Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I am offering this amendment to establish how $5 million is spent with regard to the homeland security. I rise today to offer this amendment to promote participation of employers in the Basic Pilot Employment Eligibility Verification System, a program I like to call Instant Check. This program takes the guesswork out of hiring legal employees. This basic pilot program checks the Social Security Administration and Department of Human Services databases using an automated system so that employers can verify the employment authorization of all of their new hires. This program is voluntary and is free to participating employers. All an employer needs is a computer with an Internet connection, which most everyone has. My amendment would make it easier for employers to hire legal workers. By using this program, employers no longer have to worry about whether the identification documents used to fill out the required I-9 form are real or forgeries. I have personally used this program and found it easy to use. It was Web-based and gave me an answer quickly. The longest wait for Instant Check that I could devise was 6 seconds. My amendment would also improve the accuracy of wage and tax reporting. Employees would know after the check whether their information is properly recorded at the Social Security Administration and with the immigration services. If there were any mistakes, they could be corrected so that employees would get proper credit for their Social Security contributions. This amendment also protects jobs for authorized United States workers. By using this instant check verification program, employers can be sure that they are hiring either U.S. citizens or aliens who are authorized to work in the United States. The program began in November 1997 with five States in a pilot program, added a sixth State in 1999, and as of December 1, 2004, this basic pilot program has been available to employers in all 50 States. I hope that more employers will take advantage of this and verify their employees. Given that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has the authority to sanction employers for hiring illegal workers, it only makes sense that they should also encourage employers to use the free instant check verification program so that employers can avoid breaking the law. We need to reduce and weaken the jobs magnet. This is something that does that, the Basic Pilot Employment Eligibility Verification System. I call it Instant Check. The Web page is www.vis-dhs.com/ employerregistration. This amendment simply inserts $5 million and withdraws $5 million in a pro forma effort to direct that funding in a fashion that will promote the Instant Check program. That would be the most effective way of utilizing it. It seems to be somewhat of a trade secret that employers can now verify the employability of their employees.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Chairman, I thank the esteemed chairman for yielding time to me, and Madam Chairman, I ask for this opportunity to say a few words in support of the bill that is before us and in compliments to the work done by the gentleman from Virginia who has announced to us that there is a number, the best estimate at 750,000 to 850,000, gang members in the United States. When we think about the magnitude of that size number, 750,000 to 850,000, 75 to 100 percent, and a lot believe the number is very close to 100 percent, are illegal immigrants who have established a gang culture in the ethnic enclave that is a necessary result of illegal immigration. This ethnic enclave has created and fostered some of the worst gains we have ever seen in this country, people that cut off hands and arms and heads, people that have a network across this Nation that from a prison in California can order an execution on the streets of Virginia or from a prison in Virginia, order an execution in a prison in L.A. or on the streets of L.A. That is what this culture has fostered; and that amount, that 850,000, that is roughly out of the 10 million illegal immigrants, that is about 8\1/2\ percent of the illegal population ends up in a gang. One in 12 people that come across the border illegally and stay here end up in a gang. By these numbers, it is an astonishing thing; and if we have 1.1 million that come across the southern border, these are the ones that stay here, calculate the numbers that turn out into gangs, the price to this society in hands and arms and heads. Madam Chairman, I thank my colleague for this privilege to speak before this House.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe), the judge, for the opportunity to say a few words about the future of this country, the history of this country and our beloved Constitution, and appreciate this opportunity to be here on this floor tonight. As I watched the development here and the transition of history, and I am 55 years into this life, a little over a half a century, and I was raised with a deep and abiding love and respect for our Constitution and for the rule of law, the fact that a law existed meant that the judgment of the people had spoken. And according to the strong directive of my father, I was to then adhere to that law and adhere to that Constitution. And if I did not like the language that was there and the intent of the Constitution or the law, it was my job to step forward as a citizen of the United States and seek to change it; not to ignore it, not to amend it in a fashion that did not have the will of the people in support of it. And so, today, Mr. Speaker, we have gone to this point where I look back upon this transition, this transition that has taken place over the 55 years of my life and the 45 or so years that I have paid attention to what is going on in the United States of America, and I have watched a dramatic transition take place within the judicial branch of government. And I want to acknowledge at the beginning of this discussion, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) will know this, that I had the privilege to sit down and have lunch with a group of Supreme Court justices today, and I very much appreciate them and the other justices that joined them. It was a very, very good gesture on their part to reach out and open up a dialogue and give us an opportunity to speak about and discuss the disagreements that we have between the legislative branch and the judicial branch of government. It is a natural tension that exists between these three branches of government, and this legislative branch of government, which clearly has its duties to write the laws; the executive branch of government which has its duties to execute those laws, enforce those laws; and the judicial branch of government whose job it is to interpret the laws, interpret the Constitution. It is a natural tension that exists, and it will go on as long as this is a great country. And it is a great country. And I want to compliment the justices of the Supreme Court for being part of this effort to open the dialogue and give us an opportunity to discuss our differences. And I look forward to those opportunities to continue to sit down and have those discussions, and I will take advantage of that. But I have to say here tonight that I have watched a transition over the last 55 years or so of my lifetime. And I would go back to a case that would be about 1963, Murray v. Curlett, and that was the case when Madeline Murray O'Hare became the most hated woman in America, and she successfully went to the United States Supreme Court and removed prayer from the public schools. That, Mr. Speaker, I believe started us down the path, down the path of bowing to the judicial branch of government, maybe the last time that the American public really questioned and challenged the decisions that were made over across the street in the Supreme Court building. This country has accepted those decisions because they believe that they do not understand the Constitution well enough to second guess a judge, and they do not understand the letter or the congressional intent of the law well enough to second guess a judge's decision to overturn the clear directive and intent of Congress. That has happened time after time after time. And we have seen justice after justice reach out into foreign law, reach into foreign law to find a conclusion that suits their intent and their belief of how this country ought to be shaped and how it ought to be formed. Murray v. Curlett, prayer out of the public, schools started us down a slippery slope, a fast and slippery slide down into an abyss which I do not know how we swim out of it. And I asked this question, and I have asked it of the Chief Justice directly, and that is, in case after case after case, we have seen decisions made by which we cannot recognize the Constitution any longer. One of those cases would be the affirmative action cases that were before the Supreme Court I believe it was a year ago last April 19. And in those cases, I sat and listened to that. I went to hear profound constitutional arguments. And where would you go in the world to hear profound constitutional arguments except in the chambers of the United States Supreme Court? There is no higher calling and no higher standard for constitutional arguments. And yet as I listened that day, I heard one, one constitutional argument, actually relatively profound. The case had to do with affirmative action. Chief Justice Scalia asked the question of the Michigan attorneys: If we rule against you and it results in one minority in your school, 100 percent minorities in your school or no minorities in your school, what possible constitutional difference can that make? Now, the answer was long. But it was not clear. The question is clear to me. He directed that question directly back to the Constitution, which is where the entire oral argument should have focused. And yet it happens less and less as I hear these arguments before the Supreme Court because there is an entire industry that has been built up on trying to analyze the particular personal viewpoints of each of the justices. There is quite a history there to analyze, and quite an industry that has been built up around that. But the arguments that go to the Constitution itself are ever diminished year by year, case by case, to the point where I believe that the courts have, because of stare decisis, because of the belief that once a decision is made, they should honor that decision of the previous court, not overturn the decision of the previous court. I could name you exceptions. Stare decisis says that the Supreme Court is painting themselves into a legal corner. And on the other side of that room is the doorway back to the Constitution. But unless that paint dries, they cannot get back out the door. And as long as they respect stare decisis, this respect for a decision that is made by the previous decision of the court, the paint never dries, and they are trapped further and further into a corner that prohibits them from going back to the Constitution. And so if you cannot get back to the Constitution, on what do you base your decisions? Well, foreign law. Foreign law is a nice and convenient decision that can be made. I have a list of some of these here, Mr. Speaker, and it is quite an interesting list. Justice Breyer, in his dissent, and I always give credit for dissent, Knight v. Florida 1999, A growing number of courts outside the United States courts that accept or assume the lawfulness of the death penalty have held that lengthy delay in administering a lawful death penalty renders ultimate execution inhuman, degrading or unusually cruel. Sounds a lot like some of the language in our Constitution. But how could a lengthy delay in administering a death penalty change the ultimate result of that? If locking someone up in prison for an extended period of time is cruel and inhuman, then would we not have to then release everyone that is in our prisons? And in the case of Pratt v. Attorney General of Jamaica, for example, the privy council considered whether Jamaica lawfully could execute two prisoners held for 14 years after sentencing. The council noted that Jamaican law authorized the death penalty, and the United Nations Committee on Human Rights has written that capital punishment is not, per se, unlawful under the human rights covenant; Jamaican law, the United Nation's Committee on Human Rights. And then the Supreme Court of India has held that an appellate court which itself has authority to sentence must take account of delay when deciding whether to impose the death penalty. This cited by the Supreme Court of the United States, Jamaican law, European, United Nations Committee on Human Rights, Indian law, the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe, and I quote, the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe, after surveying holdings of many foreign courts concluded that delays of 5 and 6 years were inordinate and constituted torture or inhumane or degrading punishment or other such treatment. Reference to the Zimbabwe law. This proclivity for citing foreign law, when there is a clear directive to adhere to the Constitution and we have nothing else that directs us as Members of Congress as Members, of the executive branch who are sworn in