Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming and thanking the gentleman from Texas, I'd point out into the Record, Mr. Speaker, that some months ago the Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, came before a couple of committees, Financial Services and Ag. And the question that I posed to him, and he was bound to answer that question under oath, was I made the point that President Obama was elected at least in part because he had declared and effectively made an argument, however it might have been true or untrue, that President Bush had gone into Iraq without an exit strategy. So I made the point in my question that President Obama had engaged in, supported, and participated in the nationalization of about half of our private sector, and that is the three large investment banks, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General Motors, Chrysler, I didn't go on into the nationalization of our skin and everything inside it which is ObamaCare. But in that letter that he was obligated to answer under oath, 2 months later I got a response back. And I do want to give Secretary Geithner credit. There are some members of this Cabinet that simply don't answer my letters. They apparently don't think they're accountable to Members of Congress, and they don't think that we might decide to send them a little less money when it's time to do the budget. But Geithner did answer the letter. It was seven pages long. It took 2 months to get it back, and that's not a particular complaint of mine because I know that it's difficult to make the machinery of government work. But in those seven pages of answering the question, What is your exit strategy for taking over all of these huge chunks of the private sector, his answer was, well, it's not a written strategy, and he would know when the time was right, and he would execute that when the time is right. In other words, don't you be asking me. I'm the Secretary of the Treasury, and I don't need to answer to you or to anybody else. I'm going to submit this, Mr. Speaker: there is no plan; there is no exit strategy. The President of the United States is delighted to see these companies taken over by the Federal Government and managed by the Federal Government, as is the Secretary of the Treasury and most or all of the members of the United States Cabinet because it fits in with the Web site of the Democratic Socialists of America. You know, there used to be a little bit of resistance that came up over here on this side of the aisle when someone might imply that the President of the United States is a Socialist. But I've made the argument I think so effectively that they don't try to rebut me anymore; and if any of you choose to do so, I'd be happy to yield. But the President of the United States as a United States Senator voted to the left of Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders is in the Senate still today, self-professed Socialist. And no one argues with him. But there were three Senators that voted to his left. Barack Obama was one of them, and he is the chief nationalizer. And when I saw the picture of Barack Obama standing next to Hugo Chavez, and he's doing the double grip glad hand handshake with that great nationalizer from Venezuela, the Marxist Hugo Chavez, I thought, you know what? Hugo Chavez is a piker when it comes to nationalizing. Barack Obama has way outdone him. And I don't think that he would have been a man that could have done that on his own. He surrounded himself with people that had for years worked toward this vision. Had I been assigned the task of writing the screenplay to turn America into a Socialist state, and if they would have even created for me a charismatic figure that matches that of the President and started me down the path of my imagination, and with 3 years to get ready to do it, could not have unfolded a scenario even close to what is reality today for the businesses that have been taken over by the Federal Government. Neither could have been anticipated some of the things that they're seeking to do now. But when you add these up, and you add up the takeover of three large investment banks, Bank of America, Bear Stearns, Citigroup, and when you see that AIG, for $180 billion swallowed up by the Federal Government, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for the tune of $130 billion and perhaps another $400 billion piled on top of that, and still remaining at $5.5 trillion in contingent liabilities, and the takeover of General Motors and Chrysler, both of them now under the control or influence of the Federal Government, being managed now, exactly off the Socialist Web site, ``run for the benefit of the people affected by them,'' the unions, who made no concession whatsoever, except to concede future claims that they think are going to be paid anyway by ObamaCare. And the student loan program taken over completely, exactly within the mold of what happened when we had Federal flood insurance that came in to provide one more competitor for the private market back in 1963. Now there is no private market. Now the Federal Government runs it all. When the Federal Government stepped in to compete on student loans, people said, well, you know, we need to keep these people honest. Somebody's making money off these students. Now the Federal Government runs it all. And the President's idea was that he would set up one more insurance company to provide health insurance for Americans to compete against these insurance companies whom he demagogued relentlessly, for getting one more company, correct? But there existed, up until ObamaCare passed, 1,300 health insurance companies in America, 1,300 companies that produced a variety of policies numbering to 100,000 policies. So who can imagine that one more company and a handful more policies was going to provide more options for people that would help with the competition and take some of the profits out of the industry? If these 1,300 companies competing against each other, Mr. Speaker, couldn't take the profit