The President's move on this amnesty memorandum is a clear violation of the executive powers of the President of the United States. It is one of the enumerated powers that is given to the United States Congress in article I, section 8. If the President can manufacture immigration law, here's what he has done-- I'll put this poster up. Madam Speaker, this is the result of the President's action and, that is, first he created the categories that I mentioned--three or four categories of people that are classes of people. He has prosecutorial discretion to decide where they're going to emphasize the utilization of their enforcement resources. He can determine that they are going to put more people on violent criminals, more people on serious drug smugglers. I'm not sure they are, but he can determine that they are. I haven't raised an issue with his constitutional authority to do that. I did bring an amendment a couple of weeks ago that blocked the Morton memos, which did say we're not going to enforce laws against individuals who have found themselves in the United States and haven't violated other laws. And the President has argued before the Supreme Court that there is this careful balance, a careful balance theory that Congress has directed the executive branch to create and maintain a careful balance of various immigration laws so that the executive branch interest in the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Commerce, those Departments find that balance so we don't over-enforce and offend our neighbors. Congress did not direct the President or the executive branch to create or maintain any careful balance. That careful balance is a completely manufactured theory. Congress passes laws of all kinds under the authority granted to it in article I, section 8. And those directives to the executive branch are: keep your oath of office, Mr. President. Executive branch, Eric Holder, keep your oath of office. And that oath for the President of the United States says, I do solemnly swear, to the best of my ability, to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God. Those were the words of Barack Obama January 20, 2009, right out here on the west portico of the Capitol. Preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States so help me God. And intrinsic with that oath of office, a little bit later, in article II, the Constitution says of the President, he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. That means, enforce the laws. The President must enforce the laws. He must appoint people whose job it is to enforce the laws. He must direct that they do so. They take an oath to uphold the Constitution. Eric Holder has an obligation to enforce the law. Janet Napolitano has an obligation to enforce the law, and their oath is tied to the Constitution in the same way. They understand that when they put their hand on the Bible and raise their right hand and say, I do solemnly swear, that includes, take care that the laws be faithfully executed. That's the obligation of the executive branch of the government. The obligation of the legislative branch of government is to pass laws that be necessary and proper. In fact, Madam Speaker, among article I, section 8 of the enumerated powers is a Necessary and Proper Clause, which says to Congress, the legislative branch to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers. That's the full list of enumerated powers that come before it in article I, section 8, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States or in any department or officers thereof. The Necessary and Proper Clause includes exclusive authority to pass laws as vested in the legislative branch in government. If it's exclusive, that means the President of the United States and nobody outside this legislature can pass a law. The President believes he can do that. He believes he can create legislation out of thin air, and he did so by the effect of his memorandum that was released by Janet Napolitano last Friday and supported in a Rose Garden speech by the President of the United States about 2:40 p.m. last Friday. And here's what we have. As a result of that is amnesty for whole classes of people. Between 800,000 and 1.4 million people granted a legal status in this country that, as of the morning, last Friday morning, when they woke up, they were subject to being put back in the condition they were in before they broke the law, that is, back to their home country where they rightfully belong and legally could reside. The President changed that with an unconstitutional overreach that's a violation of this separation of powers, and I'm going to ask the court to resolve this disagreement. It will take some time. It will take some money. It will take some effort and some litigation brains. They are, I believe, ready to go on this, Madam Speaker. But here's what the result is of the President's memo, and it's this: Created those classes of people, granted them executive amnesty by memo printed by Janet Napolitano, Director of Homeland Security, and directed the Director of USCIS, United States Citizenship Immigration Services, to create a permit that would allow those formerly illegal individuals to work in the United States for the duration of this permit that he would grant. Now, I've just looked at a couple of these things. These are created by laws, acts of Congress. This is an employment authorization card. It's just a model or a sample of one. It doesn't actually identify a real individual. And this is the size of a credit card, and it says U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship Immigration Services, USCIS. This is what the President has directed that USCIS create to hand to these one or so million people that get their new amnesty by executive fiat. Here is your employment authorization card. This is what will be produced, not by the direction of the United States Congress, not under the authority of article I of the Constitution that established this legislature, but under the arrogant, assumed power of the President of the United States to issue a memo that he thinks he has the authority to issue. And by the way, power in this world has historically been what you're able to assert and retain. If anyone steps up and assumes power to do something and there's no one there to challenge them and they can get away with it, they have that power and they will hold that power, and it will be a precedent for that power until someone can challenge it and take it away from them, Madam Speaker. And so the President has assumed this unconstitutional power to create entire classes of people, grouped in the hundreds of thousands, grant to them an employment authorization card, and grant to them a resident card. Now, the resident card that the President has ordered USCIS to produce in an unlawful, unconstitutional fashion will likely look something like this. This is a copy of what we know as a green card. It's a lawful permanent resident card. LPR status is what we call it. It says right here, permanent resident card. And again, this is just a token individual, a model for the card. But, Madam Speaker, they'll probably just strike out permanent resident and they might say temporary resident. It might have some kind of indication that later on he's going to make them a permanent resident. If the President can manufacture authority to do this when it doesn't exist, if he can grant amnesty to people that fit the age categories that he says, that haven't committed violent or serious felonies, or too many strings of misdemeanors, if he can do that, then why can't he also grant amnesty to those that are over 16 when they came here, those that are over 30 today, those that have been in the United States for less than 5 years, those that may have committed felonies and he just wants to give them a pass? We already have amnesty in this country for the President of the United States' aunt, who had been adjudicated for deportation, Auntie Onyango, and we already have the amnesty from the administration for his drunken uncle, Omar, who nearly ran over a police officer and had a 1.4 blood alcohol content. And then after he was brought to court, his punishment was to suspend his driver's license, and then the State of Massachusetts issued him a 45-day driver's license. These laws don't apply to the relatives of the President of the United States. Apparently they don't apply to the President's preferred manufactured classes of people. And by the way, the Constitution, according to his view, doesn't apply either to the President of the United States. This is what he has created out of whole cloth. These cards that you see here, this is a result of a deliberative act of the United States Congress. The U.S. House of Representatives, the United States Senate have concurred that we want to give people who are in this country legally an employment authorization card when they qualify. We want to give them a permanent resident card, a lawful permanent status card, when they qualify. And this green card, by the way, is a path to citizenship. Carrying this green