or as Members of the United States Supreme Court, we take the same oath to the Constitution of the United States. And this Constitution is written and drafted and ratified by the people of this country. We shall never have another. There is not another circumstance in history that could be reconstructed by anyone in this Chamber, by anyone in this city or anyone in this country that I know that could go back and say, well, if we lost this Constitution, we would just construct another one. We would find a way to get together in the blue zones and in the red zones of America, and we would draft up a Constitution that was living and breathing, and it would be a document that better fit the day of our age, and it would be something that would protect the interests of the minority against the tyranny of the majority, or the rights of the minority against the will of the majority. By the way, what protects the constitutional rights of the majority against the whims of the court? And so, today, we have gone in my lifetime from a belief that this foundational document of the Constitution, which I carry in my pocket every single day, this Constitution that I believe is our covenant with our Founding Fathers, our guarantee of rights and our guarantee of freedom, that clearly spells out the responsibilities of each branch of government. And, by the way, you can read this document through and through and through again. There is nothing in there that says separate but equal branches of government. It clearly lays out the responsibilities of each branch of government and, when read, gives the Congress the responsibility to be the final decision-maker on the courts themselves. And so, Mr. Speaker, I propose that we, as a Congress, have an obligation, an obligation to defend this Constitution, an obligation to speak our minds when we disagree with the decisions of the court, but make a logical and a rational and a constitutional argument for our side, and call upon the Chief Justice and the Supreme Court to adhere to this Constitution, to adhere to their oath of office, to adhere to the laws of this land and to reject the directive that they might think they get when they travel to other lands, that intercedes with other ideas, other concepts, other cultures. We separated ourselves from Great Britain for a good reason 200 and some years ago, and it was because we did not want to be Western Europe, and we did not want to be Jamaica, and we did not want to be Zimbabwe. We want to be a nation of free people, free people governed by a Constitution that a free people have ratified, not governed by foreign law. And what is predictable about this foreign law? How can a citizen of this country aspire to move forward and invest capital and invest time and effort and build this future and be a good citizen of the United States of America when they do not know when a decision might come down from the Supreme Court that says, oops, there was a law over here in Zimbabwe; maybe there was a law in Ghana. Maybe there was a law in Costa Rica. Maybe there was a law in Russia, Israel, Belarus, anywhere. How can we have predictability in our Constitution and our law if the courts can cite whatever, as the judge from Texas said, whatever might suit their whim of the moment? So I believe we have to adhere back to this Constitution because we have migrated from its meaning. And even though the courts found in Murray v. Curlett that there was this separation of the church and State that was created there, took prayer out of the public schools. And by the way, I do not believe the Constitution calls for that for a minute. Once that decision was made and the letter of the Constitution and the intent of the Founding Fathers was ignored and we began to migrate away from the Constitution itself, we started down that slippery slope. So is this Constitution what our Founding Fathers believed it should be? Did the Framers draft this Constitution to protect the rights of the minority against the will of the majority, protect the rights of humanity against all forces whatsoever? They believed that this constitutional framework was for the gentleman and for me and for everyone in this country. But it has changed. And there are a number of people, in fact, I believe a growing number of people, that believe this Constitution no longer means what it says; that it is a living, breathing document, that nine Justices, a majority of nine Justices, five of them unaccountable to the people, should direct this society and this civilization. But it is the vision of our Founding Fathers that those elected by the people should direct this examination and that the Judges should be ruling upon the letter and the intent of the Constitution, the letter and the intent of the law. And that is as far as it goes. If this Constitution does not mean what it says, then what purpose does it have? It is either a living, breathing document that is flexible and can be malleable and can be shaped by any Justice that happens to have the good fortune to be appointed to the bench, or those words written on this document in my jacket are sacred and they are meant to be amended only by the people then whose description is in the Constitution itself. It is a living, breathing document or we are originalists that believe in the original intent of this Constitution. If it is changed, if it is not, what it says, it means, then what does, Mr. Speaker, protect the rights of the minority against the will of the majority? What protects all of our rights as citizens? What preserves this great country if it can be shaped by the whim of the Judges? This Constitution is either what I believe it is, and that is not a living, breathing document, but a document that is fixed for all time unless we amend it. And if it is not that, then the courts have turned it into an artifact of history, just a transitional document to get us from 1789 until today, where we could turn over the future of this country to the people in the robes that make those decisions. And if we do that, then we might as well board this place up and hand it over to the courts for their staff because there will not be any function for this legislature any longer. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I appreciate the gentleman's contribution to this cause.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to address the House. This issue before us in this discussion this evening, Mr. Speaker, is the issue of an impending constitutional crisis that I believe is taking place over in the other body, and it is something that has been dealt with and worked with and rolled around by the Senate with regard to the confirmation of the President's appointments to the judicial branch of government. It is an unprecedented use of the Senate rules with regard to filibusters. About 2\1/2\ years ago, something like that, this process began, and it began with a gentleman that was appointed to the D.C. Court of Appeals. His name was Miguel Estrada, a very, very highly qualified individual, an immigrant from Honduras, someone who English was his second language. He learned that, studied hard, and worked his way up through the process. He was very, very highly qualified. But as highly qualified as he was, he was also apparently a political threat to the minority on the other side, Mr. Speaker. So Miguel Estrada hung on the vine because of this unprecedented utilization of the Senate rules called filibuster, requiring 60 votes to gain cloture so that they could go to a vote on the floor of the Senate. In the history of this country, Mr. Speaker, there has never been, until these last 2 to 3 years, that rule, the rule of the filibuster used against judicial nominees when that nominee had a majority of the votes on the floor of the Senate. The unprecedented use of that hung Miguel Estrada on the vine for 28 months and 5 days, where he finally could not stand it any longer. He had to get on with his life. He had to make a living, had to take care of his family, and so he withdrew his name. I think that should have been lesson enough, but what happened was that the minority in the other body continued with the filibuster process. They held up a good number of the President's nominees, and I believe that number was 10. Today, the President has pledged to reappoint those nominees that were held up in the 108th Congress, and so now those names are before the Senate again. In speaking of this impending constitutional crisis, I would also, Mr. Speaker, address the situation and ask that we remember the nomination process for Justice Thomas, and the long, drawn-out grilling affair that was used on him when he was finally confirmed by the Senate by a majority vote. That process and what this country went through was an agonizing thing. It was an embarrassment to the dignity of the United States that we would bring out all those details. Yet now we have a jurist who sits there and whose opinions I read, respect, admire and appreciate. He is a Justice who reads the Constitution, understands the letter of the Constitution, the intents of the framers, the effect of the Constitution and its controlling factors within our laws and the interpretation of congressional intent. I appreciate that in a justice, and apparently some of the other side of the aisle do not, so they have been filibustering this second round of appointments by our President in this unprecedented effort. Now it does a number of things. It puts us into this pending constitutional crisis because we are always one heartbeat away from a vacancy on the Supreme Court. We are always one heartbeat away from another national circus and confirmation like we saw with Justice Thomas. This case, though, it would be even more intense, it would be more difficult. It would be fought out more intensely, and that one heartbeat away or one retirement announcement away, one that some of us do anticipate could happen fairly soon, within the next few weeks or the next couple of months, if that takes place, these appointees that are hanging on the vine now that are held up by a Senate rule, a Senate rule that I believe contravenes the Constitution, will become secondary issues and the vacancy on the Supreme Court will become the primary issue. And if this precedent that they are seeking to establish is allowed to stand, then a minority in the United States Senate will control who is nominated and who is confirmed. I will say they will have influence on who is nominated and they will control who is confirmed for all of our courts in this land. We know that it is difficult to get judges confirmed that rule on the letter of the Constitution, the letter of the law, the intent of the Framers, and the intent of Congress. As we sit here with this impending constitutional crisis, this filibuster over on the Senate side, I would ask the body to take a look at the Constitution itself. And if we look to the directions that we have that are framed within the Constitution and ratified by the people, that would be Article I, section 5, it says, ``Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings.'' One might read that and conclude that the Senate can have their filibuster rules and they can hold up the judicial appointments if they so choose, but the Senate rules cannot contravene the Constitution. They cannot be outside the Constitution. We are all bound by the Constitution. We take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. I would say that the controlling factor is not that each body, each House will establish its own rules, but Article II, section 2, where it says, and I think I should read this for the body, ``He shall have power,'' meaning the President, ``by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur,'' and that is one specific time where we have more than a simple majority. There are two others in the Constitution. Continuing to quote, ``and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appointment ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law.'' So, Mr. Speaker, advise and consent of the Senate is the controlling constitutional question here. Certainly there is no shortage of advice from the Senate. We will concede they can have all of the advice they would like to deliver to our Commander in Chief and chief executive officer of the United States. We will concede that. They deliver that consistently. It is the consent portion that I object to because under consent, all analysis of the definition of consent is to a simple majority of the United States Senate, not a super majority. When this Constitution requires a super majority, it defines that in this Constitution without exception. It is a simple reading of the Constitution. The United States Senate needs to provide an up or down vote for these nominees that the President has put before them. They are qualified. They have a majority vote on the floor of the Senate. They are being held up by a Senate rule that contravenes the Constitution and it denies the representation of the people who elected the majority members of the United States Senate their voice. That is the essence of this, Mr. Speaker. To get into it further, I would like to yield to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from Indiana for his comments. Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks).

