Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Chair, I rise in support of the Gosar amendment, the amendment that eliminates a requirement for Davis-Bacon within the funds of this appropriations bill. I don't know another Member of Congress that has lived under Davis-Bacon. I have. I have lived underneath it for more than 30 years. I have received Davis-Bacon wages when I was working for other contractors, and I paid a lot of Davis-Bacon wages as an owner-operator of a construction company that I operated for over 28 years. I can tell you that the Federal Government interfering with a contractual relationship between an employer and an employee is the wrong thing to do. It does drive up the costs. The gentleman's opening remarks were spot on. My own construction records show that the costs go up between 8 and 35 percent; hardly insignificant. And it scrambles the relationship between employers and employees, who are always jockeying for the highest paid Federally designated scale. I have seen wages change, double, from just going across the road because the Federal Government has designated a different wage scale for one division rather than another. We know this is union scale. Nobody said that. This is government-imposed union scale. And I am not going to stand here to protect and defend those Republicans. They did it to protect the unions in New York. And we know that, because the labor from Alabama was going to New York in 1931 to construct a Federal building, and they wanted to lock the black construction workers that were coming from Alabama out of the trade unions in New York. That was the motive. And now today the motive is to protect union scale. If we want to build 4 miles of road or 5, we go without Davis-Bacon and we build 5. If we stay with Davis-Bacon, we will build 4. If we want to build five schools, we can do so with merit shop. If we only want to build four, we stick with Davis-Bacon. If you want to do, as many Democrats have said on this floor, and that is that any relationship between two consenting adults the Federal Government shouldn't be involved in, well, this is a relationship the Federal Government should not be involved in. For the Federal Government to tell me that I can't say to my own son I would like to climb in the seat of your excavator and sit there for $10 an hour-- Federal Government says I can't. He has got to pay me some $28 rate or whatever that is. The government has no business interfering and no business driving up these costs. We must go through this period of austerity. That requires that we not impose Federal union scale on Federal construction projects. This amendment that blocks the requirement for that funding, it saves the taxpayers money. And by the way, we've done a lot of quality work over the decades that I have been in the business. And I would match the work of our merit shop employees up against any union workers out there, who do good work too. And I have worked with them, and I have worked alongside them on projects. But the quality of merit shop work cannot be challenged. We do it according to the specifications and according to the plans, according to the architect, and according to the engineer. If we didn't meet those specifications, they would reject the work, and we would pay the penalty. My company doesn't pay penalties. We do quality work, and so do the people I associate and bid with. So I get a little worn down on that quality of workmanship. I am real proud of the merit shop work in the United States. And I think the free market should set the wages. Labor is a commodity, just like corn, or beans, or oil, or gold, and the value of it needs to be determined by the competition, supply and demand in the workplace. I urge the adoption of the Gosar amendment. I will certainly support it. And I will be happy to carry this on all throughout this whole appropriation process.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I would point out that I reference specifically the ``authorized by law'' program, and that's section 102 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. According to the leg counsel, section 102 governs everything related to the border fence. So I took care to draft this amendment to directly address the objection that was raised by the gentleman from Alabama, whom I greatly respect. This reinforced fencing act, again, goes directly to section 102. It's an authorized section. It's governing. It's governing in the code, and that's from leg counsel. So, Mr. Chairman, I would conclude my argument by saying this is drafted specifically to address the objection I've just heard, and I am hopeful that I will receive a positive result from the Chair.

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. I am confident that I can produce that information for you. I do not have it here.

Mr. KING of Iowa. It would fit in the same category.

Mr. KING of Iowa. This amendment is an amendment that, I think, everybody is going to understand. It just clarifies that none of the funds made available in this bill shall be used to carry out the provisions of what is commonly referred to as ``ObamaCare.'' That's the two sections of Public Law that are referenced in the amendment that we heard the Clerk just read. The argument will be made that this is unnecessary because the bill doesn't specifically go to appropriations to the Health Care Act that carries the President's name. I would argue that we don't know. There are 2,600-plus pages. No one understands it, and we're finding new regulations on a regular basis. A couple of things that might be under the appropriations that we are discussing here: It's possible that DHS could be participating in exchanges for immigrant health care or perhaps they could be auditing companies and helping to enforce the compliance with ObamaCare. Those are a couple of things that come to mind for me. I think this is very important. This Congress has a number of times voted to repeal and to defund ObamaCare. So, for us to inadvertently allow the appropriations that could be utilized to carry out the provisions of it, I think, would be an unforgivable omission on the part of this Congress. So I urge the adoption of this amendment. I yield back the balance of my time. Point of Order

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, with regard to the rule referenced by the gentleman from Washington, we have many limitations on funds in our appropriations bills. If the decision comes down to whether there is a parliamentary objection or not, I think I could go back through many of these appropriations bills and find limitation after limitation after limitation. The practice of this Congress has been to do so, and there will be other amendments that have not been objected to that limit the utilization of funds within this bill and every other. I would simply make that argument to the Chair.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I referenced the Government Oversight Committee as the source for most of this list.