out of the industry, how could the Federal Government do that? Regulate and subsidize. And that's what governments do. They regulate and they subsidize their competition out of existence like they did on the flood insurance programs from 1963 and the student loan programs culminated this year. And now here we are, ObamaCare, the law of the land, the law of the land that has not just nationalized three large investment banks, and Fannie and Freddie, and General Motors and Chrysler, and the student loans, now they have nationalized our very bodies, the most sovereign thing that we have. The Federal Government has taken over the management of our skin and everything inside it and decided who will buy what policy and what the premium will be. And now they're trying to decide our diet. And now they have decided a mission across the country that the retailers need to cut 1.5 trillion calories out of the products that are going to these kids. Because one-third of our kids are obese, they want to cut the calories down on a bag of Doritos. I didn't ask them how to do that. I think they just take a few chips out of the bag of Doritos. But I know what they do to a PowerBar. A 150-calorie PowerBar gets reduced to 90 calories because some fat kids will eat too many and they will get a little heavier. But I don't know what we do with those two- thirds of the kids that are probably too skinny, that need more than the 150 calories that are in the PowerBar. And I don't know what we do with the fat kid that hoards three PowerBars now for 270 calories as opposed to maybe one at 150 calories. But we cannot put a one-size- fits-all regulation in and reduce calories going into kids that need them for energy and need them for growth. More kids need more food rather than all kids need less food. And so those kids that are overweight, they need more exercise. And maybe they need to watch their diet a little bit, and that's education and that's parents, yes. But don't starve the hungry kids so that those that are eating too much have to work a little harder to keep getting too much. The super nanny state. The recycling of all of these components. Here the Speaker of the House in the House of Representatives has decreed that you can't go to the cafe over here and eat an omelet unless the eggs that are broken are from a free range hen. I think that the chicken that you eat is probably not free range because it's pretty tender and good. I didn't check on that, but I'd like to know. Doesn't taste like free range to me. But the eggs are from a free range hen. The paper, the napkins that we have around this Capitol, most of them are brown because they are recycled paper. And when I go look at my coffee filters, I wonder why they're running over, they're recycled paper. So we have these decrees that come down from on high. And the light bulbs themselves are regulated by the Speaker of the House. How much nanny state does this country need? And how much nanny state can we stand? I want American people making their own decisions. It's a free market economy. I want them to be able to exercise all of their constitutional rights. I want them to be able to own guns and defend themselves and hunt and target shoot and be in a position to defend us against tyranny. And if we do not, you know, there is something about constitutional rights and liberty. It's use it or lose it. If you don't use it, you lose it. You've got to use your freedom of speech, religion, assembly, press, second amendment rights. You've got to exercise those rights. We must do so. Mr. Speaker, we have to take this country back. I yield back the balance of my time and thank the gentleman from Texas for joining me tonight.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 261, I was detained while attempting to reach the House floor to cast my vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it's a privilege and an honor to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the House. I listened intently to the dialogue that took place before with Mr. McClintock of California and Mr. Poe of Texas. And as I sat back here and listened to the speech of President Calderon, I had some thoughts of my own that I wish to impart here into the record and for your attention, Mr. Speaker. First I want to say that on the plus side of the speech that was delivered here to this joint session of Congress by President Calderon of Mexico, there were some up sides to it. He made some points that I think were constructive and needed to be said. One of the things that he said--and I am just going from my scratch notes--was that they are going to finally reestablish the rule of law in Mexico. Excuse me. To correct that, I want to make sure I'm accurate for the record, Mr. Speaker. I have the text of the speech here. It says, ``firmly establish the rule of law in Mexico.'' That's an important point. As I go to some of the worst places in the world, and I go there intentionally because I think to have that contrast, to understand where it's the toughest place in the world to operate, then it gives us that contrast to understand how well we're blessed here in America, and it helps us understand the functions of the institutions here in America and the functions of the culture and our values. Those pillars of American exceptionalism need to be understood and polished and refurbished, and we need to do that on a daily basis here in this Congress instead of have them chiseled away at by the other side of the aisle. But the contrast of how bad it might be, AIDS villages in southern Africa where there's not a single person there of reproductive age unless they're a missionary because the rest have died of AIDS. I go to Iraq, I go to Afghanistan, I go into those places in the world where poverty is a dominant force. Up into Tibet, for example. And most of those places that I go to--in fact, almost every place I go to, I can at least put together a formula on how to fix it, to be able to identify what's wrong and processes and procedures to put in place to put it on