card around for 5 years, being President of the United States, obeying our laws, that opens the door to United States citizenship, and after that 5-year period of time the green card can be converted, and often is, into United States citizenship. What prevents the President from just granting citizenship to all of the people that he thinks might vote for him? If the President has the authority to manufacture, out of thin air, this permit and this permit, Madam Speaker, under the same assumed arrogant authority, the President would be able to grant amnesty to 12 or 20 million people, instantly make them citizens, and march them off to the polls. He's engaged in blocking the State of Florida and five other States from cleaning up their voting rolls; has sent his Attorney General, Eric Holder, to block Florida from cleaning illegals off of the voting rolls in Florida, and that's not the only State. There's a database called the SAVE database that's in the control of Janet Napolitano, and Department of Homeland Security. The Secretary of State of the State of Iowa, Matt Schultz, who is doing an excellent job of making sure that those of us who have a legitimate vote in the State don't see our vote diluted or offset by the vote of someone who is unlawfully in the United States, or not a citizen, or perhaps a felon, or deceased. We need voter registration lists that are free of duplicates, deceased and felons, and that certifies that they are citizens, and require a picture ID, and the Holder Justice Department, working with the assent, if not the encouragement of the Obama White House, is blocking the legitimate cleanup of the voter registration rolls in State after State after State. This is the most unconstitutional reach by the executive in the history of the United States, and here are some things that the President could do if we let him assert his authority. I'll go all the way down through and just pick the most important ones. In article I, section 8, the enumerated powers of our Constitution, the first power grants Congress, exclusively Congress, the authority to lay and collect taxes. What if the President decided by executive fiat that he didn't want to collect taxes against people in the lowest bracket? Because, after all, that would be an income redistribution thing that he is likely to favor. Do you think those folks would feel good about the President of the United States and maybe go to the polls and vote for him? Would that change the political dynamic in the country if they didn't have a tax liability? Probably. If that's his calculus, what prevents him from doing this? If he thinks he has the power to lay and collect taxes, he can always absolve people of those taxes as well. What if Mitt Romney is elected President of the United States and he decides that, in order to stimulate the economy, he would just waive the taxes on U.S. capital that's stranded overseas in the trillions of dollars? What if he waived the capital gains taxes and let those resources come back into the United States tax free to be reinvested in the economy? Does the President have the authority to waive taxes or does the President have the authority to lay and collect them? No, Madam Speaker, he does not. The President of the United States has the obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. The authority to legislate is exclusively within the United States Congress--House and Senate--with the consent then of the signature of the President or of its overriding with his veto. The President could, under the same rationale as he has here, lay and collect taxes or waive taxes on certain classes of people. What if he decided, I feel a little sorry for those people who I wrote into this memorandum, so I don't want them to pay taxes either. Would then America be outraged? I'd say we need to understand this Constitution better, and we will be more outraged. What about borrowing money--that's another enumerated power--to borrow money on the credit of the United States? What if the President of the United States decided under the same authority he has assigned himself here that he is not going to pay any attention to Congress on whether we agree to lifting the debt ceiling and that he's just going to go by Executive order or by Presidential fiat and direct the Department of the Treasury to go ahead and borrow money beyond the debt ceiling this Congress has set? What would we say then, Madam Speaker? How about this: to regulate commerce. Well, wait. They're already doing that. They're alleging that under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution that they can go ahead and declare that only one lung full of American air constitutes engaging in interstate commerce and that they can compel you to buy a health insurance policy that's written or approved by the Federal Government. That's the decision that we expect from the Supreme Court next week. I think it's going to be a constitutional one. Barack Obama asserts that the Commerce Clause is so broad that Congress can reach across all State lines and declare that breathing one lung full of American air is enough to engage in interstate commerce, and therefore they can regulate all activities that they can declare to be interstate commerce. That means all activities whatsoever. By the way, I will say, if the Commerce Clause is so broadened by the consent of the Supreme Court next week, then the Commerce Clause, itself, swallows all of the enumerated powers. Everything can be regulated within the Commerce Clause. But I'm really here to focus on the separation of powers between the legislative and the executive branches. So I take us to naturalization. The enumerated powers grant that power of naturalization ``to establish an uniform rule of naturalization'' to the United States Congress exclusively, not to the President of the United States. The President has argued that the exclusive rule of naturalization includes all immigration laws, that the Congress should be able to determine that, and that there is no 10th Amendment that applies. That's another case before the Supreme Court that I expect we will get a decision on next week. But this stretch of the rationale that the President has sent does great offense to the Constitution of the United States. Regardless, this Congress has the exclusive constitutional authority ``to establish an uniform rule of naturalization.'' The President can't write that. The States can't write that, but the States do have the authority to write immigration laws that mirror those of the United States Government's. The President can't write them as he intends to do. This is what he has created. Unconstitutionally, he has created these permits and these classes of people. The President has also declared that the Senate wasn't in session when they were in session, and he committed his recess appointments. I am disappointed, frankly, Madam Speaker, that the United States Senate didn't step up and defend its authority to determine when they were in session, and to not adjourn and to be in a pro forma session. They did so so that the President could not insert recess appointments, and the President did so anyway. If the President of the United States can declare that the United States Senate is not in session, then he can effectively abolish the United States Senate except for its being just simply a symbolic body. Now, there are countries around the world like that--in this hemisphere, I might add. I remember seeing the President of the United States in a glad double-handed handshake with one of those people a few years ago. Then I mentioned S.B. 1070, this great overreach when the President had sent his Attorney General to sue Arizona. He was classically asked the question, Attorney General Holder, did you read the Arizona immigration bill? His answer was, No. Congressman Ted Poe said, Here, you can read mine. It's only 10\1/2\- pages long. It's not that hard to study. I'd read it. Ted Poe had read it. So had, I think, every member of the Judiciary Committee on our side. But the Attorney General had determined he was going to sue Arizona because he was ordered to by the President of the United States. The announcement came in Ecuador from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That's how we found out. They created a whole new legal argument called the ``careful balance theory'' in that Congress had directed the executive branch to create and maintain a careful balance between the various immigration laws. We did no such thing. There is no record of this. There is no statute of this. There is no dialogue in the Congressional Record that would direct such a thing. They asserted it because that was the only argument they could manufacture that suited their political position. This is not an administration of law. This is not an administration bound by it. They are not bound by the Constitution. The President, himself, has stood before this Nation multiple times and has given the lecture about the separation of powers: Congress passes the laws. The executive branch carries them out. Then the Supreme