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. I'm sure that is going to come up a little sooner and I would be able to leave this floor and do that. So the answer to that is logistically no. But I can produce that information for you.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, this is the amendment that prohibits any of the funds made available in this act to go to these associations that are in the list of this amendment. We would like to have been able to just simply define ACORN and their affiliates, but because the definition of ``affiliates'' created some problems, we had to go with the actual list of the affiliates that has been compiled in large part by the Government Oversight Committee and in another part by the contributions of the astute media that has done some research on this. This is similar to the effect of the language that we passed in previous Congresses under the Democrat majority. We have seen what ACORN has done and attempted to do to undermine the legitimate election process in the United States. The things that we saw with the video and the film that were going on inside the offices of ACORN, I believe, and there is under-oath testimony before this Congress of at least one ACORN, former ACORN employee, who testified that she believed that what we saw in the film that came forward on YouTube and was posted in other media outlets actually reflected the culture inside the ACORN offices and was reflective of their offices around the country. And we saw that in five or six offices around the country. Therefore, this Congress, we must not forget that our Constitution's foundation is set upon legitimate elections; and to subsidize the people that are in the business of undermining it would be the wrong thing to do. This amendment shuts off the funding to the organizations that have a record of doing so, ACORN and their affiliates. It's a list of over 300. And I would just say over 300 sprouts from one large oak tree grew. These are the associates, the successors, and the affiliates of the larger and now some-disbanded organization known as ACORN. So I urge the adoption of my amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Does the gentleman yield?

Mr. KING of Iowa. I would tell you, as I said in my opening remarks, this list has been in large part compiled by the Government Oversight Committee.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Will the gentleman will yield?

Mr. KING of Iowa. I won't be speaking directly to that foundation, but I will again reiterate the source of this information----

Mr. KING of Iowa. If the gentleman yielded, I will say that I don't recall this objection when a large majority of this House under the Democrat majority voted to cut off the funds to ACORN and their affiliates. So that principle applies yet today, in my view.

Mr. KING of Iowa. If the gentleman will yield, I would submit that we could reiterate this same question over 300 times over this amendment, and I will tell you the source of this information is primarily the Government Oversight Committee. The minutes of that committee and their record is there and it's available, and there will be resources that go below into the depth of the committee report. Some of this also comes from media reports. I want to make sure that----

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

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it's my honor to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives and this great deliberative body that we have, and especially immediately in the aftermath of this historic vote that has just gone up on the Patriot Act. As we have debated this and worked with an amendment process and negotiations that took place in the Senate, we got down to the last minutes here. And I presume final passage of the Patriot Act is now on its way to the President's desk to be signed tonight so that there's not a window of vulnerability with regard to the intelligence that we can gather against our enemies that are evermore coming into the United States and plotting against us globally. This is an issue that emerged when we saw our vulnerabilities in the immediate aftermath of September 11. And as that was dealt with here in this Congress--and I will say that of pieces of legislation that have been passed in a relative emergency situation, the Patriot Act among them stands out as something that came together with--it was clearly a bipartisan effort to put the Patriot Act language together; it was done so with the information that we had at the time. Some of that information was gathered in a hasty fashion--the smoke was certainly rolling up out of Ground Zero in New York while the Patriot Act was passed here in the House of Representatives. It was also passed with the idea that it had sunsets on it so it required reauthorization so that Congress would come back and have oversight over the authority that was granted in the Patriot Act to do surveillance. For example, roving wire taps. Clear back in the 1980s it was understood with cell phones that when investigators were investigating organized crime, for example, the Mob had it figured out where they could pick up a cell phone, use it for a while, dispose of it, go grab another cell phone, use it for a while and dispose of it. The old wiretap laws that would allow for a judge to grant a warrant to tap a land line at, say, a residence or a business of the suspected mobster were archaic in the 1980s because of cell phone emergence, and so Congress acted and provided for the roving wiretap for investigations domestically. But it didn't cover the investigations that had to do with noncitizens and terrorist activities, and so that's something that the Patriot Act addressed. As I look at the components of the Patriot Act one after another, it comes down to this: That the constitutional protections that are there for the individuals that are being investigated are equal to or greater than those protections for American citizens in domestic investigations unrelated to terrorist charges. So the roving wiretap is a piece that was a natural, that had to be part of the Patriot Act, and it is. And we also have the FISA courts, the special courts that evaluate the investigations and yield a judgment as to whether they're in compliance. The national security letters, of which there have only been about 300 requested national security letters--yes, there is a confidentiality that's attached to that. If a Federal agent goes into an entity and issues a national security letter, first of all, that's reported later on to the court, and the individual or the company that's required to produce that information is bound by confidentiality for obvious reasons. If Osama bin Laden or Zarqawi or any of the plotting terrorists were planning against the United States, the subject of the investigation, they would be tipped off. They would be tipped off on the national security letter request, which means the investigation would be blown up by that lack of confidentiality, the lone wolf piece of this. So there is piece after piece of the Patriot Act that has stood up very well. And one of the people that has stood up on this issue that understands this very thoroughly, and one of the people who is on the Select Committee on Intelligence--which will prevent her from talking about some of the things that are confidential because of the deep intelligence knowledge that goes on in a secure room in this Capitol-- is my friend from Minnesota whom I would like to yield to, Michele Bachmann.