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for his eloquence, for his understanding of the Constitution, and for his willingness to share that with us here tonight. I yield to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin).

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from California for his comments, and I appreciate more insight into Justice Brown. I also want to say that I looked to the gentleman from California for his viewpoint on the law and on the Constitution because of the experience he has and the fact that he had the opportunity to view her from up close and share that with us tonight. We are asking for an up or down vote for Janice Brown and the others in the Senate. And I yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Utah. It would be interesting to have heard the gentleman say, no, I am not here and see that in the Record. That is a perspective that I appreciate being able to hear here tonight. At this moment I would also like to yield to a gentleman who has enormous experience in working with the judicial branch of government, former attorney general of the State of California and now a Congressman again, the gentleman from California (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren).

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his contribution to this important subject matter that is before us here. It is actually pending before the United States Senate. A couple of pieces that I think came out in this discussion we have had tonight has been that even though we are asking Mr. Frist to utilize the Constitutional Option and to call for a rule decision that would be that in the case of a constitutional issue in the United States Senate, when the confirmation of judges are before the United States Senate, a simple majority vote will have to prevail. It is not unprecedented in the Senate rules. What it would do is it would set aside the filibuster option with regard to judicial appointments. There is no filibuster right now for appropriations bills for obvious reasons, because if you allowed a single Senator or a minority of the Senators to hold up the spending, then anyone could hold the appropriations process hostage to their particular agenda and their particular wishes. Those rules reflect the reason for suspending filibuster for the purposes of appropriations. Certainly, getting judges on the bench is as high a standard and something that should allow for a simple majority vote over in the Senate. If he exercises that option and the majority leader makes a decision that they will have a vote on the rule, the rule can be amended on the floor of the Senate with a simple majority vote. So if 51 Senators say, let us change the rule to a simple majority for confirmation of judges, it is entirely within the Constitution. In fact, it brings them back to the Constitution which says advice and consent. Consent is defined as a simple majority, not a supermajority, which is what prevails today. I happen to have heard in the news media last week, or else early this week, the former Governor of New York was on the media saying, and that would be Governor Cuomo, saying that James Madison said the Constitution is here to protect the rights of the minority, meaning the minority in the United States Senate, from the tyranny of the majority. Well, this is not the case. I will say, yes, the Constitution protects those rights; it defines those rights. But what we have right now is the tyranny of the minority in the United States Senate setting policy and determining who will get through the confirmation process for everyone in the United States of America. So Mr. Smith, after this rule is changed, will still go to Washington, we will still protect the rights of the minority by our Constitution, but we will then prevent the minority, who have been elected to serve in a capacity in the United States Senate, will allow them their rights, will let the people who elected the majority in the Senate make the decisions on who gets confirmed to the courts in this land. There is far more at stake here than these judges that are before the court today. It is the impending nomination to the Supreme Court that is at stake here. The hostages that are sitting over there right now in the Senate include the energy bill, the transportation, the road bill, other pieces of legislation that we passed over there from the House, all sit there today waiting to be bottled up in a potential filibuster that has to do with the threat that the process will be shut down in the Senate. Well, we know when somebody shuts down this legislative body by using the rules, however they might use the rules, they have paid a price at the ballot box. There are more Senators over there today on the majority side than there were before the last election because the public does not want obstruction. They want progress, they want an up- or-down vote for these justices consistent with the Constitution, and that is a simple majority. My junior Senator from the State of Iowa is one of those people who has taken a position and actually led an initiative back in 1995 to change the rules in the Senate so there would not be a filibuster of the justices. That was his opinion then; I am asking that it be his opinion today. In fact, his wife was before the Iowa Senate to be confirmed to a position there before the Board of Regents. If those senators had determined, my former colleagues, my alma mater had determined they wanted to use their rights to filibuster to hold that up, the junior Senator from Iowa's wife would not be sitting on the Board of Regents today like she is. We want to have the voice of the people in this country heard. We want to stay consistent with the Constitution. We want an up-or-down vote. It is a simple process, a simple concept, and something that, in 214 years of the United States, has not been utilized, the filibuster, to hold up these judicial appointments. So, Mr. Speaker, I would ask this: let the people know that what we are asking, the Constitutional Option, the up-or-down vote in the United States Senate, let the people know that it is their voice that will be heard when that option is exercised. We ask for that action early in the United States Senate so that it does not bottleneck legislation that is there; and we ask for this decision before such time as we get into a real bare-knuckles brawl over a Supreme Court Justice that might well be nominated within the next few months. So with that, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak before this House.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) for her contribution to this cause. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop).

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me time on this important issue. The stated purpose of the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act is to protect the health and safety of young girls by allowing parental involvement when their home States have thought it appropriate to require such involvement. As a general rule, no one has a young girl's best interest at heart more than her parents. Where this rule is not the case, the law allows for judicial bypass of the parental involvement requirements. Therefore, the amendments introduced by the Democrats in the Committee on the Judiciary are unnecessary. Moreover, these amendments are dangerous. As my distinguished Committee on the Judiciary colleagues have explained, the health and safety of these young girls is not protected by providing a blank exemption for those who may have sexually abused them. That is precisely what these amendments did. They provided blanket exclusions with open doors for sexual predators to exploit to cover up their crimes. Far too often, the adults transporting these minors across State lines to circumvent their home State's parental involvement laws are grown men who have sexually preyed upon the girls. We have heard those statistics delivered by the chairman. To exempt certain classes which characteristics show are highly likely to be sexual predators would gut the intent of this bill, to protect the health and safety of young girls. The descriptions of the amendments in the committee report only describe the potential effects of the amendments if they had been adopted. They do not describe the motives of those offering the amendments as has been stated. The minority had the opportunity to include dissenting views in the committee report and they did. And those dissenting views do characterize the motives of those who supported this legislation. It has already been spoken to as the remarks by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) with regard to the Fugitive Slave Act, and so I would just say this, that I am amazed that this subject was brought up. I am amazed that the minority wants to have a national debate over this subject matter. When I look at these exemptions and exclusions, this open door, cabdrivers, bus drivers, professional transport people, clergy, godparents, grandparents, adult siblings, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, not the family cat, not the family dog, but everything else you can imagine including the pizza delivery boy are exemptions from this bill. If those amendments had all gone on the bill, it would have been gutted in the bill and it would have gone down because I would have voted against it and so would the rest of us in the majority. I think it is clear the result of the position that is taken here. What is not clear is the motive as to why we would want to have a national debate to talk this over again when we clearly understand that we are trying to protect the rights of parents, not the rights of grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters and siblings.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the rule and the underlying bill, the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act. Mr. Speaker, eight in 10 Americans favor parental notification laws, and 44 States have recognized the important role of parents in a minor child's decision to have an abortion by enacting a parental involvement statute. Even so, many of these laws are being circumvented by people who simply transport girls across State lines to States without parental notification laws for the purpose of getting an abortion. All too often these other adults are grown men who sexually preyed upon the young girls, and they used the abortions to cover up their crimes. CIANA returns parental rights to parents. Despite the strong deference it gives to abortion rights, even the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes that parents' rights to control the care of their children is among the most fundamental of all liberty interests. The Supreme Court has consistently recognized that parents have a legal right to be involved in their minor daughter's decision to seek medical care, including abortion. The court has consistently affirmed a State's right to restrict the circumstances under which a minor may obtain an abortion in ways that adult women seeking abortion are not restricted. The Supreme Court has also observed that ``the medical, emotion, and psychological consequences of an abortion are serious and can be lasting,'' and that ``it seems unlikely that a minor will obtain adequate counsel and support from an attending physician at an abortion clinic where abortions for pregnant minors frequently take place.'' The Supreme Court has also stated that ``minors often lack the experience, perspective, and judgment to recognize and avoid choices that could be detrimental to them.'' No one has the child's best interest at heart more than her parents. Minors have to have parental permission to be given an aspirin by the school nurse. Twenty-six States have laws requiring parental consent before minors can get body piercings or tattoos, and in fact some States prohibit tattooing of minor children even with parental consent. Parents must be able to play a role. The public, State statutes, and Supreme Court precedent all support parental involvement in a minor's life decision. Please support the rule and the underlying bill.