the right track. Most of us in this Congress believe we can at least gather the information to address these situations. When I come back from Mexico, I have this other sense. It's a different feeling. I can see a lot of the things that are wrong, but I don't know how to fix it, because the corruption goes so deep, it threads through so many components of their society. Unless there's a good formula to fix the culture of corruption, I don't know how you fix the rest of the institutions in Mexico. I want to give a hats-off to President Calderon for taking on the drug cartels. I know, being down there in part of the exchange program, as he was a candidate for office shortly before he was elected, one of the things that I was advised, sitting in those meetings and sometimes it was one-on-one with the door closed, was that he is going to have to take on some of the forces that helped get him elected in order to straighten things out in Mexico. So when I see the numbers that show the thousands of casualties in the drug cartel wars that are going on and the federal officers that have been lost in that battle and the local police departments that are either afraid to enforce the law or are corrupt and wrapped up in the cartels, it's a very difficult task that he has faced. I will give another point to the point that he has made that the consumption of illegal drugs here in the United States is one of the huge forces that drive the illegality that comes through Mexico. I have to concede that point. We need to address the illegal drug consumption in America. We lack the ability to do that. Our society, our culture, our civilization has accepted a certain level of illegal drug consumption and abuse in America. We've accepted the violence that goes with it. We've accepted the child abuse, the domestic problems that go along with it as simply a component of our society, as we accept the rotting inner cities in America, and we essentially send money there to start a new inner city economy that isn't based on something productive as a rule. Those are American problems that we need to address. He spoke to those lightly. He spoke to those gently. He referenced them. But President Calderon came on very strong against the Arizona immigration law. And I'm wondering who briefed him before he gave his speech here today. It almost looks as though the speech was prepared by the Obama White House. When you look at the language that was used and the language that he emphatically disagrees with Arizona's immigration law, SB 1070, that's the bill, he emphatically disagrees with the bill, even though he says that he recognizes our constitutional right to pass laws and establish immigration laws and enforce those immigration laws. So I am wondering what it is that offends President Calderon so much about the Arizona immigration law since it mirrors the Federal immigration law. Was he offended then by the Federal immigration law? And when he sat down in the Oval Office with President Obama, did he say, I think you ought to amend the Federal immigration law so people here as legal immigrants don't have to carry their papers after the age of 18. That is the law. It has been the law for a long time. It is not something that offended people before. I hadn't heard about it before Arizona stepped forward and made it part of their State law. So if President Calderon is offended and disagrees with Arizona immigration law, which mirrors Federal immigration law, if he hasn't voiced an objection to Federal immigration law, by the law of deductive reasoning, you would just boil it down to he is only offended because local law enforcement in Arizona will be enforcing the mirror of the Federal immigration law, because it can't be the law itself that he is offended by or he would also be offended by the Federal immigration law. I think that is a simple law of deductive reasoning to take it down to that. I am not sure that the people on the opposite side of the aisle from us have the capability to do that deductive reasoning any more. And when I look at the people in the administration who have taken on Arizona's immigration law and willfully misinformed the American people, and I will include President Calderon of willfully misinforming the American people on the Arizona immigration law, but I look at the President of the United States who made comments that there could be a woman in Arizona taking her daughter off to get some ice cream and apparently because of the way they looked, they could be called over and asked to produce their papers. Now that was playing the race card, and that divides the American people. And that recognizes a statement made by Mr. McClintock a few minutes ago that there is an intentional effort to divide people for political purposes. The President has done it. And I can't imagine that he had read the bill until last night. He sounded a little more like he had, but he couldn't have read it if he was going to say the things that he said. He knows Arizona law doesn't allow for a woman or her daughter to be stopped for no other reason than their skin color when they are going off to get some ice cream. It specifically states that in the bill, not the ice cream part. But it specifically states there has to be probable cause; and in order to investigate the immigration status, there has to be a reasonable suspicion. We understand reasonable suspicion. I happen to have written reasonable suspicion language in Iowa's workplace drug-testing law. We didn't ask a trained law enforcement officer to evaluate the reasonable suspicion. We simply asked an employer to either appoint himself or designate an employee to take 2 hours of course training in identifying reasonable suspicion. And then with that 2 hours of training and 1 hour per year refreshing training could be able to point to an individual and say I have a reasonable suspicion you are a drug abuser; you have to provide a urine sample. Here is the clinic. Here is the nurse. Go in there and we are going to test you. For 12 years it has been in the