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, and thanking the gentlelady from Minnesota for coming to the floor on short notice to add clarity to this discussion and this debate and having the courage to stand up on these constitutional principles. I have had it pointed out to me that the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution limits the Patriot Act. It's the protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Unreasonable. And these searches and seizures that have been found to be reasonable, in many cases by our Supreme Court across this land, are very well settled law, and the Patriot Act fits within the parameters of existing domestic surveillance. And I would add that this Congress has protected itself in this fashion: that the major components of this Patriot Act that have been extended are extended for 4 years. That means that this Congress comes back again and evaluates the Patriot Act for constitutional and functionality within this 4-year period of time, and it will require reauthorization again. So we're carefully walking down this path making sure that the abuses do not take place. And I, as a member of the Judiciary Committee and as one who has gone up to the secure room and gone through a number of secure briefings that had to do with the functionality of the Patriot Act--it's a requirement on some of our parts here in this Congress to do that. I have also made a pledge to a number of other Members that I'll keep an eye on these constitutional functions and the respect for this statute that's given by the Federal agents that are allowed to utilize the Patriot Act. And that will be a never-ending vigilance here in this Congress. It always is. And protecting constitutional rights is a never-ending vigilance. One of the people who is very duly vigilant who, when the rest of us take a little break and catch some sleep at night, is back keeping his eye on the functions of government, one of the relentless and incessant providers of protection of liberty and constitutional protection and one of the scholars on the Constitution here is the gentleman from Texas. I'd be happy to yield such time as he may consume to Mr. Louie Gohmert.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time and thanking the gentleman from Texas, Judge Gohmert, who does do due diligence in this Congress, it occurs to me as I listen to the discussion here and participate in it, that there was a decided lack of enthusiasm for the Patriot Act on the part of Barack Obama when he was a partisan Senator. The most liberal Senator by voting record out of the 100 Senators in the United States Senate, and that includes Bernie Sanders, the self-professed socialist who voted somewhat to the right of Barack Obama when they were in the Senate together. This candidate for President then, Barack Obama, had a position that was less than favorable towards this Patriot Act, but as he became President, sat down with his briefings, which I presume and hope are daily briefings, and he began to understand the threat against the United States that exists domestically and abroad. His position on the Patriot Act began to migrate. And perhaps as we speak now he is picking up his pen to sign the Patriot Act, the extensions of the three provisions that were approved here tonight that extends them for a 4- year period of time. That, Mr. Speaker, brings this back before this Congress. And it means also that all of the people that are utilizing the Patriot Act within the sections 206, the roving wiretap; and 215, the business records component of this; and section 6001(a), the lone wolf component, each of which were extended here by this Congress for 4 years, all of the Federal agents that would be utilizing these provisions will be very well aware that Congress will be reviewing these provisions within 4 years of today. So they will be very careful I think to comply with the law. And I think this is a prudent extension rather than the effort to make it permanent. I think it's prudent to temporarily extend these provisions of the Patriot Act. As the gentleman from Texas alluded, and I will just say I would like to reiterate and emphasize this point, of all of the things that we have heard and the things that we have heard up in the secure room from the classified standpoint, the things that we have heard before the Judiciary Committee and the many hearings that we have had, the challenge that was put out towards President Bush in a partisan effort, I think, to undermine the Patriot Act before the last Presidential election in November of 2008, all of those efforts, not one individual was produced who had had their constitutional rights usurped. Not one. Not one had lost their constitutional rights under the Patriot Act. It would seem to me that of all of the encounters that have taken place under the Patriot Act for all these years, if there had been serious abuses of people's constitutional rights, we would have heard from an individual. And then a statement is made that, well, we won't know because we don't have access to these records, that they are all secret. Well, but the records are reported to the FISA court, and the FISA court evaluates them. And the reason we know that those records exist is because there is a requirement of the court reporting. But still, not an individual has come forward who has had their constitutional rights and their civil rights abused. Now, that doesn't mean I am not taking a position here, Mr. Speaker, that it has not happened. And I am not taking the position that it could not happen. My position is that if it had been endemic, if it had been something that was systematically grinding through the civil rights of Americans or individuals that are in the United States and under the protections of our laws and our Constitution, we would know some of those names, we would know some of those faces, we would understand those incidents. And one of the hardest things you can do in this business is to try to explain something that is law without putting a face on it; to try to explain a flaw that they argue might exist within the Patriot Act without being able to give an example or an anecdote to put that face on it so people can see by example how things work. We are only dealing with data here. We are dealing with data here because we don't have the individual examples. They have not come forward. They have not been identified, however mightily some have tried to produce them. So I support the extensions that we passed here tonight. It is something that I have worked with here in this Congress into my ninth year. It's very much something we have examined, I think, very thoroughly with hearing after hearing, and intense debate, and amendments that were offered, as well as the secure briefings that take us much deeper into the practices of the Patriot Act. So the three components that were extended here tonight for 4 years, the roving wiretaps, which are just absolutely necessary. If