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I stand today in support of the U.S.- Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement and the benefits it will provide to hardworking American farmers. Currently, the U.S. market is already fairly open to agricultural products from Central America and the Dominican Republic, but U.S. farmers face a variety of tariffs and other barriers when exporting to the DR-CAFTA countries. This agreement will eliminate those barriers, reciprocate open market access, and put American farmers on a level playing field. As the nation's top exporter of corn, with farm cash receipts of over $3.7 billion, corn producers from the great state of Iowa, which I represent, would benefit from the FTA. Recent price strength in U.S. pork markets is directly related to increased U.S. pork exports. Mexico is a good example. DR-CAFTA countries are also important export market for Iowa soybean farmers, who are the top exporters of soybeans. Nationwide these exports already account for 14 percent, a total of 1.0 million metric tons or 58 million bushels. Finally, the Iowa beef industry would benefit from the FTA. In 2003, the U.S. found bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a Canadian cow causing us to have export challenges with Japan. The U.S. has lost valuable beef exports, and this FTA would help expand access and market potential. This Agreement will provide U.S. farmers with unequaled access to a large market with growing incomes and growing demands for agricultural and food products. The elimination of tariffs will provide American farmers with preferences over producers in Canada, Europe, and other countries. This will help to restore lost U.S. market share and increase overall exports to the five DR-CAFTA countries. Mr. Speaker, I strongly urge my colleagues to support American farmers and to support this very important piece of legislation.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Otter) for his comments. I will get to some more of that subject matter of education as I go through this. I appreciate your patience with me tonight and indulgence. I would like to first speak to the broad picture of energy across this country. There is this entire pie of energy here and different components and slices of this pie. Energy, first of all, is a component in everything that we buy. If there is any one item that adds to inflation in all the products that we purchase in this country, it is energy because it takes energy to produce anything, it takes energy to deliver anything, and it takes energy to go pick it up and buy it. So whenever we move, we are burning energy, and that is a part of the cost of everything we are. If we do not have an effective energy policy, we are paying more for all goods and services in this country than is necessary and that means it makes us less competitive in the rest of the world. That is the big picture as to why energy is so important. Some of the components of this energy are crude oil. We know how much energy we bring in across from the Middle East and Venezuela and other parts of the world that is imported into the United States. The crude oil cost includes also the military investment over there and the unrest and everyone, as was said earlier, the gentleman from Texas stated about every country must have their energy. Whatever it takes, we must have our energy. But we sit in this country on a significant supply of domestic crude oil. This bill puts in place the motion to construct the refineries that we need so that we can bring the crude oil in and get it refined. It also allows for us to go up to ANWR and do our drilling up there to bring that crude oil down to the lower 48. I also have been up to ANWR to take a look at that. As I asked the people up there around the Kaktovik area, they said, yes, we have to go hunt the caribou during a certain time of the year but really the resident caribou in the drilling area are only in there from mid-May until the end of June. They come in to calve and then they leave about the end of June. That is the time when the permafrost thaws down to about a foot or 18 inches. Nothing is going to move during that period of time except the caribou and when those young calves get old enough to walk back, they go back over to Canada out of the area, so nothing would be going on in that region when the caribou were there. It is kind of a caribou maternity ward in that part of Alaska. We need that domestic crude oil and any nation that is looking to its long-term best interests will be producing its own energy. The concern about someday running out of crude oil, why would you keep it in the bank forever when we have other opportunities for different energy supplies that will be developed as science and technology catches up? We need to go there, get that crude oil, get it drilled, and bring it down the Alaska pipeline. By the way, the Alaska pipeline, if the North Slope oil runs out, and it looks like it is heading in that direction, that pipeline has to stay full almost all the time or it starts to erode inside the pipe, it turns to rust and it may not be able to be put back up on line. So it is important that we keep the Alaska pipeline up and going. That is a huge and valuable resource that began construction there in about 1972. It has been there a long time, it has served very, very well, and it can do a lot more. In that same region is all of the natural gas that is already developed that we do not have a good way to deliver it to the lower 48, that is the pipeline. Yes, there are some things to work out within the State of Alaska. I hope that gets done. We have done, I think, what we can do here, at least for now, but we need that natural gas, we need it into the Corn Belt, we need it for a lot of the reasons that the gentleman from Colorado said, and I am glad he is in here talking about corn and ethanol with regard to energy. In the part of the country where I come from, we have constructed ethanol production to the extent that within the next 2 years, we will be able to say that we have built all of the ethanol production, all the plants that we have the corn to supply in the Fifth District in Iowa, the western third of Iowa. We have started construction now on biodiesel plants, we have two plants up and running now, we are breaking ground on a third plant that happens to be about 9 miles from where I live as the crow flies on biodiesel. Biodiesel is coming along in the same shoes as ethanol, only a lot faster, because they have learned from the people that blazed the trail in ethanol. We are going to have, I believe, within the next 5 to 6 years, all of the biodiesel production that we will have, the soybeans and the other bioproducts to supply. That has made already this district that I represent an energy export center with the ethanol production being up to almost all we can provide and the biodiesel, we have started on it very well. We have tremendous wind energy that has been put in place there in the last 4 to 5 years. I will say 6 to 7 years ago, we had almost no energy production, we were an energy consumption region, and today we are an energy export center. It has changed that much. It has helped a lot with our energy independence and to become less dependent on foreign energy supplies of all kinds. But we are faced with this need for nitrogen fertilizer and almost all of our nitrogen fertilizer is made directly from natural gas, directly from natural gas. Ninety percent of the cost of that fertilizer is the cost of purchasing the gas to produce the nitrogen from it. So we sit in this country without being able to get the pipeline down from Alaska where the gas is, it is already developed, and that is a process that if all goes well could maybe get done in 6 years. It may take 9 or 10 years to get there. Yet that needs to happen and it needs to happen quickly. But within the lower 48 States, earlier we saw the map of the layout of the natural gas, along the east coast, the west coast and the outer shelf around Florida and in the central part of the United States. One of these esteemed gentlemen has made the statement on this floor, and I am going to repeat it, and I believe it, and that is that we have enough known natural gas reserves underneath non-national park public lands in the United States of America to heat every home in America for the next 150 years. That is almost a renewable energy resource when you look at that kind of a quantity. Yet natural gas is three times the price as it was just 5 and 6 years ago. Our natural gas that produces our fertilizer has done the same thing to our fertilizer prices. People in the Corn Belt pay going into the ground with their fertilizer and then when they take that grain off the field in the fall, they have to dry the grain and most times what do they dry it with? Natural gas. So we are more susceptible to high natural gas prices than maybe any place else in the country and we have watched because of that the fertilizer production go offshore to places like Venezuela and Russia. I remember what happened with the oil cartel in the late seventies when they shut down the oil delivery to the United States and the prices went up. We could be in that same situation with Venezuela and Russia if we let them take on any more of the fertilizer production. We need it here. We have got the gas here. We need to develop the gas. When we develop the gas, we will be able to keep our fertilizer plants. But if we do not, we will not be able to keep those plants which means we lose that fertilizer production and makes us dependent on those countries that I named. That is really critical. We mentioned the solar energy as a component and that is going on in some of the parts of the country. Hydroelectric has been built and constructed. One of the other things I am concerned about is we have not built a nuclear plant in this country in a generation. The engineering technology that it takes to do that is leaving us year by year. That is another piece that has got to move along. We have got hydrogen around the corner and hydrogen may be the answer to much of this, but if we put all these pieces together, wind and ethanol and biodiesel and natural gas and crude oil, hydroelectric, the whole list, we have got the picture of the pieces that make us less dependent on foreign oil. That is the picture, that is the energy bill, and that is why I support it.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for organizing this Special Order, and I ask the gentleman from Idaho if he would pause a moment to engage in a brief colloquy with the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Otter) because the gentleman holds some expertise, and that is the need to continue to build refineries in this country, crude oil refineries. Could you speak for a moment about what we expect will happen with refinery construction in this country if we pass the energy bill as it is presented. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I rise today in strong support of H.R. 6, the Energy Policy Act. We need a balanced energy policy in this country, and this bill takes great strides towards achieving that balance. As a founding co-chair of the House Ag Energy Users Caucus, I am concerned that the Corn Belt is being held hostage to high gas, diesel and natural gas prices. Farmers utilize diesel and gasoline to operate their equipment and transport their product. Farmers have had to tighten their belts as prices have increased. Therefore, I am in strong support of this energy bill that allows for exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR), which will allow for more domestic supply of oil. Nothing has caused more concern for agriculture than the price of natural gas. Natural gas is the primary feedstock for anhydrous ammonia and other fertilizers and accounts for 90 percent of the cost of making nitrogen fertilizer. The surge in natural gas prices over the last 4 years has been a key reason why nitrogen fertilizer costs have jumped by nearly 50 percent at the farm level. This rise in prices has contributed to the growing reliance on imported fertilizer. For that reason, I am in strong support of the natural gas provisions in this bill and would urge Members to oppose amendments that would weaken any natural gas provisions in the bill. Finally Madam Chairman, most of my colleagues know that Iowa is not only a consumer of energy, but a producer of energy. The Fifth District of Iowa is an energy export center, exporting ethanol and biodiesel all across this nation. This bill includes a 5 billion gallon Renewable Fuels Standard that will be good for our energy independence while securing rural economies. However, I want to see the bill come back from conference with an 8 billion gallon standard. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the Energy Policy Act.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, this is a mission of joy for me. On the floor of this Congress, I am pleased to recognize the city of Spencer, Iowa, as the number one place to live in America. This is not surprising to the folks in western Iowa. America is now aware of what we have known for a long time. Spencer is not just a great town to raise a family; it is an excellent place to live. Tucked away in fields as far as the eye can see, Spencer is a town full of services, recreation, culture, entertainment and wonderful people. I just celebrated with the people of Spencer the opening of my office on Grand Avenue. Large enough to offer many of the services of a larger city and still small enough that people know and trust their neighbors, it is the kind of trusting place where people leave their doors open and the keys in their cars when parked outside the coffee shop. In this town, if you were to walk into the Sisters Cafe or Carroll's Bakery on any given morning, you would see the citizens of Spencer making time for each other. It is the kind of place where you know your neighbors and strangers are just friends you have not met yet. Congratulations, Spencer, Iowa. You are number one.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman for yielding and for organizing this special hour that we have here in the United States Congress to commemorate the life of a man so well lived, I am hard pressed to even suggest another individual contemporary of mine who can compete in that category, a life extraordinarily well lived, a life that began in Poland in 1920, May 18, a month after my mother was born. And as he lived through that life in Poland, and he saw the Nazi pressure come on the border, and as that border pressure became the invasion of Poland in September of 1939, he was a young man, a young man the son of a poor soldier, a young man who was at that time already a theologian, a student, a philosopher, an actor, and a writer of plays. And as the Nazis occupied Poland through that period of time, during the Second World War, some of that work needed to go underground. It needed to stay underground when the Soviets took over. But he lived a life where he saw the Nazi Holocaust, he saw the totalitarianism that came with the Nazis, and he saw the oppression that came with the communists and the Soviet Union. It gave him a perspective that could not be gained perhaps anywhere else on the planet but there. And those of us who believe in providence know very well that God put him there. And he put him there for us, for so many things that we have benefited from over those ensuing years, those 65 years from 1920 until 1985, as he lived underneath the Nazis and the Soviet Union, and underneath the totalitarianism that came with that. Yet he emerged as Pope, unheard of, unheard of and unnamed. In fact, I have an interesting personal anecdote to this, that Pope John Paul now referred to as the first, lived only 32 days after he was named Pope, and ascended to the Papacy and died, another period of time, we were in that unknown period of time when we did not know who the next Pope would be. That went on for days and several weeks. Early in that process I had no idea who the next Pope would be. I had not even looked at names or studied that or tried to handicap that decision that would come out of the conclave. But I remember that I had a dream one night, and I woke up in the morning and I said to my wife, Marilyn, I said, I had a funny dream last night. I dreamed that our new Pope would be Polish, and he named himself John Paul II. And we laughed. It sounded so ridiculous that there would be a Pope who wasn't named, and especially from Poland that would ascend to the Papacy. And that joke was a joke amongst us. And then when he was named Pope, a Polish Pope, John Paul II, and that little insight came true, I had no idea what kind of a man he would be; but one of the first things he did in his first foreign trip was go back to Poland. There he was seen by one-third of the population of Poland, and the stops that he made people coming out of the mountains by the millions. They wore their best holiday clothing. They played musical instruments, a great celebration and honor for this Pope. The son of Poland had returned as his first foreign trip from the Vatican. And his message was, Be not afraid. Today we hear that message in the countries around the world. If you can lift that veil of fear, if you can lift it in East Germany, or if you can lift it in Iraq or Iran or Lebanon today when people are no longer afraid, they can do great things. And that ``be not afraid'' message is the message that we hear every time from the mainstream news media today when they say the veil of fear has been lifted off of Lebanon today, that is the people's message. That is Pope John Paul II's message from 1978 that still echoes and still inspires for freedom. Be not afraid. If you would listen to Lech Walesa today, all the times that they tried to organize Solidarity in Poland and were unable to do so until Pope John Paul came and carried that message. And people stood up and his message also was, be peaceful. We do not need a violent revolution. We need a peaceful revolution of people who are not afraid. That message of be not afraid brought Poland into freedom for the first of the Eastern Bloc countries. And that message of, be not afraid when the Wall came down on November 9 of 1989, and the people crawled over the Wall and climbed on it and celebrated and chiseled pieces out of it, and I have a piece of the Berlin Wall in my office here in Congress, and that piece symbolizes the single most significant historical event in my lifetime, the end of the Cold War. When that Wall came down, the Iron Curtain came crashing down. It could not have come down without Pope John Paul and his message. And it was a historical miracle the way that freedom echoed across the Eastern European nations, the square in Prague, people rattling their keys. They held their keys in the air, and shook their keys. They shook their keys for freedom the way that they held up the color orange in the Ukraine, which we heard from today; and the way they waved the Lebanese flag in the square in Beruit today, that was a peaceful assembly of freedom in Prague growing from and being from that inspiration of be not afraid, be courageous. He was consistent; he believed in the principles of the Bible and the Church as being immortal and faced with the modern religion that says that the Bible needs to be read in light of contemporary values. He rejected that kind of philosophy because the Church has to stand for timeless values, not changing and fluctuating values. His courage in the face of life, on the issue of marriage, the issue of peace, all of those things together, the sanctity of human life has been an inspiration for many of us on marriage and the family. This was an issue that floated across this country throughout the last elections. And 11 States went to the polls and said they stood for marriage; many of those people went to the polls inspired by John Paul II and his consistency in values, his consistency in faith, his consistency in the value of human life and how important the family is as the unit, the unit through which all of our values, our religious values, our work ethic, our culture as a people, flows through that unit of a man and a women joined together in holy matrimony and children, and passing those values along to the next generation. That human unit of the nuclear family is the key to civilization. And if we fail in his message to hold our families together in this country and on this planet, we have failed humanity. That is part of the legacy as well as the inspiration to stand with those principles. There was no compromise with evil with John Paul II. He knew evil. He faced evil daily, and he stood for peaceful and high godly purposes. There was no compromise with wrong. If you compromise with wrong, it becomes part wrong. If it is part wrong, it is all wrong. He stood with those principles that consist in ethic of the Catholic Church. It is the sanctity of human life, and no one could have stood for that any greater than John Paul II. We stand here today, yes, in mourning, but in great celebration, great celebration for a life so well lived that we can give thanks to his legacy for time immemorial, and I pray that we will also refer to him as John Paul, the Great. I appreciate the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks) yielding.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlelady from South Dakota especially for asking for this floor time tonight and bringing us together to talk about this important issue of ethanol. And while I have the opportunity to say a few words here, while my esteemed colleague from Nebraska is in the Chamber this evening, I wanted to take the opportunity to point out that one of the byproducts in biodiesel is a glycerin product, and the closest thing I can identify on the market is Cornhusker's hand lotion. We will have millions of gallons of that as we produce our biodiesel, and we will be looking for some more markets, because I am not sure that there are enough hands to consume all of that Cornhusker's lotion. But I think that expresses some of the bipartisan nature that we have in this. It is a regional issue very much as well. Us in the Corn Belt have led on renewable fuels, and the ethanol industry had to go through a lot of growing pains to establish an industry. I happen to have yesterday shaken the hand of the individual, and he is in the Iowa Senate, his name is State Senator Thurman Gaskill. It was his birthday yesterday; he turned 70 years old. He is the man that actually pumped the first gallon of ethanol in this country. And it was a unique circumstance to be there to eat a treat, to celebrate his birthday, and shake the hand that pumped that first gallon of ethanol in the United States of America. It has been a long, hard slog to get here, where with the industry in ethanol. They have blazed the trail for biodiesel. As I have watched this come together, and I have watched the leaders in the industry have this vision that said we can take this corn product, and we can turn it into a fuel product that is clean, and it is safe, and it is kind to our air and our water, and it is kind to our engines. And as I listened to many of the stories that come out when people were concerned about the impact on their motors, and there was some old motors that had rubber products in there that did break down with ethanol, that is essentially a thing of the past. And those objections and complaints pretty much drifted past the wayside. But I have some things that I would like to go through to address some of this, and as the coach said, most has been said; I will probably say a few over again. But it does pay to repeat some of them. In the past 20 years, Iowa has led the biofuels industry to become one of the most important players in the search for renewable, home- grown energy resources. And if I described the district that I represent, it is roughly the western third of Iowa. And if you would draw a line there from, say, go to the South Dakota-Iowa