law in Iowa, and I heard all of the same things when we passed that law. That reasonable suspicion would be used to discriminate against people because someone didn't like them because of their skin color, sexual orientation, gender identity, or whatever it might be. All of this hysteria that gets built up around this legislation and the willful misrepresentation of the language and the effect of the law turns out to be--what do we call it, a tempest in a teapot in the end, not something that is going to produce substance on the other side of this, but a lot of hysteria created. As Tom Tancredo, who used to say these things on the floor of this House, he said the level of hysteria is proportional to the degree to which they are afraid the law will actually work and that Arizona will be able to enforce the mirror of Federal immigration law and they will be able to effectively outlaw sanctuary cities in Arizona. That is what this is about. The people who object to Arizona immigration law are lying to the American people. Many of them know it. The Attorney General sat right here in that seat today and when President Calderon said that he objected to Arizona's immigration law, who led the standing ovation, the Attorney General of the United States who confessed to the gentleman from Texas that he didn't read the bill. But he would commit the resources of the Justice Department to investigate Arizona for constitutionality questions, statutory questions, case law questions that had to do with Arizona's immigration law, not having read the bill, not having examined this or been even briefed by his own people, but having been directed by the President of the United States to use the full--well, use the force of the Justice Department to examine Arizona's immigration law and could not to me in that same hearing respond to a question, Could you point to a single place in the United States Constitution that causes you concern? Can you point to a single Federal statute that you think might preempt Arizona's immigration law? Can you point to a single piece of case law that would indicate that Arizona doesn't have the authority to enforce Federal immigration law. He could do none of those things, and subsequently the gentleman from Texas asked him if he had read the bill. I thought when that question was asked that it was a question to set up something else because I thought it was a given that the Attorney General of the United States would have read the bill before he misrepresented it to the American people. I yield to Judge Poe.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas for bringing that perspective in. I have also spent time down on the border and ridden in the war wagons. I have seen the screen that hinged that goes over the windshield, and you can tip it back over the hood when you get away from the border and out of rock range. I have watched them climb the fence, come into the United States, take a look and watch the Border Patrol move towards them, and they run at the speed they need to run to climb back over the fence, hang over the fence, and smile and wave and smirk. Sometimes the same individuals get caught, and they come to the Border Patrol station. It is interesting to note that the Border Patrol in the Nogales area in particular, they will go out and pick people up, and they have a private contractor that comes and does the transport. They have paramilitary or military-type uniforms on these officers, gray uniforms, and they are riding in a white van. It has a cage built inside it. They will come along and pick them up. When a Border Patrol officer picks them up, they will call the wagon and the contractor picks them up and delivers them to the station. And they walk in there. They already know the drill. They have their personal items in a Ziploc bag. They waltz in. Some have a smirk on their face. They know that the consequences are zero. They will sit down along the wall. They know there is a little time while they take their turn to get fingerprinted and get their digital photograph. Then they will be sorted into cells and then loaded back on sometimes the same van, within an hour or so and taken back down to the port of entry on the border. They turn the van sideways, open the door, and they walk back into Mexico to come back again the next day or the next hour. We don't have catch and release any more the way we used to have it. We have now catch and return. It occurs to me that we aren't really making progress. The mission statement down there on the border is not that we are going to get operational control of the border, even though Janet Napolitano seems to think that they are doing so because they have fewer interdictions, but I know you don't measure border crossings necessarily by how many people you stop coming in. You do it by how many people actually make the attempt and/or get through. So to lower the law enforcement and interdict fewer people doesn't mean there are fewer attempts necessarily, but that is the metric that we are using. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Louisiana who has some comments on this issue.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, and I thank the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Fleming). A number of things come to mind as I listened to the dialog here. One of them was lurking in the back of my mind that I had to go back and find. It was a statement that was made by President Calderon that I'd like to have a sit-down conversation with him on, when he said in the early part of his speech today, he said, As you can see, Mexico was founded on the same values and principles as the United States of America. I don't think I can see that. I'd like to know what he's thinking about and talking about when he makes that statement. There are certainly principles that are similar and principles that are identical, but there are principles on the way the United States was founded that are unique to the United States of America. And that's a conversation for another time. I pose that