you can imagine Khalid Sheikh Mohammed running around, or Moussaoui running around the United States with a gym bag full of disposable cell phones, using one for a little while and tossing it in the trash, and then another and another and another, you have got to be able to switch and have the roving wiretap follow the individual rather than follow a single land line that might be there. It just makes simple sense. It existed since the eighties for domestic investigations of crime, including organized crime. We have the business records component of this, also extended for 4 years, that allows those business records to be accessed, to be able to look for patterns, patterns that would indicate the acts, the planning of terrorism against the American people. We have the lone wolf provision, which says an agent of a foreign power, if that agent of a foreign power is operating, under the suspicion that that's the case, they can go in and do investigations, that also is extended for 4 years. It was a difficult negotiation here in the House and in the Senate. It did come down to the last minute. Sometimes here in Congress we can only do things at the last minute. I would like to, Mr. Speaker, transition this subject matter into another subject matter that I understand the gentleman from Texas is prepared to discuss. In this brief segue, and I expect to yield so the gentleman from Texas can take this subject matter up, but in this transition and in this week, I think it's important that the House of Representatives and the American people consider what has happened with regard to especially the Middle East. Having come back from a trip through that area of the world and been briefed on a lot of our national security issues over in that part of the world, it comes to mind as I watched President Obama's speech last week about the Global War on Terror and about his efforts from a tactical, a geopolitical and a diplomatic effort in the Middle East, naming country after country that have gone through the Arab spring, as we now call it, the unrest in places like Egypt and Tunisia, and the list goes on. Certainly Libya is part of this. As I read carefully through President Obama's speech that I understand he delivered at the State Department about a week ago or so, if you take Israel out of the speech, the rest of it read like George W. Bush delivering the Bush Doctrine. A lot of that philosophy I support, that if you give people an opportunity to grasp and achieve and succeed with the beginnings of freedom, they'll turn their focus from hatred and from terrorism towards building their communities, their families and their countries and towards commerce. That philosophy is beginning to emerge with a level of success in Iraq, for example. It has been a belief of George Bush and known as the Bush Doctrine for a long time. As I listened to President Obama, who was critical of that approach and that doctrine and our involvement in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, I would point out that he gave a Bush Doctrine speech, with the exception of Israel. There, President Obama, I'll say, broke the mold and went down a new path, a bit of a surprising path, unless you are reading between the lines on his position on Israel in prior times, to make the argument that there would be a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, that the Palestinians would have a single contiguous country. Right now it's either two pieces, West Bank and Gaza, or three pieces, West Bank, Gaza and whatever their claim might be to the Golan Heights. If you look at the map, it's not possible to tie together a contiguous Palestinian state without severing Israel from its components. It was interesting, also, that President Obama said, well, this is how we want to do this, a contiguous Palestinian state, a two-state solution, and the issue of Jerusalem, we'll just set that aside for now but they have to go back to the '67 borders. That had to have caused a lot of Israelis and American Jewish people and those of us who have a strong support and affinity for Israel to take a deep breath and gasp and wonder what did the President mean? Why did he throw all that confusion into the situation in Israel? And the statement that he made resulted in putting Israel at even greater risk, undermining their security, making their negotiating position less stable and encouraging more pushback from the Palestinian effort and their sympathizers and the terrorists that are part of the government, the Palestinians, who refuse to acknowledge Israel's right to exist. You cannot negotiate with people who are determined to annihilate you, and as Binyamin Netanyahu said, they're not going to concede the strategic locations that allow Israel to defend itself. When Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke behind where I stand right now a couple of days ago, I think it was an historic speech, I think that he laid out the parameters that can allow the Jewish State of Israel to survive and defend itself against its enemies--and there are many--and I think he went about as far as he could without openly challenging the President of the United States who, by the way, had to walk back some of his comments a few days after his speech. So I'm happy with what has happened in the aftermath of President Obama's speech that I believe erroneously said that Israel would have to go back to the pre-'67 war boundaries. But I want to, Mr. Speaker, as I turn this floor over to the gentleman from Texas, say to you and here before the American people that that speech took place here in the United States Congress because of the activism and the foresight and the effort of Congressman Gohmert who put that request together and got a lot of us to sign the letter of invitation and with that support took it to Speaker Boehner who, as I understand it, issued the invitation, and the timing of it was impeccable timing in the aftermath of President Obama's speech, and at the time that there are critical issues taking place in the world, the Prime Minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu, stepped here on the floor of the United States Congress and spoke before a joint session of Congress, and the joint session of Congress that received him as a representative of Israel with the warmest of welcomes that anyone could ask for, with instantaneous and spontaneous standing ovations, two or three of those before a word was uttered and several more before there was any word of substance uttered, the warmth and the bond and the commitment to stand up and support Israel not just in spirit, not just politically, but tactically and monetarily as well, was clearly demonstrated here in the joint session of Congress. That is thanks to the gentleman from Texas. And so, Mr. Speaker, as I wrap this up, I would thank you for your attention and your indulgence, and I would yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. It's a privilege to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, in this great deliberative body. I came here to talk about a different subject matter. But after I listened to my colleagues for a little while, I believe it's pretty important that we set some of this record straight. I don't know where they would