border, and then go through counties over to the east, and from there on that Minnesota border draw a line straight down to Missouri, that roughly western third of Iowa would get most of the district that I represent. In that district there are 32 counties, and those 32 counties, among them are six operating, functional ethanol plants, most of them with 40-million-gallon-a-year annual capacity or above. Some have grown up more than that. And in addition to that, we have at least one other ethanol plant that is under construction in Denison, Iowa, which is right within about 2 miles of where I grew up. That product will be up--that plant will be up and on line fairly soon. We have three others that are on the drawing board. And while I have this opportunity to say so, I think that the plant in Denison is unique in its character. It sits just down the river a little ways from the original Iowa Beef Packer's plant that is still up and running, and that was built in 1961. And there they will be producing ethanol. They will be able to ship it by rail or by truck. There is already a grain facility there that the producers are used to bringing grain to with large storage capacity. And the unique nature of this plant is it has gas, it has water, it has rail. It has an airport there within just a little over a mile of the ethanol plant. I pointed out on the day that we did the ground-breaking ceremony to the amazing energy plant there in Denison, as I looked at the board of directors all sitting there under the tent, and I explained to them that they had made a good business decision, and I was not sure that they realized how good that business decision actually was, because you have the corn there, and you have all of the things that I have described, it is all of the components that you would want for an ideal location as well as plenty of corn around the region, but additionally they are going to be producing a dry distiller's grain that some used to think was a byproduct, but certainly it is a very, very valuable animal feed product. And I advised them that they didn't need to load that dry distiller's grain out on trucks and haul it off and market it somewhere to some of the other feeders. I suggested that they just set up an auger and put in a row of feed bunks, and line those bunks up on up river, and within about a half a mile they could bring those calves in, and they could start feeding those preconditioned calves right there at the ethanol plant, and they could just kind of walk sideways a little ways, and the more they gained, the further away they would get from the plant. And eventually they would fatten out at about 1,200 pounds, and they could walk across the road right into the beef plant. The best place in the world that you can put an ethanol plant. And I would add, though, that when you go into those plants that are up and running, and the efficiency is there, the cleanliness, the state-of-the-art technology, that art technology that used to belong, that technology that used to belong in the hands of ADM and Cargill, and they certainly have that technology as well, But it is being developed by good engineering companies in the Midwest, companies that are working with farmers and producers and keeping that capital and invest it back into the hands of the people that have to make a living off of the land. But the efficiency that is there, as the energy efficiency, and it used to be the argument made that we would burn more energy producing ethanol than we actually produced, and that equation went the other way a long time ago. And we are up to about 2\3/4\ gallons of ethanol out of every bushel of corn, and then take the dry distiller's grain, and then ship that out and feed that to livestock without really a net loss in that feed value. It is really something to see when you see a line-up of trucks coming into an up-and-running ethanol plant, and they are coming in dumping grain, and they dump that grain in the pit, it goes up, and it goes on up to be produced into ethanol. And there are other trucks lined up in the other lane loading out dry distiller's grain, corn coming in, turned into ethanol, ethanol out on the rail, dried distiller's grain going out sitting right beside it, some coming in with corn, others hauling dried distiller's grain out. It is efficient. It is almost the perfect symbiotic relationship for a corn producer to see that kind of production go on. And so there in the district, the day that I went up to do the ground-breaking ceremony in Sioux County at the Little Sioux Corn Processors, it was a chilly day, and we went up there and turned over a spade of dirt and celebrated the beginning of a new value-added operation up there. And when I left I drove south, down through Buffalo Ridge. And there, in Buena Vista County, there were, at that time, there were 259 wind chargers standing there on the ridge. Today there are at least 359 in that same region. And then just a little further south, there is the ethanol plant at Galva. And as the crow flies, I believe it is 18 miles, two ethanol plants, 359 wind chargers. We have become, in western Iowa and in much of the Corn Belt, an energy export center, something that was not conceived of 10 years ago, not visualized 6 or 7 years ago, but today is a reality. And, in fact, in the district that I represent, these 32 counties, those six up-and- running plants, the one more under construction, and it looks like three more likely can go, we will be, within 2 years, to that position where we can say we have built all of the ethanol production that we have the corn to supply, another astonishing accomplishment. And as I watch the biodiesel come behind this, the biodiesel that has looked at the trail that is blazed by the ethanol producers, those people like Thurman Gaskill that pumped that first gallon of ethanol, and they see that pattern, that path that has been set by ethanol, and because of that, biodiesel is stepping in that path and they are following it. And, in fact, here just a few weeks ago, I had the privilege to be at the kick-off ceremony for the fund-raising drive to build the biodiesel plant at Wall Lake, Iowa, and that happens to be about 8 or 9 miles from where I live as the crow flies. And there were maybe 100 to 150 people, and I thought they all came to have a little lunch and hear a presentation. And I was asked to give a speech, and I gave one. Had I known how much investors were sitting in the room ready to invest in the capital fund drive, I would have shortened my speech up and gotten out of the way. They began their capital fund drive that day with a significant response, and in 9 days raised the capital necessary to get the biodiesel plant off the ground and get it rolling. And it will be producing biodiesel out of soybeans and off of animal fat. And that is a byproduct that can be put to better use. So the biodiesel, remember, has a lot of versatility in it as well. We all know that America can no longer afford to depend on oil that flows from unstable sources and unreliable partners. Oil has reached almost $60 a barrel, and with world demand for oil increasing at an explosive rate, it is likely we may never see low oil prices again. Clearly, this Nation is too dependent on foreign sources of oil, and even a brief rundown of the facts is a sobering exercise. Two-thirds of the world's known oil reserves are located in the volatile and increasingly violent Middle East, while America's domestic oil reserves have declined 20 percent over the past 15 years. American taxpayers today spend more than $50 billion a year just to protect Middle Eastern oil supplies. This is the cost of our energy, too. Today, the U.S. is importing more than 62 percent of its oil, and that number is expected to hit 77 percent in the next 20 years. Yet there has not been a major new refinery built in the U.S. since the Bicentennial. So, recently, the Renewable Fuels Association announced that January's ethanol production set an all-time record high in production. U.S. fuel ethanol reached 320 million gallons in the month of January. The previous high was 312 million, just the month before in December. U.S. ethanol industry set an all-time monthly production record this last January now of 241,000 barrels a day, and that is an astonishing amount of production. We have a long ways to go before we get our production up to the point where we can meet the demand in this country, not just at the 10 percent rate or the 30 percent rate. As the gentlewoman from South Dakota pointed out, we have a market out there for E-85, and E-85 uses a lot more renewable fuel; and it takes a lot more pressure off our imported oils from overseas. It is a lot better for our environment, for our air and our water; and it is something that has been my life's work in soil conservation work, water quality and air quality in preserving our resources. This is something that is good for all of us. It is good for all Americans. It is one of those issues that when you first pick it up and look at it, it looks good, and you hear some criticism, you find the answers to that and it looks better. Each time you turn this ethanol and biodiesel, the renewable fuels package around, you can see it does more and more for us. By the way, the balance of trade, we watched our balance of trade, that deficit number get larger in the red over the last several years. A year ago, we were looking at a minus $503 billion of balance of trade, red ink. That is how much product we purchased overseas greater than the amount we exported. Last February 10, we got our new numbers for the balance of trade. It is now a minus $617.7 billion of more goods that we imported than we exported. But the ethanol industry, the renewable fuels industry, but ethanol itself will change that balance of trade to the tune of $5.1 billion that will reduce the amount of foreign oil that we will have to purchase. So this fits in very well with our economics. It fits in very well with our taxes. It fits in very well with our air and our water and our environment. It is something that is good for rural America, good for the Corn Belt, and good for the cities, especially for their air quality. It is a replacement for MTBEs. That is something I wish we had done a long time ago. It would save this Congress a lot of grief that we will be facing in how to deal with the MTBE issues. It is time to move forward and solve this problem. I ask for support on this bill. We will be rolling it out here next week, and I am glad to be a part of it. It is something I have a lot of energy and passion for. I thank the gentlewoman from South Dakota for her efforts.