Court, the judicial branch, interprets the laws. That's the President's lecture, and he cast it all aside and asserted an executive edict that he could create these things out of thin air. If the President can do so, then, as we go on down the line, he can regulate commerce. He can do the naturalization. The President has already stuck his nose into bankruptcies, and the secured creditors for Chrysler saw themselves aced out while the White House was the only appraiser of Chrysler motors. They wrote the terms of the chapter 11 for Chrysler, and they were the only entity that was bidding on Chrysler's assets. They set the price going in. They wrote the terms of the bankruptcy, and they offered the price on the other side of it. And what did they do? They scooped the secured creditors' assets away and handed them over to the unions. Congress sets the terms of bankruptcy, not the White House. Again, he has crossed the line. We go on down the line. What if the President decided that he could establish the currency of the United States? That's exclusively the Congress as well. What if he determined the euro were going to be the currency of the United States of America? What could we do? What would our alternative be? We'd take the gentleman to the courts, and ask the courts to determine the difference. In the end, the people will decide this. With regard to intellectual property, he could waive copyrights, trademarks, and those types of laws, or he could create tribunals or wipe them out if he is going to assert an authority to rewrite article I, section 8. Madam Speaker, I appreciate your attention. We must keep our oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the separation of powers. I intend to do so. I ask for everyone's help in this whole country. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Utah for yielding, and I particularly appreciate it, given the subject matter I'm about to bring up. Madam Speaker, I had introduced legislation months ago in this Congress, in fact, as far back as last August, H.R. 2942. It's the result of the massive flooding that we have suffered in the Missouri River bottom last summer. The Corps of Engineers released unprecedented discharges of water coming down the Missouri River; 70,000 cubic feet per second was the previous high. We went through 160,000 cubic feet per second. It was a secret flood. No one could drive there, and no one could boat there. You had to fly over it to see it, and it was water that was perhaps a mile and a half wide downstream from Sioux City, Iowa, to just a few miles south of there, 8 miles wide at Blencoe, 11 miles wide upstream of Omaha. And south of Omaha downstream below Glenwood, it became 4 to 6 miles wide all the way down into Missouri, St. Joseph, Kansas City, and on about halfway towards St. Louis. This was a massive flood of historic proportions. It could have been prevented; yet I have not challenged the Corps of Engineers on that. I've just said to them we need to fix the problem so it doesn't happen again. They have declared that this was a 500-year event, even though the USGS statistician said it is somewhere between a 70- and a 1,000- year event. H.R. 2942 enjoys the support of almost everyone that represents the Missouri River watershed area. And, yes, naturally, it will be more downstream. But from Sioux City downstream to the mouth, there's only one that represents the river that has not signed onto this bill. It's bipartisan; it's the entire Iowa delegation and most of Nebraska. Yet the Rules Committee turned down my request to offer an amendment even though there is no discussion and no disagreement. My amendment was germane to the bill. They raised an issue of jurisdiction after I was dismissed from the committee. I don't think that was by plan or strategy. My preparation is this: if a Member of Congress can't have their voice heard on an amendment that's germane when all of the boxes are checked and everything was done right to present it before the committee--by the way, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida for calling for a recorded vote on this, a party-line vote. This time it was Democrats siding with Steve King. It's the second time the Rules Committee has turned me down this year on a legitimate request. But I'd ask, if the House is going to work its will, as Speaker Boehner has said, we must have a Rules Committee that will allow when it's in proper form to allow that kind of a vote here on the House floor. I'm not going to get that debate. I'm not going to get that vote. And the people that I represent and all of us from Sioux City downstream to St. Louis now have been covered by not just water for an entire summer, more than 3 months of epic-proportions flooding, but now what's left for us, Madam Speaker, is sand and camel habitat. I'll vote ``no,'' but I don't intend to try to bring down the rule.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I have a King amendment at the desk, 322.

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, my amendment addresses Executive Order 13166. That was an executive order that was issued in August of 2000 that directed our Federal agencies to provide foreign-language services to anyone who might seek to engage with the American Government. When I say the American Government, I do mean, Mr. Chairman, not just the Federal Government, but also local government. The order directs Federal fund recipients--meaning local government-- to pay for the enormous cost of providing translation and interpreter services from their own funds. There is no Federal reimbursement for this executive order. Many of us support English as the official language. We understand that there are billions that are spent in an effort to facilitate access to government to people who do not have the language skills, but also understand it is impossible to meet all of those demands. As we watch the proliferation in this government, I would look at what recently Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano released, a memorandum detailing a DHS language access plan, which expands Executive Order 13166. In summary, Mr. Chairman, this amendment simply says that no funds available under this act may be utilized to enforce Executive Order 13166. With that, I yield to the chairman of the subcommittee from Alabama.

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, just quickly in closing, I would point out that we got along fine without this executive order up until the year 2000, and we'll get along fine without this executive order after the year 2012. The assimilation component of this doesn't take place if you facilitate foreign-language speaking within government. Eighty-seven percent of Americans support this policy, the policy of English as the official language. This is a component of it. There's nothing that prevents justice, health, or emergency services from utilizing multiple languages to take care of the people. So I urge its adoption, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, this amendment, this second King amendment, addresses the Morton memos, and he would be the director of ICE, and he is quite well known for the memos that unfolded that are known as the Morton memos. There are three of them. These memos, compiled together, bring about the effect of administrative amnesty. We'll remember that the President issued a policy sometime probably less than a year ago when he essentially announced that they were going to look for ways that they didn't have to deport people that are already adjudicated for deportation. At the time there were 300,000 people here in the United States here illegally who had been adjudicated for deportation. They were awaiting a final deportation order. The President's policy, as echoed through Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and acted on by ICE Director Morton, issued three memos that gave administrative amnesty this way. Memo number one was the most significant, and it said this: that aliens who pose a danger to national security or are a risk to public safety, they might be deported. Illegal aliens who have recently entered the U.S., they might be deported if you catch them at the border, so to speak, Mr. Chairman. The third component of that memo number one was aliens who are fugitives or otherwise obstruct immigration controls might be deported. It really means the rest of them we're not going to pay much attention to. That's the administrative amnesty component. Memo number two discouraged ICE agents from enforcing immigration laws against aliens, many who would qualify if the DREAM Act had been enacted--which is a pretty outrageous policy when you consider that it has multiple times been voted down in Congress. Number three discouraged ICE agents from enforcing immigration laws against aliens who were victims or witnesses of crimes. Those are the Morton memos. This amendment prohibits the dollars from being used in this budget to enforce the Morton memos. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, March 2, 2011. Memorandum for: All ICE Employees From: John Morton, Director Subject: Civil Immigration Enforcement: Priorities for the Apprehension, Detention, and Removal of Aliens Purpose This memorandum outlines the civil immigration enforcement priorities of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as they relate to the apprehension, detention, and removal of aliens. These priorities shall apply across all ICE programs and shall inform enforcement activity, detention decisions, budget requests and execution, and strategic planning. A. Priorities for the apprehension, detention, and removal of aliens In addition to our important criminal investigative responsibilities, ICE is charged with enforcing the nation's civil immigration laws. This is a critical mission and one with direct significance for our national security, public safety, and the integrity of our border and immigration controls. ICE, however, only has resources to remove approximately 400,000 aliens per year, less than 4 percent of the estimated illegal alien population in the United States. In light of the large number of administrative violations the agency is charged with addressing and the limited enforcement resources the agency has available, ICE must prioritize the use of its enforcement personnel, detention space, and removal resources to ensure that the removals the agency does conduct promote the agency's highest enforcement priorities, namely national security, public safety, and border security. To that end, the following shall constitute ICE's civil enforcement priorities, with the first being the highest priority and the second and third constituting equal, but lower, priorities. Priority 1. Aliens who pose a danger to national security or a risk to public safety The removal of aliens who pose a danger to national security or a risk to public safety shall be ICE's highest immigration enforcement priority. These aliens include, but are not limited to: aliens engaged in or suspected of terrorism or espionage, or who otherwise pose a danger to national security; aliens convicted of crimes, with a particular emphasis on violent criminals, felons, and repeat offenders; aliens not younger than 16 years of age who participated in organized criminal gangs; aliens subject to outstanding criminal warrants; and aliens who otherwise pose a serious risk to public safety. For purposes of prioritizing the removal of aliens convicted of crimes, ICE personnel should refer to the following new offense levels defined by the Secure Communities Program, with Level 1 and Level 2 offenders receiving principal attention. These new Secure Communities levels are given in rank order and shall replace the existing Secure Communities levels of offenses. Level 1 offenders: aliens convicted of ``aggravated felonies,'' as defined in Sec. 101(a)(43) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, or two or more climes each punishable by more than one year, commonly referred to as ``felonies''; Level 2 offenders: aliens convicted of any felony or three or more crimes each punishable by less than one year, commonly referred to as ``misdemeanors''; and Level 3 offenders: aliens convicted of crimes punishable by less than one year. Priority 2. Recent illegal entrants In order to maintain control at the border and at ports of entry, and to avoid a return to the prior practice commonly and historically referred to as ``catch and release,'' the removal of aliens who have recently violated immigration controls at the border, at ports of entry, or through the knowing abuse of the visa and visa waiver programs shall be a priority. Priority 3. Aliens who are fugitives or otherwise obstruct immigration controls In order to ensure the integrity of the removal and immigration adjudication processes, the removal of aliens who are subject to a final order of removal and abscond, fail to depart, or intentionally obstruct immigration controls, shall be a priority. These aliens include: fugitive aliens, in descending priority as follows: fugitive aliens who pose a danger to national security; fugitives aliens convicted of violent crimes or who otherwise pose a threat to the community; fugitive aliens with criminal convictions other than a violent crime; fugitive aliens who have not been convicted of a crime; aliens who reenter the country illegally after removal, in descending priority as follows: previously removed aliens who pose a danger to national security; previously removed aliens convicted of violent crimes or who otherwise pose a threat to the community; previously removed aliens with criminal convictions other than a violent crime; previously removed aliens who have not been convicted of a crime; and aliens who obtain admission or status by visa, identification, or immigration benefit fraud. The guidance to the National Fugitive Operations Program: Priorities, Goals and Expectations, issued on December 8, 2009, remains in effect and shall continue to apply for all purposes, including how Fugitive Operation Teams allocate resources among fugitive aliens, previously removed aliens, and criminal aliens. B. Apprehension, detention, and removal of other aliens unlawfully in the United States Nothing in this memorandum should be construed to prohibit or discourage the apprehension, detention, or removal of other aliens unlawfully in the United States. ICE special agents, officers, and attorneys may pursue the removal of any alien unlawfully in the United States, although attention to these aliens should not displace or disrupt the resources needed to remove aliens who are a higher priority. Resources should be committed primarily to advancing the priorities set forth above in order to best protect national security and public safety and to secure the border. C. Detention As a general rule, ICE detention resources should be used to support the enforcement priorities noted above or for aliens subject to mandatory detention by law. Absent extraordinary circumstances or the requirements of mandatory detention, field office directors should not expend detention resources on aliens who are known to be suffering from serious physical or mental illness, or who are disabled, elderly, pregnant, or nursing, or demonstrate that they are primary caretakers of children or an infirm, person. or whose detention is otherwise not in the public interest. To detain aliens in those categories who are not subject to mandatory detention, ICE officers or special agents must obtain approval from the field office director. If an alien falls within the above categories and is subject to mandatory detention, field office directors are encouraged to contact their local Office of Chief Counsel for guidance. D. Prosecutorial discretion The rapidly increasing number of criminal aliens who may come to ICE's attention heightens the need for ICE employees to exercise sound judgment and discretion consistent with these priorities when conducting enforcement operations, making detention decisions, making decisions about release on supervision pursuant to the Alternatives to Detention Program, and litigating cases. Particular care should be given when dealing with lawful permanent residents, juveniles, and the immediate family members of U.S. citizens. Additional guidance on prosecutorial discretion is forthcoming. In the meantime, ICE officers and attorneys should continue to be guided by the November 17, 2000 prosecutorial discretion memorandum from then-INS Commissioner Doris Meissner; the October 24, 2005 Memorandum from Principal Legal Advisor William Howard; and the November 7, 2007 Memorandum from then Assistant Secretary Julie Myers. E. Implementation ICE personnel shall follow the priorities set forth in this memorandum immediately. Further, ICE programs shall develop appropriate measures and methods for recording and evaluating their effectiveness in implementing the priorities. As this may require updates to data tracking systems and methods, ICE will ensure that reporting capabilities for these priorities allow for such reporting as soon as practicable, but not later than October 1, 2010. F. No Private Right Statement These guidelines and priorities are not intended to, do not, and may not be relied upon to create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law by any party in any administrative, civil, or criminal matter.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I would point out that the Morton memos, in effect, provide administrative amnesty potentially for millions. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I would just make the point that I listened to a lot of discussion about something that we well know around here is prosecutorial discretion. We don't have the resources to prosecute every law breaker and we know that law enforcement has to use that discretion on those resources. This, though, is the President's policy. This is the President's policy of administrative amnesty that's implemented through the White House, through Janet Napolitano down through Director Morton and his Morton memos, which are amnesty. They said, we don't want to enforce the law. We want to have comprehensive immigration reform, which we know are code words for amnesty, and they are bringing it about through an executive administrative amnesty in the same way as they are trying to implement cap and trade rules through EPA rules and regulations. I would add also they have a responsibility to enforce the law. It says in article II of the Constitution: He shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. This Constitution doesn't give an exemption. It doesn't say you're going to enforce the ones you like and not the ones you don't like. We have to adopt this amendment so that we do direct the law. I would urge its adoption, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, this is the Davis-Bacon Act amendment. And for everyone's information, Mr. Chairman, it's this: The Davis-Bacon Act was an act that was signed into law on or about 1932. It was generated in New York to lock the African Americans out of the construction trades in New York. It is the last remaining vestige of Jim Crow laws in America. It's a union protection law. What it says is that any Federal construction project with 2,000 or more dollars involved in it must meet these Federal prevailing wage standards. We know--and I've spent 28-plus years as a founder and owner of a construction company and a number of years prior to that. I'm over 30 years in the construction business, Mr. Chairman. We know this amounts to a union-imposed wage scale and federally controlled wage prices. What it does is it increases the cost of our construction projects. Our records over the years show that someplace between 8 percent and 35 percent is the increase with the Davis-Bacon wage scale as opposed to competition setting those wages. Some of the charts here that I'm looking at show between 9 percent and 37 percent. I just use the number 20 percent more. Our project costs us 20 percent more because of this federally imposed wage scale that's unnecessary, and it cuts out competition. You can make the decision, then, on whether we want to build 4 miles of road or 5, whether we want to build, Mr. Chairman, four bridges or five, or whether we're going to create and have these construction jobs. Are there going to be four jobs or are there going to be five? In many cases if we repeal the Davis-Bacon wage scale, you would have minorities, in fact, you would have a majority of those that would fill those jobs would be minorities. It takes the Department of Labor 2.3 years just to issue a ruling on whatever the wages might be. I have seen them vary 40, 50 or 60 percent just across the road. That's how far off it is. What this bill does is it prohibits any funds from being used to enforce or implement the Davis-Bacon wage scale, and it gets us a lot more bang for our buck. It gets us the quality that we have always had, and it puts America back into competition. That's what's built this country. I urge its adoption, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman's work in putting the statement together, but as someone who has lived this 30 years, I don't accept this statement on its face, and I can tell you that my hands-on experience tells me something entirely different. The statement that was made that says that three-quarters of these decisions are not based solely on union scale. It might be based on union scale in a union contract or sitting down in a room to make an agreement with the Department of Labor. I don't know how these deals are made. It is union scale, and they sit there and decide we can drive up the costs of these public projects, and we can make sure that we can pay more in wages and benefits to anybody else and cut out the competition so that the entrepreneurs, the people that are founding businesses that are trying to get into this market, are locked out of the market. Davis-Bacon locks people out of the market. It locks minorities out of the market. If you look around and you hear that expression, ``people doing work that Americans won't do''--well, if you look around, the unions have been locking minorities out ever since 1932. That was the purpose of this bill. By the way it was a couple of misguided Republicans that passed the Davis-Bacon Act and got that started. I'm embarrassed about that. One day we will have to fix this because Davis-Bacon is the last vestige of the Jim Crow laws in the United States of America. It does drive up the costs an average of 20 percent, somewhere between 9 and 37 percent for these costs. It cannot be said either that there's a reduction in quality when we put competition in. Competition increases the quality, it increases the efficiency. It brings about the skills in the workforce, and it allows contractors to bring people in at a scale where they can be trained. So we have more competition for the labor. We get better bang for our dollar. We build four bridges instead of five, 4 miles of road instead of 5 under Davis-Bacon. We can do it the other way around and reverse it. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, in response to that I would say again I have worked in this trade for a lifetime, I have been in the room. I know how this works. This is union scale imposed through the Department of Labor. It is not prevailing wage. There is a study I have in front of me that shows that if we repeal Davis-Bacon there would be approximately 25,000 more minorities working in the construction business. In some trades there are many, some trades there are few. It's not something that's balanced across the countryside. But what you don't have is competition coming into the marketplace. You do not have efficiency in your work. You don't get the bang for the buck because you have got a federally mandated wage scale, and it cuts down on the efficiency because you have people on the projects that are looking for the highest-paid scale that's there. And so they will climb on the finish motor grader and drive up and down the road rather than the rough bulldozer to get the production work done. They won't pick up the shovel because it pays less than it does holding the grade stake. You cannot get willful efficiency out of people when you have the Federal Government deciding what they're going to pay. Additionally, we have some studies also that show when they audited the reports, 100 percent of those wage reports were wrong, Mr. Chairman. So I would urge its adoption, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. KING of Iowa

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

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I offer this amendment, which strikes a million dollars out of the Fish and Wildlife account and it inserts $571,429 into the Reserve Maintenance account. So it is a net savings of $428,571, which would go to deficit reduction. But my purpose is not to focus on the deficit reduction component of this, Mr. Chairman. My purpose is to make the statement that we have watched in that Missouri River system, the Pick-Sloan system that has six dams upstream and the longest channel in the United States going downstream, and we suffered a flood last summer, the 2011 flood of epic proportions. The system had been designed and completed in 1968 based upon the largest runoff ever, which was 1881. Now it's 2011. Now the Corps of Engineers declares that last year's flood was a 500-year event. USGS says it's between a 70- and a 1,000-year event. The Corps picked the 500-year event, which defines it as an anomaly for them, and they refuse to manage the river in a fashion that protects us from serious downstream flooding. So instead of creating a habitat for fish and wildlife, which is the least tern, the piping plover, and the pallid sturgeon, now we have hundreds of miles of camel habitat--sand and dead trees--from the flooding. I have a bill, H.R. 2942, that needs to move through this Congress. This is an opportunity to speak to the necessity to direct the Corps of Engineers to protect us from serious downstream flooding and consider fish and wildlife in the interests upstream. This redirects some of those funds to that to send a message to the Corps of Engineers to take a little bit out of their Fish and Wildlife account, which is around $70 million, and put a little bit into their Maintenance account, which is around $7 million, and start to adjust this proportion. But it is a token vote, Mr. Chairman, because there's much more that needs to be done. We need to be able to discharge 120,000 cubic feet per second out of Gavins Point Dam and be able to maintain that within the channel. If we can do that, then the fisheries' interests upstream have a very minimal impact when the Corps is finally, under H.R. 2942, directed to adjust the levels to protect us from serious downstream flooding. That is the argument. I urge the adoption of this amendment, the message that would be sent, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

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