be satisfied. It seems as though the attack is on anybody that's in free enterprise and the support goes to anything that is government. Anything that raises taxes and grows government is good, and anything that taxes free enterprise, and especially profits--those evil profits--are bad. That's the theme that I hear from the gentlemen who spent the previous half hour or hour demagoguing the issue of Big Oil and big insurance companies. This is particularly appalling to me when I walk in here on the floor and I hear a statement made by the gentleman from California saying this: You're going to turn them over to the most voracious sharks in the country--the health insurance companies. Well, if it happens to be that the health insurance companies are operating without competition, keeping their prices down, why doesn't the gentleman or others that might believe that engage in the health insurance industry? The President of the United States made it very clear. He said he wanted more competition in the health insurance industry. He wanted to create a government-run, government-owned health insurance industry as part of ObamaCare. And he didn't realize, I don't think, when he uttered that statement, at least before ObamaCare was passed and began to knock the competition out of the way, that there were 1,300 health insurance companies in America--1,300--and over 100,000 policy varieties that one could choose from depending on the State that you might live in. That's a lot of companies, and they've all been shot down here with a blanket allegation that they're voracious sharks. How can anybody be a voracious shark if there are 1,300 companies to compete against and 100,000 policies to choose from? Surely, there's something there that would satisfy the gentleman from the perspective of that array of variety that was available before the President decided he wanted to make the 1,301st insurance company be the Federal Government and perhaps give us a half-dozen or so policy varieties with a community rating that compressed it down, that raises the health insurance premiums for the youngest, lowest income people among us, and subsidizes the premiums for the highest income people among us. That's ObamaCare, Mr. Speaker, and it clearly is. The gentlemen seemed to have forgotten what they all worked together to do to America over the last 19 months. They worked to impose ObamaCare on 300 million Americans, 306 or so million Americans, and they come here on the floor tonight to talk about the effort on the part of Republicans to try to save this Republic from the voracious appetite of government, the voracious shark of government that feeds upon the sustenance of the American people, that puts into debt every single person, every man, woman and child in America, and puts the mortgage on their head the day they are born. Last fall, I talked about my granddaughter, my most recent granddaughter, Reagan Ann King. She's about 7 months old now, 6 to 7 months old. On the day she was born, her share of the national debt was $44,000. Welcome to America; welcome to the world; welcome into life. You owe Uncle Sam $44,000, and the interest is building. The interest is building, and this young lady is going to have to work a long time to pay that off. I hear the same Members over here, at least from the same party, talking about the average debt that a college graduate has, that student loans are costing too much money. They had to confiscate all the access to the marketplace for the free market on student loans and turn it completely into a government-run operation because they believed that somebody was making money off the interest, and they lamented that an average student loan when someone graduated from college was in the area of maybe $20,000 to $40,000. But it doesn't concern them that their policy and the President of the United States and the former Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the majority leader of the United States Senate, Harry Reid, the three of them, the ruling troika, President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, could get in a phone booth and do what they would to America, and they have driven up this national debt and deficit to the point where it is appalling to the fiscally responsible Americans who pay their bills on time with the paycheck that they have with the amount that's left after they pay their taxes and their payroll. They want more government, more taxes, more irresponsibility. They want the nonproductive sector of the economy to feed on the productive sector of the economy, and they stand here and talk about a company that they claim made over, maybe the aggregate of all these companies, made over a trillion dollars in profits in the last decade. I'd like to see that data. And perhaps, if they have anybody on that side of the aisle that's ever actually engaged in business, they would do a calculation to see what the return on investment was, what was the capital investment that returned that kind of an investment, if those numbers would actually hold up under scrutiny, and I suspect they won't. Then, if they're going to do a legitimate measure, they would also take a look and see what have been the windfall profits of the Federal Government in collecting royalties off the product that has been produced by these companies that are doing high-risk exploration in deep waters to make sure, yes, for a profit--they should have a profit--but they also are making sure that there is cheaper energy here in the United States certainly than there would be otherwise if we didn't have these companies exploring for oil in places like the gulf coast and up in the Bakken region, and if we didn't have some kind of support here in Congress to open up offshore drilling, drilling on the non-national park public lands in America. We're an energy-rich nation. We have a large share of the world's energy and a smaller percentage of the world's population, and we have that energy, I suspect, because we've actually explored for it, identified it, measured it and quantified it. But, of course, that stuff escapes the people on the other side that are making these arguments for political reasons. The talking points of the Democrats are now, demagogue the Republican budget, attack the Republicans and accuse them of threatening senior citizens, and they completely deny the fact that people 55 and up in the Republican budget are expressly protected from any kind of budgetary changes. It is truly an entitlement for those 55 and up. I'm not going to take the stand that we should then transfer that all the way down and guarantee my little granddaughter, Reagan Ann King, that her anticipated Medicare and Social Security benefits will be what she expects them to be on the day she's born with her $44,000 worth of national debt that she has to pay off. Are we going to guarantee her that she gets her retirement benefits under Social Security in the amount that has been calculated in the actuarial tables and a promise? Is that an entitlement? Are we going to guarantee her the level of Medicare? Are we going to take away any incentive for all children born in America to establish themselves, to protect themselves, to plan for their own retirement, their own future, and perhaps