question out there, and if anybody has an answer to that, I'm not illuminated enough on that subject matter to see into his mind to understand what he's actually saying so that I can agree with him. No, I disagree with him until I can find a better explanation. When the gentleman earlier, Mr. McClintock, talked about 600,000 legals, he must have been referring to 600,000 naturalizations a year in America. And when I look at the numbers of people that come into the United States legally, under a visa, we're up now to about 1.5 million in the last 2 or 3 years. That number over the last 10 years averages about 1 million a year. There is no nation in the world that is as generous with its legal immigration as the United States of America is, and there is no nation in the world that we're more generous to with legal immigration than the nation of Mexico. Those are simply facts. We saw some facts, I think, today that showed about 111,000 legal immigrants from Mexico on an annual basis. And I remember seeing some data that showed about 14\1/2\ percent of the legal immigrants into the United States come from Mexico. Those numbers would comport pretty closely to each other. That's pretty generous. And we saw also, our economy, we've had an increase in the numbers of unemployment, up to 470,000 new applications for unemployment. It was interesting that President Calderon talked about their economy creating 400,000 new jobs in the last quarter in Mexico, and here we're watching 470,000 new applicants for unemployment in the United States of America. And if I go back to the workforce in the United States 10 years ago, the workforce was 142 million, and today it's a little over 153 million in the workforce. And if you would add up the legal immigrants that have received green cards and processed through this process of, some to naturalization, some not to naturalization, about half that come to the United States legally actually follow through on the citizenship application component. But the legal immigration over the last 10 years and the jobs that have been opened up for people that came here that received green cards or workers' visas almost mirrors the size of the growth in our workforce. And so we have 15.4 million unemployed in America. We have another 5 to 6 million that are looking for jobs. Around 20 million or more in America would meet my definition of unemployment, people that need work and are looking for it. We have a workforce that could be expanded dramatically if we would simply take those of working age who are not engaged in the workforce, that aren't working for one reason or another. That's about 80 million. So we have 20 million looking for work in America, unemployed, and those that have given up trying to look, and then you add another 60 million that are simply not in the workforce for one reason or another that are of working age. That's 80 million Americans we can draw from. And we have 8 million illegals in America, at least, that are going to work on a regular basis. Now, enforcing immigration law would open up 8 million jobs. That would be half of the unemployment problem, roughly that 15.4 million that are technically unemployed. About half of those could go to work to fill the slots of those that are now being occupied by illegals. And when people say that there's work that Americans won't do, there's not a single job they can point to that they can't say an American won't do. And about 3 years ago, I looked into that when President Bush was making that statement constantly, there's work that Americans won't do and so we have to bring in immigrants, and the illegal ones are the ones that first come and he wants to legalize them. So I asked the question: What is the toughest, dirtiest, most dangerous, most difficult job there is that any American would be asked to do? And the answer to that, as I polled the people around me, came back, well, rooting terrorists out of places like Fallujah would be about the toughest job there is. And so, well, what do you pay the lowest ranking marine to go into Fallujah and put his life on the line to root the terrorist out of there? Well, if you paid him a 40-hour week instead, and it's 60 or 70 hours a week or more, but a 40-hour week, that comes to about $8.09 an hour. So if a marine will go in and root terrorists out of Fallujah, for his country, granted, at $8.09 an hour, I don't think you can find a job picking lettuce that an American won't do for the going rate. And what's happened is our economy has gotten so distorted, we've become such a welfare state that, according to Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, a study that he did a couple of years ago, if you would take a typical family of four that was headed by a high school dropout, without regard to their immigration status, legal or illegal, American, natural born, naturalized, but a high school dropout heading a household, a typical family of four, the net draw--well, first I have to say, they pay taxes. They pay about an average of $9,000 in taxes. But they'll draw down an average of $32,000 in benefits, and the net cost to the taxpayer is $22,449 a year. That's $1.5 million over the 50-year span of heading that household. And so now America's become a welfare state. And the lower skilled people, natural born, naturalized, legal or illegal, can't sustain their household in this economy because their skill level isn't high enough. And we would argue, we need more unskilled people in America so we can pay more people not to work and subsidize more families because the pressure on those jobs at the lower skills is so high that the highest percentages of unemployment in America are exactly in the lowest skilled jobs that we have. I would say we need a tighter labor market so the wages and benefits can come up in the lower skilled workers so they can sustain themselves. And those other folks, the taxpayers don't have to subsidize that household and the households of the people that aren't working at all. That's one of those economic equations.