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, as always it's my privilege and honor to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives and take up a series of issues that I think you should be considering, and I would recommend that be the case as long as the broader part of the body of this Congress and the public is listening in to this conversation that we are having, Mr. Speaker. I would make a series of points on where our Nation needs to focus our energy, where this Congress needs to focus its energy, and how we turn this country back into the country that was envisioned by our Founding Fathers. I would make the point, Mr. Speaker, that we have now, coming on almost 4 years ago, elected a President who rode into office with a large majority in his party, in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. I warned then, going into the 2008 election, that if America elected--and I quote it this way--the ruling troika, the troika of President Obama, the majority leader of the United States Senate, Harry Reid, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, that the three of them could go into a phone booth and thereafter make a decision on what they decided to do to America without accountability that could check them in their very active endeavor to shape America in a way that wasn't envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Lo and behold, Mr. Speaker, that is what happened. The voters in 2008 made that decision. They expanded the Democrat majority here in the House of Representatives. They also elected Barack Obama to the Presidency, the most liberal President America has ever seen and, of course, maintained a majority of Democrats in the United States Senate. What unfolded was an effort here in the House that passed cap-and- trade, and we stood here on the floor, Mr. Speaker, over and over again and did battle with cap-and-trade. We called it cap-and-tax. Cap-and- tax was the right way to describe the bill that would tax people who were burning hydrocarbons and, doing so, create a disadvantage for American industry and an advantage for the industries in places like India and China, where they care less about what goes into the atmosphere than we do here in this country. That legislation, which I will always believe we had the ability to kill--even in the House Republican minority at the time--if we had turned up all of our efforts, we had the ability to kill it, Mr. Speaker. We didn't get that done. We came close. We didn't get that done. And the cap-and-tax legislation passed over to the United States Senate, where it was subsequently killed in the Senate. But the sentiment of the President of the United States; the Speaker of the House, then Nancy Pelosi; and the majority leader of the United States Senate was to impose cap-and- trade or cap-and-tax on us. And they tried. They tried mightily. And President Obama has since said that if he can't get cap-and-tax passed--he would say cap-and-trade, Mr. Speaker--that he would implement it by rule and implement it by regulation if the Congress will not comply with his directive. Now, we haven't heard very much about that effort in the media--not very much from the President, not very much from Democrats in this Congress or Democrats in the United States Senate. But it remains that this executive branch is implementing rules and regulations to carry out the initiative of cap-and-tax, cap-and-trade, which has been so rejected by the American people and exposed to be at least perpetuated by a fraud of dated information that went back and forth between the United Kingdom and the United States. So that's one piece that has been coming at us. It's a result of that decision made by the voters in 2008. And as they pushed on cap-and-tax from that election, we saw then also that supermajority of the House Democrats, Senate Democrats, and the most liberal President America has ever seen. By the way, Mr. Speaker, I'm not making that number up. That is the data that shows that when they measured the votes of the United States Senators during the entire tenure of Barack Obama as a United States Senator, which I recognize wasn't long, he voted to the left of every Senator in the United States Senate, including Bernie Sanders, the Independent Senator from Vermont, who I served with in the House of Representatives. I personally like the gentleman. He's a self-professed socialist. Yet Barack Obama voted to the left of the self-professed socialist Senator, Bernie Sanders, and the left of every United States Senator. While he was a Senator advancing cap-and-tax, cap-and-trade, he said that under his proposal of cap-and-tax, cap-and-trade, that the costs of electricity generated by coal would ``necessarily skyrocket.'' Well, that's happening. They have written regulations through the EPA and other means of the executive branch of government to the point now where it's been I think clearly established that from a regulatory perspective it is not just virtually, Mr. Speaker, but literally impossible for a new coal-fired generating plant, no matter how clean burning that coal might be, to be constructed in the United States. We tried that in Iowa a year and a half or so ago, to build a coal- fired plant in Marshalltown. It had the best combination of entities that you could bring together that could utilize this and the longest- term, best vision you could put together with the engineering and the business model. And they finally had to, as we say on the chess board, tip over their king and concede that they couldn't build a new coal- fired plant. Now it's become ever increasingly clear that expanding coal-fired generation also is regulatorily virtually impossible, perhaps literally impossible as well. So the costs of our electricity go up and the leverage that comes in on creating subsidized forms of energy that fit within the political wishes of the President seems to be pushed well out of the White House. In any case, Mr. Speaker, that was one of the fights that went on here in this Congress back in those years between 2008 and the election in 2010. Of course, another one was the passage of ObamaCare. ObamaCare sometimes is described as the pejorative way that it should define the health care plan that the President advanced and that had the full support of then-Speaker Pelosi. I would remind people of that--then- Speaker Pelosi. That legislation first came to this floor as H.R. 3200. That was the precursor to the final package of ObamaCare. In the end, the bill that they define it as--two different bills, by the way. One, a reconciliation package that was slid around the filibuster in the Senate. That's a component of ObamaCare. The other one was legislation that passed out of the House and Senate with a supermajority in the Senate--a temporary supermajority in the Senate, I might add--and that was only passed because there was a promise made here that the President would sign an executive order that in effect amended legislation that the House was about to pass. Now, Mr. Speaker, if there are any civics students listening to this discussion, I imagine that I have just heard their jaws drop across America, to think that the President of the United States, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago as an adjunct professor, would think that he, now as President of the United States, could sign an executive order that could amend legislation under the promise that it would amend legislation that was about to be passed on that condition in the House of Representatives. That took place right here, Mr. Speaker. That's what's happened to this country. That's what's happened to the constitutional constructs of this country when you have leftist activists in charge of this government and they took the bit in their teeth and they ran off the cliff into the left and we ended up with ObamaCare, which they call the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. You can walk up and down the streets of America, and with the exception of right around the Capitol here in Washington, D.C., I would suggest that you wouldn't find two people in 100 that would know what that means. We know what ObamaCare means. That's the President's advance of the health care policy that takes away our constitutional right to manage our own health care. And I tell people often that ObamaCare needs to be repealed for a lot of reasons. It's unaffordable, it's unsustainable, and it does set up rationing. Sarah Palin was right: it reduces research and development. It means that America will no longer be the lead in the innovation and health care systems in the world. All of those things are bad and wrong and unsustainable about it, but the worst thing is that ObamaCare is unconstitutional. It's a direct assault on Americans, on our sovereign right. Mr. Speaker, the most sovereign thing that any of us has in the United States or anyplace in the world is our own soul. We protect that. We decide. That's freedom of religion that's in the First Amendment in the United States Constitution, take care of your soul. That's sovereign. The second most sovereign thing we have is our health: our bodies, our skin, and everything inside it. And what is ObamaCare? They went in and nationalized Chrysler. They nationalized