be responsible enough to take themselves off the entitlement rolls so that there can be a future for America? This economy collapses unless we address it. If we don't have the will, if we're going to listen to this kind of talk and cower before that and misdirect the American people with statements that clearly cannot be supported by the facts and think somehow there's a solution, my question is: What's your solution? More debt, more deficit, more demagoguery? For what? You'll put America into debt to exchange it for more political power? We saw what you did with political power and the American people rejected it in a resounding election just last November, and the large super-Democrat majority in this Congress turned completely over to a large Republican majority instead. Eighty-seven freshmen Republicans. You should be able to understand, none of them got elected because they want to grow government or increase the debt and deficit. Not one. Every one ran on the repeal of ObamaCare. While I'm on the subject, Mr. Speaker, I would make this point. Of all that was said about what it is that allegedly Republicans would do with seniors, here's what ObamaCare exactly does with seniors. It cuts Medicare by $532 billion, a direct assault on seniors, a direct assault on their Medicare. Now. It's not a delay. It's as soon as they can get this monstrosity implemented, and they believe that they're going to take that money and roll it over into something else, and it was part of the smoke and mirrors to come up with a CBO score that they could allege that it was actually going to be a money saver. But the American people threw a lot of people out of office last November because they knew when the President of the United States, the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader all say the same thing, we're going to insure 30 million more people with ObamaCare and it's going to be at no cost, 30 million more people insured at no cost, the American people know that's false. No matter how many times it's repeated, they know that that's false. You can't get more for less. Things cost money. And they could understand this. That if you take the 306 or so million Americans and if you're concerned that there is a percentage of them that are uninsured, we should only be concerned about the Americans that were uninsured and remain uninsured, I might add, that don't have affordable options. If Bill Gates is uninsured, I don't have any heartburn over that. Bill Gates can manage his own health care. He can be self-insured. He may well be, for all I know. If Warren Buffett is uninsured, I'm not concerned about that. He can manage his own health care. If somebody that's making $174,000 is uninsured, I'm not concerned about that person because they're making enough money to take care of their own health insurance. And on down the line. To what level? But the people that they're trying to argue were uninsured, this larger number of around 46 million uninsured Americans, when you start subtracting from that those that are eligible for Medicaid but don't bother to sign up, those that are eligible under their employer but opt out, those who are here in the United States illegally. I don't want to cover them, Mr. Speaker. As you begin subtracting from the 46 million and you get down to the number of those Americans that are uninsured and do not have affordable options, that number turns out to be not 46 million but 12.1 million. That's making $75,000 or less. That's the measure. Those who are uninsured and don't have an affordable option. Now, 12.1 million is still a lot of people, but it only amounts to less than 4 percent of the U.S. population. And ObamaCare completely transforms the best health care system in the world, the best health care delivery system in the world, and the best health insurance system in the world to try to get at a small percentage of the less than 4 percent of Americans who were uninsured without affordable options. What do we have today? Do you hear any Democrats coming to the floor to tell us how many people are uninsured in America after ObamaCare was passed? I can offer this guarantee. It's more. There are more that are uninsured today than there were on the day that ObamaCare was passed because more employers became more doubtful about what it would be that would be imposed upon them. There are fewer employees today than there would be if ObamaCare had never passed because the companies don't have the confidence that they can operate within the environment of an implemented ObamaCare. And I listen to demagoguery on big insurance companies, Big Oil, big banks. Well, America is set up on competition, and if these companies have such a market share and such an advantage that now they can take unreasonable profits from the marketplace, somebody's going to get in the market and they're going to start a bank and oil company or insurance company. But here's what I'm for within the area of health insurance. I want to allow people to buy insurance across State lines. I want the people in New Jersey, the young man that's buying a typical policy, in good health, roughly at age 23, for $6,000 a year--that's before ObamaCare passed--I want him to be able to go to Kentucky and buy that similar typical policy for a 23-year-old healthy male in Kentucky for about $1,000 a year. Isn't that a good solution? That way your 1,300 health insurance companies that we had are competing all against each other instead of being isolated within the States, operating under individual State mandates. And they can then afford policies that can have higher deductibles, higher copayments and significantly lower premiums. And I want to see people get off the entitlement rolls, both of Social Security and of Medicare, and this can be done. And, Mr. Speaker, I will take you quickly down the path of how we get there with Medicare and HSAs. Under the HSA legislation that was passed in 2003 under Medicare part D, a young couple, let's just say, they presumably fell in love and got married at age 20 and went to work on their life's work. I can do the math work with round figures. And over the course of 45 years of work, from 20 until 65, they maxed out on their health savings account. They started at $5,150 a year for that couple, and then it grows by COLA on up and just continues as long as there is a cost-of-living allowance that increases it. And if you subtract from that amount $2,000 a year that would come out of their health savings account in what we might call typical expenses of health care, going to the doctor, doing those things that you don't want to put on your insurance policy and if you compounded the balance of that health savings account at 4 percent, which is historically accurate--and I did this math before we had the downturn over the last 2\1/2\ years--it comes up to this. That couple would arrive at Medicare eligibility age 65 with a health savings account that had $950,000 in it. $950,000, Mr. Speaker. Now, the liability, the present value, present negative value of an individual that arrives at Medicare eligibility age today is about $72,000. That's the average that the Federal Government would be paying for health care benefits for the duration of the life of the individual after