Mr. KING of Iowa. The gentleman from Louisiana.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I'd just make this point, and that would be that when we have people that are being subsidized, their families are being subsidized because they can't make enough wages to sustain their household, and, for example, working in the packing plant in my neighborhood 20 years ago paid about the same amount that a teacher makes today. It paid about the same amount as a teacher 20 years ago, but today a teacher makes about twice as much as the person that works in the packing plant. The person that works in the packing plant now has trouble sustaining themselves without some kind of support. There was a day when a young person growing up in my neighborhood, if they wanted to, they could go get a job in the packing plant and they could buy a modest house and pay for the home and prepare for retirement and send their kids off to college. There'd be some student loans in that, and significant ones, but they could manage their life and they could go to work and, with respect in the community, be able to sustain their family. Today, that's been driven out because of an oversupply of cheap labor. I'd yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time from the gentleman from Texas, actually I was looking to see if I could come up with within the text of President Calderon's speech, it seems to me that I heard him say, and it wasn't clear enough in my memory, that our immigration laws were broken or needed to be repaired. And I want to find the exact text of that. And I will do that. But I wanted to add to the dialogue here on amnesty. Because amnesty has been the central word in the immigration debate from the beginning of immigration debate, and we go back to 1986, when President Reagan signed the amnesty bill. And even though I disagreed with that act, it was one of the very few times that President Reagan let me down, but he was in a position where he believed he had to sign the bill. And the bargain was if we would grant amnesty to a million people that were in the United States illegally, then they would turn up the enforcement of immigration law, and there would never be another amnesty again. And that's been, well, 1986. So 24 years ago when he signed that bill he was at least straight up and honest about it and said it's amnesty. Now, we understood what amnesty was in 1986, but I watched them try to change the meaning and the definition of the word amnesty throughout this debate going back to President Bush's immigration speech that he gave in about January of 2005. And throughout all of that I heard them argue, many people from that administration, and then the concept was pushed forward from the Obama administration that it's not amnesty if you make them pay a fine, learn English, and pay back taxes. Well, what is it that you wouldn't require of an American citizen? Learning English is something we would require of someone that would want to be naturalized. So that's not an extra burden to give somebody a path to citizenship to require them to learn English. That's already law. You have to demonstrate proficiency in both the spoken and the written English language. So paying your back taxes? We wouldn't accept somebody as a naturalized citizen that had back taxes that they didn't pay. That's an obligation to pay your taxes. So the only other thing, the thing that makes it not amnesty in the minds of the people that argue that it's not amnesty to give somebody amnesty, is to require them to pay a fine. So the fine started out at $500. And I pointed out that a coyote's average price is $1,500. Could you at least get it up there to where if they can pay a coyote $1,500 to bring them into the United States, to smuggle them in, couldn't they at least match the pot to become a citizen of the United States? Well, then they raised the ante to $1,500. Now they said it's not amnesty, surely, because now it's the going rate for citizenship. You can't sell citizenship to America. You cannot do that. Citizenship is precious, it's sacred. It's something that when you go and speak at a naturalization service, and I have done that on a number of occasions, and I presume my colleagues have done that as well, it's a very, very rewarding thing to do. I recall one in particular in the Old Executive Office Building right across from the White House itself, in the Indian Room. This was presided over by the Secretary of Citizenship Immigration Services, USCIS, Emilio Gonzalez at the time, who happens to also be an immigrant from Cuba. And he understands this in perspective. And as he gave the speech to the several score that received their naturalization that day. He said, When they ask you where are you from, you tell them, ``I am from America.'' From this day forward, you tell them, ``I am from America.'' Tell them you are the first American. Don't answer you are from anywhere else; you are an American. You are the first American, you are the first generation of Americans in the lineage that will follow from you. And when you look out that window and you think of the person that lives in that House next door, the President of the United States--he didn't say President, but that's the scenario that we were in--to remember, from this day forward you are as much an American as he is. I have never heard it so eloquently put how much we embrace the naturalized American citizen that comes through and follows through the right way. And when we embrace American citizenship, we also embrace the Declaration, the Constitution, our history, the rule of law, the experiences that bind us together. And we should understand that words mean things, and you can't redefine them because they are inconvenient. And the word amnesty, to grant amnesty is to pardon immigration lawbreakers and reward them with the objective of their crime. Now, if their objective is citizenship and you grant them a path to that, and they broke the law and you give them a path to citizenship, that's a reward. If the objective is they want to work in the United States, and you tell them you can do so and we are going to