General Motors. For a time, they nationalized three large investment banks, AIG, Fannie Mae- Freddie Mac. The entire flood insurance program in the United States and the student loan program in the United States, all of that taken over by the Federal Government in the last few years. And then ObamaCare came along. And that is, Mr. Speaker, the nationalization of your skin and everything inside it and a 10 percent tax on the outside if you go to the tanning salon, just to add a little extra insult to injury. That's what ObamaCare has done. It has tapped into this vigorous American people, the most vigorous people the world has ever seen. We've skimmed the cream of the crop off of every donor civilization on the planet and gotten the best that any civilization had to offer because they were inspired by the American Dream, inspired by those visions that are embodied within the Statue of Liberty. Those visions altogether attracted people to come here to this country so they could live free, be free, breathe free, and do as they will in a free enterprise system that has a rule of law, freedom of speech, religion, and the press and assembly, and no double jeopardy and tried by a jury of your peers and states' rights that flow down to the States or the people respectively. All of that is the promise of America. And when you come to America and you embrace that promise, then you can work to achieve the American Dream. But the Federal Government taking over the nationalization of our bodies takes that away from us. And the 1,300 health insurance companies that we had 2\1/2\ years ago when the ruling troika imposed ObamaCare on this country are fewer now. The 100,000 possible health insurance policies that were out there on the marketplace that one could choose from are fewer now. And the government stepped in and reached more. And just yesterday, I got the news that Nemschoff Company, which is a subsidiary of Herman Miller, Inc., and provides 111 jobs up in Sioux Center, Iowa--111 jobs making furniture and other equipment, a lot of it that goes into medical clinics and hospitals, a specialized type of a production facility, 111 jobs, will close its doors, and they cited, Mr. Speaker, ObamaCare. The uncertainty and the cost and the burden of the imposition of ObamaCare upon a company that's building products for health care causes them to shut their doors down. They didn't give any other reason. I didn't talk with them. I didn't solicit this. That was what came out in their press release. And I learned it when I read the paper. ObamaCare forces them into a situation where they are shutting down a company that has been there for years, and it has 1,100 jobs. Well, the profit has been taken out of it for them. That's why the plant has to be closed. We need to remember that this economy doesn't function to produce jobs. This economy and this free enterprise system we have functions to give a return on capital. When capital is invested, it needs to be invested with an anticipation that there will be profits. And that anticipation for profit is what brings about jobs. And keeping those jobs competitive is what is an incentive to produce the expanses in technology so that America can be the innovators for the world and the most competitive economy in the world. But this administration seems to believe that you can't have a business model unless you can have the government at the table. And the government will decide what kind of health insurance policy you can buy and that you shall buy it, and that there is an individual mandate in ObamaCare that takes away our constitutional rights, and that's the unconstitutional taking of the second most sovereign thing we have, which is our skin and everything inside it. And if the Supreme Court--and I believe, Mr. Speaker, they will make a prudent constitutional decision, and I anticipate that decision very early--well, I will say next month sometime I anticipate that decision. They will be deliberate on this, that the Constitution defines a limited government, the principle of federalism. The principle of federalism isn't to grow the Federal Government, it is to limit the size of the Federal Government and for those powers to be devolved down as close to the people as possible. The Federal Government should be the last resort, not the first option. If you can take care of things at the family level, take care of it at the family level. If you can't do that, take care of it at the friend level. If you can't do that, do so in your church. Do so in your neighborhood. Do so in your school. Do so in your community. Do so in your county. And if you can't do that, do so in your State. But as a last desperate resort, the Federal Government then maybe can step in if the cause is high enough and there is a constitutionally enumerated power to do so. But this enumerated power of the Commerce Clause is where the proponents of ObamaCare pointed to argue that they have the constitutional authority to require every American that fits within their defined category to a buy health insurance policy that's approved by Barack Obama with the mandates on it that are approved by Barack Obama which, by way, include by Presidential edict--legislation by not Executive order; not legislation from the bench as we sometimes complain about with an activist judicial branch. The President of the United States legislated by press conference when he directed Kathleen Sebelius to issue the order that even our faith-based organizations, and especially our Catholic health care providers, but it also includes many of the Protestant organizations, that they shall provide contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortifacients, and they shall do so free of charge, that it should be part of every health insurance policy. So, Mr. Speaker, can you imagine if you were someone who had committed your life to Christ, for example, a celibate priest, a celibate nun, you're required to provide contraceptives for those who are not, and if it violates your religious convictions, whether or not you wear a collar? We can't discriminate in favor of someone who happens to be a professional reverend or pastor or a bishop or a cardinal. And a layperson on the street whose convictions may be as deep needs to have the same conscience protections from a religious perspective. And so for the Federal Government to step in and declare, You're going to provide health care services; you're going to buy this health insurance policy, and you will guarantee that it'll cover contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortifacients, abortion-causing drugs for every one of your employees even if you're in the business to oppose the idea of abortion-causing drugs. The President got the political pushback on that, Mr. Speaker, and over a couple-weeks period of time of taking the crossfire that came from across this country directed at the White House for the audacity to make that declaration, the President held a press conference and said--it was at noon on a Friday several weeks ago now, and he said this: I'm going to make an accommodation to the religious organizations, and, therefore, rather than requiring Catholic Hill Services, for example, to provide abortion-causing drugs and sterilization and Cadillac contraceptives, I'm going to instead make that accommodation and require the insurance companies to do that for free. Now, you heard me say a little bit ago ``legislation by press conference,'' Mr. Speaker, and I say that because of this: The rule that was issued by Health and Human Services' Kathleen Sebelius that imposed this thing on religious health care providers especially, that rule was never changed. The language is identical to what it was. There is not an ``i'' dotted differently or a ``t'' crossed differently. The rule is the same. So the only thing that changed was the President did a press conference and said: Okay, I'm going to cut you some slack, religious organizations. I'm going to make an accommodation to you, and I'm now going to require the insurance companies provide it for free. He repeated himself: For free. The audacity. King George would not have the audacity to step up and do a press conference 230 years ago and say to America: Well, regardless of what the Parliament thinks, I'm just going to go ahead and require you to, let's say, buy tea at the rate that the British would like us to buy. No, there would be a tea party in Boston Harbor if that happened. Well, there's going to be a tea party in this country, too, only it's going to take place in November, and the American people will reflect on what has happened over these 3-plus, going now on 4 years, the imposition of ObamaCare on all of America without regard to the Constitution and the restraint, requiring people to buy a health insurance policy that's approved by the Federal Government that has mandates that are stuck into it by what? Not by legislative action. Not by a rule approved by the United States Congress. By an executive branch that's directed out of the White House to write up the rules however they see fit and