they reach 65 Medicare eligibility, $72,000. So the couple then would be at $144,000, and you have to adjust it for inflation, but I just go without tonight for the purposes of mental figuring. So you would take the $950,000 and you subtract $144,000 to take care of what would be the premium for a Medicare replacement policy, a paid-up Medicare replacement policy similar to an annuitized health care plan for life. And now you're in this area of--let's just say $806,000 would be the balance in your health savings account, $806,000. And what's the Federal Government's interest in that health savings account after that point? They want to tax it as regular income as it comes out of that account as being spent by the individual, or they want to tax it as death tax later on if the people, once they pass away, to tax it on the way to their heirs, the death tax. Why wouldn't this Federal Government offer to the people that have their health savings account, why wouldn't it offer them this? Buy a Medicare replacement policy, and you can keep the change tax free and you can will it to your children or you can use it as a pension plan. Now, we're already solving this situation of Social Security, Medicare by allowing HSAs to grow and let people manage their own lives. That's the kind of thing that we need to have going on for solutions, not demagoguery, not trying to conflate the philosophy of a budget that's designed to get us to balance. Where's your balanced budget over there on that side of the aisle? Is there a single one of you that will stand up and tell me that you have offered a balanced budget? You didn't even offer a budget when Nancy Pelosi was Speaker the last year or two here, and now you're here attacking this budget. You don't have a plan. You don't have a platform to stand on to criticize this platform, and you had plenty of opportunity to offer your own. But there's no balanced budget that's being offered on this side of the aisle. That's clear. That's why no one responds to me, or I'd yield to someone who wanted to allege that Democrats offered a balanced budget. If they did, it would be with-- what's that word? The voracious shark of tax increases would be what would happen, Mr. Speaker. So I think perhaps we've dispatched what took place in the previous half hour or an hour, and I will then now, without segue, transition into the subject matter that I came here to talk about. That's this. Day before yesterday, I listened to the President's speech that he gave in El Paso, Texas, and it was surprising in a way, a bit shocking in a way. It was a political speech on immigration. I mean, that's clear. And the people that analyzed it came to the same conclusion that I did, Mr. Speaker. But as I listened to the President of the United States, who was standing in El Paso very near the border of the United States, begin to ridicule people who want border security, well, first, he uttered the breathtaking statement that the border fence is, quote, basically complete, close quote. Mr. Speaker, the border fence is basically complete, uttered by the President of the United States? I have a few data points I think he should go back and revisit. One of them is, Mr. President, there are 2,000 miles of southern border, about 4,000 miles of northern border. But just dealing with the southern border, 2,000 miles of southern border. Now, whatever it was that Janet Napolitano told you, Mr. President, here are the facts on the border fence as of today, as constructed. Out of the 2,000 miles, there are 350 miles of pedestrian fence. That's called primary fencing. That's a fence that you don't just walk through. It's a bit of a barrier. They get climbed all the time, but it's a single fence. Often it's a chain-link fence. I don't know if they're referring to the barbwire fence. I suspect not, because I think actually we've got a little bit more of that on the border. Even the Federal Government, the Department of Homeland Security claims the primary fencing, pedestrian fencing is 350 miles out of the 2,000 miles. Now, they add this all up and they say we've got all of these miles of fencing, but if it's double fencing or triple fencing, they count each mile of it even if it's layered. Then, if that's the case, it's all done, it's a triple fencing, then we've got 6,000 miles of fence, Mr. Speaker, but that isn't the case at all. Here's the comparison. 350 miles of primary fencing or pedestrian fencing. Now, we know that a single fence doesn't do us a lot. It slows some traffic down and it gives a line of demarcation. Double fencing slows them down a lot better, and it sets up kind of a no man's land we can patrol and sometimes catch illegals inside of that before they climb the second fence and go off into the underbrush. So of the secondary fencing they have, there's not 350 miles of that. Remember, 2,000-mile border. Secondary fencing, 36.3 miles. Now, remember the primary fencing, 350 miles; the secondary fencing, 36.3 miles. I'm going to tell you that we don't have a lot of effectiveness until we get to at least the secondary fencing component of this. So of 2,000 miles of border, 36.3 miles of secondary fencing, 36.3 miles is kind of what you can say is somewhat built, but a lot of it requires also triple fencing. And I've been down to visit the triple fencing, and that exists in a number of places and it exists very effectively in some areas of Arizona, in the southwest corner of Arizona, of course on the Mexican border. Now, when you look at the border, out of the 2,000-mile border, the fence that is--they call it tertiary, that's the third layer of fence. I have 350 miles of primary fencing, 36.3 miles of double fencing; and of that 36.3 miles, 14.3 miles are triple fencing. The triple fencing, as far as I know, has never been defeated by anyone. They go around it. They may tunnel under it sometimes, but they've not defeated the fencing, and it's been pretty effective. But if you've got effective fencing at 14.3 of the 2,000 miles and within 220 yards of that triple fencing--and by the way, there is triple fencing in El Paso--the President is standing within 220 yards of triple fencing in El Paso, arguing that the fencing is basically complete, and he's ridiculing Americans who want border security by saying--now I'm just going to include myself in this--that we'll never be satisfied, that we keep raising the bar. Well, no. I always set the bar up pretty high. I don't think I need to raise it. It reminds me of the way Margaret Thatcher once responded to a student when she was in Iowa and she was asked the question, What have you changed your mind on since you left office? She thought a little bit, and she said, Goodness. I was in office 11\1/2\ years. My principles were very soundly based. I saw no reason to change them. Well, the principle that I've laid out for border security, as far as infrastructure on the border, is this: We've got 2,000 miles on the southern border through which comes 90 percent of the illegal drugs consumed in America. I don't suggest that we have to build 2,000 miles of triple fencing. I want to build a fence, a wall, and a fence. Yes, that's effective. It's cost-effective as well. I only suggest that we build that fence until they quit going around the