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me time. I especially thank the chairman for his leadership on bringing this legislation to the floor in the condition that it is in, and I would like to compliment all the leadership in the House and on the Senate on both sides of the aisle that have worked so hard and so diligently throughout this weekend and given up their Palm Sunday weekend to serve a very important citizen of this country and someone whom we have an obligation to protect the constitutional rights of Terri Schiavo. She has a right to due process under the 14th amendment, and she has a right to equal protection. She has a right to her day in court. We look at the circumstances that took place in the Florida courts and the continual appeals that we went back through and the relentless efforts to end her life by her guardian, her estranged husband, who may have a conflict of interest. And I look back into that to see what that might amount to because it is always important to understand the potential for the motives. And as I added up these dollars, the settlement for medical malpractice, $250,000 preliminarily and the court then ruled another $1.4 million to Terri Schiavo and $600,000 awarded to Michael Schiavo, that is $2,225,000 awarded in her behalf. Of that one can assume approximately $800,000 went to attorneys fees and costs. Now, additionally the court ordered $750,000 to go into the Terri Schiavo trust account. Now, that was pledged to go for her rehabilitation, her care, her medical treatment, and her tests. And that was a pledge made by her guardian, Michael Schiavo. But of that $750,000, these are the most conservative numbers that I can produce, there was $486,941 that went to attorneys' fees to promote her death, not her care; another $10,929 to Michael Schiavo for expenses; another $55,000 to the bank for, assumedly, administrative fees. When you do the math on this and shake this down, it breaks down to this: approximately $2 million out of that $2.25 million against her interests into the pockets of attorneys and into the pockets of Michael Schiavo and into the pockets of the bank for administrative fees. Less than $200,000 was committed to her care over all of these years, 13 or 14 years. And I think this illustrates a potential for a conflict of interest. She is not on life support, Mr. Speaker. She needs only a feeding tube and the court ordered to remove the tube. And if it were determined that her food and fluid were to be stopped, all they had to do was stop adding it. It is a horrible way to die. She has been denied therapy, and she has been denied treatment. It has been stated that she does not show any electronic brain waves. She only had a CAT scan back in the early 90s. She has never had an MRI. She has never had a PET scan, and she has been denied treatment even for infection. And when they sent her to the hospice 5 years ago, a place where a person is sent to die, 5 years she has been there, Mr. Speaker, and 5 years she has been denied sunshine, denied even the ability to be rolled out into the sunshine in her wheelchair.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) for yielding me this time. I wanted the opportunity to address the issue of the funding that has gone in on behalf of Terri Schiavo, and the report that I have put together, I could easily add several hundred thousand dollars to that that have gone towards attorneys and towards the interests of Michael Schiavo as opposed to the interests of Terri Schiavo. I would have a documented report that I would file with the Congressional Record, except that the trust fund for Terri Schiavo has been sealed at the request of the attorney on behalf of Michael Schiavo. So, therefore, we cannot get those records. We do not know what is going on behind the scenes. What we know is that she has not had tests, she has not had therapy, and she has been denied medical treatment. The attorney of record for Michael Schiavo happens to also have been a former member of the board of directors of the hospice where Terri Schiavo is now being taken care of. And by the way, I happen to have another piece of information that flowed to me today, a GAO audit looked in on that and that organization paid $14.8 million back in Medicaid fees that were inappropriately collected. Another question we have is, we do not know whether there is a life insurance policy that would name someone as beneficiary in the event of the death of Terri Schiavo. The question has been asked of the guardian several times, and he has refused to answer every time. So we cannot even evaluate the assets or the intent of the guardian. Those issues will be looked at by the court. Another issue that should be addressed, and we will hear this continually as this 3-hour debate goes on, is the allegation that 19 judges have reviewed this and 19 judges have concurred. I have put together the full list of the judges that have heard the case of Terri Schiavo in the history of this, and throughout all of that I can identify Judge Greer, and I can identify a three-judge panel that heard her case en banc, and I can identify the Supreme Court of the State of Florida, which we saw perform a number of times in the year 2000, and also the United States Supreme Court, which simply refused or denied cert on the subpoenas last week. So if we are going to count judges sitting en banc and if we are going to count supreme courts in totals of 7 and 9, that narrows it down pretty much to one judge that has seen and reviewed all this case and that is Judge Greer. And I believe that Terri Schiavo deserves her day in court. She deserves a de novo review. She deserves an opportunity to be heard and an opportunity at life.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I have introduced legislation to make English the official language of the United States Government. The English language is the carrier of liberty and freedom throughout history and the world. For centuries, our common tongue, English, has been the uniting force in this great nation, knocking down ethnic and religious barriers to make us truly one nation. Today, as we rally for unity and patriotism a common means of communication propels us toward our goal. The English Language Unity Act declares English the language of the United States. Like its predecessors, it does not affect the teaching and study of other languages. It does not deter the use of other languages in the home, community, church, or elsewhere. The Act includes commonsense exceptions to the policy, for international relations, national security, teaching of languages, and preservation of Native Alaskan or Native American languages. A common language has enabled generations of Americans to realize the dream of American opportunity and freedom. Studies continue to prove those who know English get better jobs, earn more money and receive better health care than those who cannot speak the language. As a result, an emphasis on English decreases reliance on the federal government. The need for official English appears in our newspapers every day-- injuries in the workplace, mistranslations at hospitals, people who are unable to support themselves and their families--all because they could not speak English. Recognizing a common language is neither racist nor exclusionary. It is a principle enacted by 177 countries worldwide to allow for the transmission of ideas and customs and to allow people of multiple cultures to come together. This bill does not inhibit people from speaking other languages, nor does it attempt to place any limits on culture, religion or customs. The Unity Act gives newcomers an opportunity to succeed in the United States. It bonds the newcomer with his fellow Americans, allowing both to reach for the highest rung on the economic ladder and provide for a family. According to the U.S. Department of Education, those with limited English proficiency are less likely to be employed, less likely to be employed continuously, tend to work in the least desirable sectors and earn less than those who speak English. Annual earnings by limited English proficient adults were approximately half of the earnings of the total population surveyed. Few doubt this reality. In a 1995 poll by the Luntz Research firm, more than 80 percent of immigrants supported making English the official language of the United States. They are joined by 86 percent of all Americans who agree with English as the official language of the United States. Similar English legislation in the 104th Congress (H.R. 123) drew 197 bipartisan House cosponsors and won a bipartisan vote on August 1, 1996. That spirited effort, led by our late colleague Bill Emerson, is unfinished business that we must attend to for the benefit of all Americans. I urge my colleagues to co-sponsor The English Language Unity Act of 2005 in the 109th Congress so that we can ensure that all Americans have the opportunity to attain the American dream.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me and leading us in this important subject matter. I appreciate the opportunity to say a few words. Before getting to the economy, I want to add some remarks to those of the gentlewoman from Tennessee's discussion with regard to the Middle East. I would like to paint this image in the mind of the people in the country. And that is that as we see people demonstrating in the streets of Lebanon, when they have made the pledge that they are not leaving the public arena until they are a government governed by themselves and that they are a free people, that magnificent display that is going on in Lebanon today, as I watched that, I looked back through my mind's eye and I asked myself where I have experienced anything like that before; where I have seen anything like that in history. It takes me back to the square in Prague, back in the early 1990s, after the Berlin Wall came down. That was about November 9 when the wall came down, and it echoed into about 1990, right before the Czechs went to the square and stood there with their keys and rattled their keys in the air. They stood for freedom, until today they are a free people. That miracle of freedom that echoed across Eastern Europe in that time was not something anyone predicted. Yet our President stood just outside this Capitol building on January 20 and gave his second inaugural address, and even the liberal news media understood there was a Bush doctrine, and that was the doctrine of freedom. He said in that address: ``If you stand for freedom, we stand with you.'' Today, we stand with the Lebanese people, we stand with the Syrians, we stand with the Iranians, and we stand with the Saudis. We stand with all people on this planet that yearn for freedom. Another thing that has happened there is that the fear factor has disappeared in Lebanon. When the fear factor disappeared, the people could freely stand in the streets. When that fear factor can disappear in Iran, in Syria, in Saudi Arabia, and around the Middle East, they can also come to the streets. Maybe before then. When that day comes, we will no longer see the habitat that breeds terror, and we will be able to actually stand here today and define a victory in the war on terror, and that is the absence of the habitat that breeds terrorists. And that is freedom. But to our economy, which is the discussion tonight. I characterize it a couple of ways and add to the gentlewoman's discussion, and that is that our jobs growth in this country has been going on at such a torrid pace that we will soon, within the next 3 months, reach the level of over the last 2 years having had job growth of 1.5 million jobs a year. That is 1\1/2\ million jobs a year. That is an amazingly fast growth, 3.8 percent growth as the gentlewoman said, but that in the face of the trial lawyers skimming 3 percent off the top. And that study tells us that they take the first money. They are standing there taking the first money off our economy. If we want to grow at 3\1/2\ percent, just to sustain the growth we need in our infrastructure and to meet the needs of a growing population, then we have to make up for that 3 percent that goes off the top because of the litigation in this country that is rampant. We took steps in this Congress to rein some of that in. We sent it over to the Senate, where this year they heard us and sent it to the President, and he signed the litigation reform legislation, which will make a difference and make it easier to sustain that kind of growth. Homeownership is at an all-time high. I think it would compete with anywhere in the world, at 69.2 percent. That is 69.2 percent. Seven out of ten people you meet on the street live in a home they own or are making payments on. Not a rented home, but an owned home. What pride in ownership. And what that does for sending the roots down into our economy and society and keeping our children at home, all of those things are a plus that show up in the bottom line. Inflation is in check. Personal income is up 8.6 percent. That is so much in the last year that it scares me a little bit, being a 28-year employer; thinking that if personal income is up 8.6 percent, then I would have to be giving my employees a raise of 8.6 percent every year, which is a pretty torrid pace as well to keep up with employment. Earlier we heard on the floor some remarks that we have a lot of problems with the trade imbalance, and I will not deny we have a trade imbalance. In fact, a year ago it was minus $503 billion a year. The last