leave you alone now, then you have rewarded them with the objective of their crime. If they falsified their identity, stolen someone's identity, and you waive that identity theft that steals from someone else their security, their credit rating, their confidence that they can be secure in their person and you waive that because you would give them a path to citizenship, that's amnesty. Time after time again rewarding people with the objective of their crime. They might have come here just to deal in drugs. Well, so are we going to let them falsify their identification documents and become part of the--last time it was two-thirds of those who came in under the amnesty plan falsified their records. There was that much corruption. About a million that were designed to receive the amnesty, and then the fraud and corruption expanded that to about 3 million all together in the 1986 amnesty act that rewarded them for violation of their crimes. And when I ask the illegal immigrants that come into the United States, We want to do a background check on you, how do we do that? Can you get me your birth certificate? We want to track and see if you have any violations in your old country. And their answer would be, well, yeah, I can get a birth certificate. Well, then why don't you get me one? Well, first, what do you want it to say? What do you want this birth certificate to say? Why do you ask me such a thing? Well, I want to make sure I get you a birth certificate that says what you need it to say. How old do I need to be? Where do I need to be born? Can I have a clean record? And so you can't trust the data that comes from a country that only half the people are born in hospitals, and the ones that aren't don't have birth certificates as a rule. And so there are many myopic things going on in this country. You have people over on this side of the aisle that are completely pandering for political power. And some will argue that Republicans want cheap labor and Democrats want all the political power that comes with that. I will argue there are a lot of Democrats in business that think they have a birthright to cheap labor. And it isn't even a majority I don't think any longer of Republicans that take that position. Sometimes they just simply have to compete because the people that they are competing against are hiring a lot of cheap labor. Then they rationalize and they decide I will hire some of this cheap labor, too. And pretty soon it becomes a virus that just takes over the economy, and the rule of law is the victim. But I would like to yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I briefly reclaim and make the point also that the ACLU and a number of other left-wing organizations have filed a lawsuit against Arizona's immigration law, and they intend to press that in the courts. So if they're worried about discrimination taking place, I don't know why they're out there beating the drum. We've got other organizations out there that have announced, as of today, that they're going to continue and accelerate civil disobedience against Arizona's immigration law. And on top of that you have some of the cities in the country that are boycotting Arizona. You saw the basketball players that weren't able to go down to Arizona even though they'd earned their place in the tournament because apparently the school administration wants to make a political statement. All of these huge mistakes that are made to pit Americans against Americans. And we should stand together and stand behind and stand with the rule of law, which is represented so well by the judge of Texas, who I'd offer a final word to.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Louisiana as I reclaim. I certainly agree. And I would add to this that it is one of my very solidly held beliefs, and if you look across history and the forces of culture and civilization, that the single most powerful unifying force for humanity known throughout all of history is a common language. When you look, the most successful institutions over the last 200 years have been the nation states. And the borders of nation states have been shaped around the lines where people speak a common language. Why is France France? Because they speak French there. Why is Germany the reunified Germany? Because they speak German there. In Switzerland it's a little bit different. But that's a lot longer story. And they have actually not had a lot of agreement there for the last 700 years until after World War II. But it's a powerful unifying force. And if you look back 2,500 years ago in China, there was an emperor there. He was the first emperor of China. And I can never pronounce this in Chinese, so somebody out there is going to cringe. I can probably spell it, but it's close to Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. It was actually about 245 B.C. when he lived. And he looked at that vast area of China, and there were 300-some different dialects and languages that were spoken. They had all of those separate provinces. They were not unified. But as he traveled around, he looked and he realized these are similar people. They look the same. They don't speak the same language. They wear similar clothes, they eat similar food, they are of a similar ethnic background just by looks. And he decided he wanted to unify the Chinese people for the next 10,000 years. So he hired some scribes to produce a language that could unify them. And that's where all of these 5,000 characters in the commonly used Chinese written language that are common to all the Chinese, or up to 50,000 different varieties of all these 5,000 characters, came from. That's why it's picture writing. The intelligent people that he hired were intellectuals. They sat down and decided, well, we don't know how to make this make sense unless we draw a picture. So they did these pictures. Now we have the Chinese language. And the goal to unify the Chinese people for the next 10,000 years has been pretty effective. He is a fourth of the way along the way. He is also the one who standardized the width of the axles on the oxcarts so they could fit in or out of the ruts. And he standardized a number of things. The terra-cotta guards are another component of that. But it's a piece of wisdom that has been holding together for a quarter of a millennia. And it's a piece of wisdom that we can't seem to get figured out here in the United States of America. It's the only country in the world that doesn't have an official language. That's my research. Some others will disagree with that. But that's, again, a longer story. But I would be very happy to yield to the gentleman from Texas to add to this wisdom, as we have about 12 minutes left on the clock.