end, Mr. Speaker. That will be the measure. That's how we'll know if it's effective. If they're going around the end, we'll extend it a few more miles. If they keep going around the end, we'll keep building. If the illegals are still entering the United States, then we'll build it from Brownsville all the way up to San Diego or to Tijuana if you prefer. The President said the fence is basically complete, that he's basically got 14.3 miles of completed fencing on 2,000. I don't think anybody is going to think that that's a very basic completion. I should have, perhaps, done this math, but if I just do 14.3 miles and if I divide that by 2,000 miles, I get--let me see--seven-tenths of 1 percent of completion. That would be the President's idea of basically complete. Seven-tenths of 1 percent of the entire 2,000-mile border has triple fencing on it and 2\1/2\ times more than that, so maybe you'd have, oh, let's say, 18 or 19--1.9 percent completed if you'd just consider the double fencing instead of the triple fencing. And the President is making fun of people who might want a moat? I have a picture here. I've flown that within the last couple of months in a helicopter to evaluate the border, almost all of it, all the way from El Paso across all of New Mexico and almost all of Arizona--I know I've flown all of it at one time or another--and it occurred to me that the President was standing pretty close to the moat at the time, 220 yards away from right there at the border. Not only does it have the triple fencing that Janet Napolitano made fun of--she said, If you show me a 20-foot fence, I'll show you a 21-foot ladder--but in El Paso, here's what we have: We have the Rio Grande River, moat No. 1, with water in it, flowing down. You have a fence. You have a patrol road. You have another fence. Then you have a canal that has a fairly fast current in it and a lot of water with concrete sides and bottom. Then you have another fence, so you have triple fencing. If anybody is going to come into the United States into El Paso, they've got to get across the river--sometimes swim, most of the time wade--climb a fence, avoid the Border Patrol that has a patrol road and stations posted along inside the column of the two fences, climb a second fence, get into the canal, swim the canal, get up over the top of the next fence and into El Paso. Mr. President, it's not happening in El Paso because fences work. By the way, the natural water streams there have been really useful as well, and I think that, if I had any staff that stood me up within 220 yards of a structure like that to make fun of it, I'd probably have different staff the next day. I hope he takes note of that, Mr. Speaker. I make these points that the immigration situation in the United States is this: We have a GAO study, and this study that just emerged here a few weeks ago tells us that there are a number of people who die in the Arizona desert while sneaking into the United States. The loss of every one of those personal lives is a tragedy, and it's of high proportion to their families, but I began asking the question: How many Americans die at the hands of those who do get into the United States? That study report comes out and tells us this: In the Federal, State and local prisons in America--and this is a very minimum number. This is a floor, not a ceiling. We know the number is higher. We know it's no lower than this--there are currently incarcerated 25,064 criminal aliens who were arrested for homicide and who are currently incarcerated in those prisons that I mentioned in the United States. That's 25,064 homicide victims at a minimum that we know of, and that's some of the price for our not securing our border. If we had 100 percent enforcement on our border and 100 percent enforcement over people in the United States illegally, then theoretically at least all 25,000 of those people would be alive. They would not be under the ground in the United States--one coffin at a time, one obscure village at a time, one tragedy in a family at a time. It's more than 25,000, certainly, which is a number that soars when you think of it, a number of multiples of the victims of September 11, and we sit here and say, Well, you know, it's only people who want to come here to make a better life. It's not only that to the families who have lost victims to this. I just sat down and had a discussion within the last couple of hours with Tiffany Hartley, whose husband was a victim of the vicious murder out on the jet skis on Falcon Lake, which is just north of McAllen, Texas, on September 30 of last year. The tragedy of his death, the unwillingness on the part of this administration to go in and investigate his death, to find the perpetrators who killed her husband, and come to the truth of that incident is inexcusable and unconscionable. The Justice Department needs to drill in with this. They need to turn up their diplomatic pressure. The State Department, Hillary Clinton, needs to connect with the Mexican consul. Let's get to the bottom of this. Let's get the facts as they stand. Let's find out who investigated what and when, and let's take a look at the communications as they go back and forth so we can get a sense of the level of focus that maybe existed or maybe didn't exist. I'm calling upon Eric Holder to take a look at the murder of David Hartley. Do so for Tiffany. Help her get some closure. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, today Members of this House took part in a debate that addressed the issue of using taxpayer dollars to fund abortions. As an original cosponsor of this legislation, I commend Mr. Smith from New Jersey for his conviction in bringing this bill to the floor and for his leadership in the pro-life movement. Today, our debate extends the legacy of Congressman Henry J. Hyde, who was passionately pro-life and helped lay the foundation for the victory we celebrate today with the passage of H.R. 3, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. In light of this debate, I think we should all take time to reflect on a bold statement made by Mr. Hyde, a statement that was printed in the program at his funeral. I attended Congressman Hyde's funeral and was touched by the wisdom of his words. He said, ``When the time comes as it surely will, when we face that awesome moment, the final judgment, I've often thought, as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it is a terrible moment of loneliness. You have no advocates, you are there alone standing before God, and a terror will rip through your soul like nothing you can imagine. But I really think that those in the pro-life movement will not be alone. I think there will be a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world, and they will plead for everyone who has been in this movement. They will say to God, `Spare him because he loved us,' and God will look at you and say not `Did you succeed?' but `Did you try?' '' I hope we find comfort in knowing that yes, we are trying. We are fighting to defend and protect innocent human life, and we will not stop until every life--born and unborn--is protected.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 308 I was tied up in an elevator. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''