announcement came out, the annual report came out February 10, and that was a minus $617.7 billion in imbalance in trade. So that is about a 20 percent increase in the negative balance of trade that we have. Some of those things work out good for our consumers. You can afford to buy a winter coat for your little girl cheaper than you could before. But we cannot go on forever letting foreign interests own U.S. assets and holding them for collateral. So we need to work this thing back to correct the balance of trade, but it is not something that will be done with a policy that says, well, we are concerned about sweat shop labor in El Salvador or those kinds of issues that are essentially out of control. What is in our control in this Congress are our tax policy, regulatory policy, and that is what we need to focus on. That is why I, years ago, in fact 25 years ago, came to the position and the conclusion that we needed to do some real tax reform. Now, we have done good things with the Jobs and Growth Act, and they were the right decisions to bring us back from the bursting of the dot- com bubble that happened about 7 or 8 months before the President was inaugurated the first time; and then, of course, the September 11 attacks. I will argue that those two blows to our economy, coupled together, were the greatest blows, the most severe blows ever to the economy of this country; yet we have recovered. The stock market is back and all these statistics are up. But we can do more, and we can do better. Mr. Speaker, we can do better because there is another level, another destiny for the United States of America. We are reaching for that destiny to inspire all people in the world to reach for freedom and liberty and being able to make their own investments and control their own destiny economically, but we can also set a tax policy that ceases to punish the productivity in America. Today, today every day when people go to work and punch the time clock or make the sales calls or throw that bale of hay, Uncle Sam stands there with his hand out with the first lien on everyone's labor, on the productivity of America, on your investment interest and on your labor. Ronald Reagan once said what you tax you get less of. So us, in our wisdom, we tax productivity in America instead of consumption. I suggest we eliminate the IRS, the Tax Code that goes with it, and transfer all of this over to a national sales tax, a consumption tax, a fair tax, H.R. 5 and tax consumption, take all tax off of production and get Uncle Sam out of the way, standing there at the time clock getting his first and the worker getting his later, and change this whole attitude. Productivity will go up in America. The IRS right now is a trillion dollar drag on an $11 trillion economy when we add the cost of funding them, enforcing them, and the disincentives that are in place that people decide I am not going to make that sales call, I am not going to do that extra overtime, I am not going to make that investment in that farm or industrial factory because the tax burden is too high. If we take the tax off all productivity, everybody gets the money they earned in their paycheck. Take-home pay goes up 56 percent under a national sales tax, and items on the shelf, their price goes down by an average of 22 percent because there is an imputed cost in everything that is sold. Businesses that provide goods for sales have to impute the cost of the Federal tax in that item. That is an average of 22 percent. So, for example, if there is a Japanese-made Mazda that is imported from Japan sitting on the dealer's lot at $30,000, and pick your American brand sitting on the other side of the street with a $30,000 sticker price, we remove the Federal tax that is imputed into the American made because it is imputed in the Japanese made overseas. We will see that $30,000 American-made car go down to $23,600, and the Japanese car is still at $30,000. By the time we add the sales tax back in, the American car is at $30,400 or so, but the Japanese car is around $39,000. We have approximately a $9,000 advantage on those two vehicles of equivalent value that were selling competitively at $30,000 each. We change the tax policy, and competition drives the price out of the American made and now we have an advantage to market American goods. Mr. Speaker, that is one of the ways that we can address this imbalance of trade because we will build more products here. If we sell more of our products here, that means the jobs that produce them are here. If we import less from foreign countries, that means the jobs that produce those imports are going to have to be producing exports to go to other countries. We can repair this balance of trade with a national sales tax, a fair tax. We can change this $617.7 billion of red ink to a plus number, and while we are doing that, we remove the penalty for savings and investment. So the capital investment the gentlewoman talked about that really is a great indicator of where our economy is going, capital investment will not be punished. Form the capital, and we will see capital go into technology, research and development, higher ed, all of the things that improve the productivity of the American worker. By the way, we must improve the productivity of the American worker. We are seeing industrial equipment go overseas as well. And as we see that punch press or lathe going to a developing country and they train their workers how to use that equipment, we will never get those jobs back again. We do not want to compete for the wages that are being paid there either, but we can move our people to the top side with education, research and development and technology capital investment. They have got to produce more. We can do that with technology and a national sales tax, and fix this balance of trade. We are on the right track, but we can do more. If we go to a national sales tax, we will take America to another destiny yet with our economy. Mr. Speaker, I urge the President's commission and this Congress to take a good look at real tax reform, not tweak it around the edges. We have done that. We have positioned ourselves well to take America to its next level of destiny, and I am looking forward to the 109th Congress for being a part of that.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor tonight to make what might be a shocking announcement, and that is an announcement of something that has not been very available in the United States news media, something that needs to be acknowledged on the floor of this Congress. And that is that one of America's most reliable and possibly historically are the most reliable American ally, an American ally that has been with us in virtually every major conflict throughout the 20th century, and is with us today in Iraq as one of our strong coalition partners, joining together with Great Britain and the other 25 or so coalition partners that are there. The nation of Australia has doubled their troop deployment to Iraq. They have done so at a time when there are other nations that are looking for opportunities to leave that area. And they have done so at a time with historical moment, when we are seeing people marching in the streets of Lebanon reaching out for freedom, acting upon the Bush Doctrine, standing up for freedom. The Australians are standing with us, as they stood with us in World War I, World War II, Vietnam and Korea and, as I said, virtually every major conflict. The 900 or so troops that are in there now are there to defend, in an interesting irony, they are there to defend the Japanese, who have also deployed to Iraq to provide engineering and other services there in the country at a time when it is pivotal and significant that we help them continue to grasp the freedom that they did when they reached to go to the polls on January 30. Now, the reason I make this announcement as an announcement is because I think it is pretty difficult for a regular American citizen who watches television every day and reads the paper every day, and maybe even surfs the Internet every day, to even know this significant piece of international news, a piece of international news that was published throughout a great number of Internet services, as well as mainstream media around the world, but not so well in the United States of America. So, I looked around and I asked the question, how would a person know this? I came across it because I picked up the Sunday newspaper in Sydney, Australia, and this is what I found. The countries that refuse to surrender, U.S., Australia and Britain, boost their troop numbers. Great Britain increased their numbers there, as has the United States, as has now Australia. And the national news media that handled it here in this country were few and far between. So how would a person go about finding this out? Well, I will go to Al Jazeera's Web page and see if I can find this little piece of information that I happened to have been coincidentally privy to. And I find on Al Jazeera's Web page dated February 22, Australia to send more troops to Iraq. I did not find that in major newspaper in America, with the exception of the Los Angeles Times and one other newspaper on the west coast. Not the Washington Post. Not the Washington Times. Not the New York Post, not the New York Times. Not generally available to Americans. Mainstream media broadcast TV, most of the cable networks had a little story, one blip. But on the mainstream media that was not something that came out on Peter Jennings, Brian Williams and not Dan Rather. But it did come out of Al Jazeera. These are our tried and true allies. The people that stood with us for over a century have doubled their troop commitments out of Australia, and there is a long list of them standing with us as allies, as has Great Britain, and as has a number of the other coalition partners. We need to recognize them, Mr. Speaker. We need to acknowledge them. We need to thank them for their service, not just to the support of the coalition troops, but their service to the freedom of humanity. And I challenge the news media to pick this up and try to scoop Al Jazeera next time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I want to address a number of numbers here. This is a little bit about numbers, and one of them is that 121 organizations that we heard about, as if they were the ones that should obstruct the safety of 282 million Americans whose lives are at risk. Another number, 19 terrorist hijackers, 19. Nineteen of them with 63, another number, 63 valid driver's licenses in their possession. Any one of those driver's licenses got them anything they needed to do in America, full rights of citizenship for that matter, and get on board any airplane. And another number, 3,000 dead Americans. And what have we done to close the door? Anything? Have we even said ``no'' to the 121 organizations that say, Leave the door wide open, keep us at risk because somehow or another there is some kind of tone here that we object to? We think something is in your heart. We need to close this door. And what have we done? We have made it harder for terrorists to get on airplanes with razor blades. We spent millions of dollars on metal detectors and millions of dollars expanding TSA and putting Federal employees in place, and we put millions of people in long lines waiting to get through. So it is a little harder for them; they have to stand in line with the rest of us. Stand in line with the rest of us where I stand, where I see a 75-year-old lady going through a spread-eagle search while the young Middle Eastern male waltzes through with a smirk on his face, and we cannot close that door. This bill does some of that, not all of that, but it will be the first thing that will keep the 19-type terrorist hijackers off our airplanes, keep them out of our airplanes, out of our automobiles and provide a measure of safety and security for the American people. It is not enough, but it is the barest of common sense, and it must move through this Congress, and it must move through this Congress right now, today.