a President that has the audacity--and that's one of his favorite words, by the way, Mr. Speaker--the audacity to seek to legislate by press conference. Edicts by press conference. It is breathtaking the extra-constitutional reach that's been taken by this President and this administration, and this country needs to rise up and get back to our constitutional underpinnings. We need to reject ObamaCare. I want to see this House vote again this summer after the Supreme Court decision, no matter what the Supreme Court decision is, and I'm optimistic about getting a constitutional decision from the Supreme Court. But I want to see this Congress vote again for a 100 percent repeal of ObamaCare so everybody's on record, everybody understands that it must all go. It must all be pulled out by the roots. There can be no vestige of ObamaCare left behind. It's an unconstitutional taking of American liberty. In a vigorous Nation, Mr. Speaker, we cannot reach our destiny if we are tied to the anchor of ObamaCare that directs and rules our lives and consumes about 17 or more percent of our gross domestic product. And so the difference is this: The troika of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama has been broken. It was broken in the election of 2010 when they saw the extra-constitutional reach of ObamaCare. They saw the effort on cap-and-trade. They saw Dodd-Frank pass through the House and the Senate and become law, an overreach. You had the people involved in the solution for the economic downward spiral that were contributing to the problem. There are a whole series of things that we need to put this aright, Mr. Speaker. One of them is to scrub out the regulations that have been put in place in an effort to try to implement cap-and-trade around the resistance of this United States Congress, the separation of powers that's clear in the Constitution itself between the legislative and the executive and the judicial branches of government. I'm just very confident that Barack Obama taught those separations of powers, that the article I component of this that says, Here, this is how we set up the legislature. They set the laws. They set the policy, and the establishment of the executive branch of government whose job it is to carry out the laws and take care that the laws are faithfully executed. We have a President who apparently encourages someone like Eric Holder to disregard especially immigration laws and only enforce those laws that, let me say, do not make them politically vulnerable. They decided they had 300,000 people that were in this country illegally that had been already adjudicated for deportation, and they said we don't have the resources to enforce the law against everybody that's here illegally, and so they committed their resources to going back through the files, looking through 300,000 forms of people that had been adjudicated for deportation and coming up with a reason or an excuse to try to let them stay in America, to try to turn another blind eye. Those resources had already been used to enforce the law; all they had to do was follow through with the directive of Congress. The administration created this new argument that has never been heard before, I think, in the history of jurisprudence that Congress had directed the executive branch--this is in their assertion in the Arizona immigration case--to establish and maintain a ``careful balance'' between the various immigration laws because it affects the different interests of the executive branch. Enforcing immigration affects our foreign relations, so the State Department has an interest. It affects our homeland security, so Janet Napolitano has an interest. It affects, perhaps, the educational system, and so you have the Secretary of Education with an interest. And it goes on and on and on. These are not competing interests. Congress has directed that all of these laws be faithfully enforced, and the administration has refused. That's a new approach to, let me say, prosecutorial discretion, Mr. Speaker. It goes on and on. We have to repeal ObamaCare, repeal Dodd-Frank, pass a balanced- budget amendment to the United States Constitution. It's clear this Congress doesn't have the will to balance the budget. Maybe a simple majority in the House could be convinced to do so; it would be very tough. You can't get it done in the United States Senate. Even if we could balance the budget, we can't keep that happening year after year and pay down and then off this national debt. We need a balanced-budget amendment to the United States Constitution. My advice, Mr. Speaker, to the next President of the United States would clearly be: refuse to sign a debt ceiling increase as President unless and until the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States pass an acceptable balanced-budget amendment out of each Chamber that's identical in message to the States for ratification. If we can get that done, then there is a justification to give a short- term extension to our debt ceiling here in this Congress. If not, we need to hold the line until such time as the will is brought into this Congress to bring forth a balanced budget and to pay down and then off our national debt. My youngest little granddaughter, Reagan Ann King, was born about 19--or maybe now 20 months--ago. Into the world she came with her share of the national debt at $44,000. I looked at that little girl and I thought, you know, a typical student loan might be $24,000, might be $30,000, but she's got a $44,000 loan and a mortgage on her head with interest accumulating every day, and she has just drawn her first breath. By the time she turned 1 year old, her share of the national debt was $48,000. And this little blonde-haired, brightest blue-eyed little girl with a beautiful giggle and smile doesn't know what kind of responsibility has been stuck on her by people that are living today at her expense and the expense of all of those babies that have been born and those yet to be born that will be taxpayers--and only about half of them fit that category today. So, Mr. Speaker, that little girl turned 1\1/2\ years old, and now her $44,000 debt that was $48,000 on her first birthday, it became $51,000 when she's 1\1/2\ years old. She's going to be a taxpayer and a producer, and so you have to take that times two because only half the people have a Federal income tax liability. So, $102,000 on the head of every American, young and old, that's our national debt. And we've watched trillion-dollar deficits roll up over the last 3\1/2\ years. The President's budget came to this floor at $1.33 trillion in deficit--$1.33 trillion, Mr. Speaker--and now we're approaching $16 trillion in national debt and it's got to stop. We have to turn this country around. The American voters spoke in 2010. They sent 87 freshmen here into this House of Representatives who are constitutional conservatives, and every one of them voted to repeal ObamaCare. They want a balanced budget; they want a balanced-budget amendment. They are God's gift to America. We need another one in November 2012, and more fresh faces and more vigorous people here that will adhere to repeal of ObamaCare, a balanced-budget amendment, an all-of-the-above energy plan. We need more of the same kind of people in the United States Senate and a President that will sign that legislation into law. I look forward to the privilege to work with those new faces as they arrive here and work to make the case before the American people every day from now until November, and thereafter. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your attention, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for his leadership on this issue and many other issues, and I come to the floor here in strong support of the PRENDA Act. The very idea of sex-selection abortion, gendercide, as it was so aptly named, brought back to mind for me a story that I heard from a man whom I admired. His name was Gil Copper. Sadly, we lost him back in 2010. Gil Copper was a World War II veteran who volunteered with Merrill's Marauders in Asia and marched across those areas in India and Burma to take on the Japanese behind the scenes. Gil Copper picked up and was awarded one Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, one Combat Infantry Badge, and one Purple Heart. Gil Copper spent his time off in Asia under the bridge in New Delhi, India, standing in the Ganges River listening for the splash. Standing there day or night, any time he had off, he was listening for the splash of a little baby girl that would often and regularly be tossed off the bridge into the river to drown because the culture in India cherished boys and didn't cherish girls. Gil Copper would swim out there and pick up those little girls that were floating then in the filthy Ganges River and swim back with them and dry them off and carry them to the Catholic orphanage in New Delhi. He saved scores of lives during that period of time. That culture has arrived here in this country, and this bill puts an end to that kind of culture that would select baby girls for death.