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the judge from Texas as I reclaim. I came across the language that I said I would look for in President Calderon's speech where he said, I fully respect the right of any country to enact and enforce its own laws, but what we need today is to fix a broken system. I would argue that, yes, there's a lot of burden on the system, but I am not seeing the Department of Justice come to us and ask for more money for judges, more money for prosecutors. We also heard in our dialogue today that they are bringing charges and prosecuting if someone has 500 or more pounds of marijuana they are smuggling into the United States. I have personally pulled out of the false bed of a pickup about 240 pounds of marijuana. That wasn't enough to get him prosecuted when the threshold was 250. It's astonishing for me to think how much is 500 pounds of marijuana and how you might let somebody go and not prosecute. No wonder there's not a restraint there if we're not willing to put these resources in. And I'm not getting a number when I ask how much money are we spending on the southern border to defend that border. I want to know how much a mile. I can't get that answer back from Janet Napolitano because the budget is broken up in different categories and they mix and match and slide it around. We put this together and we've just tracked now the increases. But about 3 years ago, the numbers turned out to be $8 billion on our southern border. Now it's increased by an additional 50 percent. So one has to presume that 8 and 4 is 12--$12 billion on our southern border. Instead of it being $4 million a mile, now it's $6 million a mile. $12 billion. With all of that money that's being spent with boots on the ground, and we're doing a catch-and-return and we're not able to prosecute in some of these sectors of the border unless they have 500 or more pounds of marijuana with them, how can we expect that that is a deterrent or that it is effective? I don't know that the system is broken, but neither can I see that we're using the laws that we have and enforcing them to their fullest effect. And neither can I see that there's a mission understanding on the border that is articulated from the White House on down to the Border Patrol agents who punch the clock, go in and do their job. And some of them do a great job. But it's a difficult thing to do if there's not an overall mission understanding. We've got about 5 minutes, and I'd yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming and thanking the gentlemen from Texas and Louisiana for being here tonight to add so much to this dialogue that we had. We're a Nation. We can't call ourselves a Nation if we can't define ourselves by borders; and the border must be defended, and we must protect it, and we must control who goes in and who goes out. The Constitution has a couple of places where it addresses immigration. I'd point that out if the Attorney General were still sitting in this seat here that we're required, the Federal Government, is required to protect us from invasion. That's one of the components. And then in article 1, section 8, it says that Congress should establish a uniform naturalization law. Well, we have done that for a uniform naturalization. That means whatever nation you come from, you go through the same tests and meet the same standards and there won't be different criteria from one State to another, so that people can become Americans under a standardized formula. But it doesn't say anywhere in the Constitution that the States cannot support Federal immigration law. And I add that there was a lot of misinformation that was presented around this country, and it continues to be presented around this country that argues that local law enforcement doesn't have authority enough to enforce immigration law. And it's never been true in this country. It's been something that's a fabrication, but it's never been true. The case of U.S. v. Santana Garcia, 2001 establishes the implicit authority of local government to enforce Federal immigration law. I appreciate the attendance and the dialogue and the contribution of my friends from Louisiana and Texas and the job they do in this Congress. I appreciate your attention, Mr. Speaker, and I yield back.

Mr. KING of Iowa

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

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, on roll call no. 256, I was detained while attempting to reach the House floor to cast my vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to be recognized here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives and have the opportunity to address you and hopefully illuminate some of these arguments that come before the American people, that come before this Congress and that reflect down that hallway to the United States Senate. And, Mr. Speaker, I long heard from over on this side in the 30-Something group that for years-- actually they went from their thirties to their forties--stood over here, two, three, four, sometimes five or more, and they would make the argument that, if we would just give them the gavels, everything would be all right with the world; that if we would just let them be in the majority, they could fix the problems of America and the world. And they constantly harangued against the Republican majority that existed until the end of 2006, constantly promised that they would fix all the problems that we have, and constantly attacked then the President of the United States. It's so interesting to me, Mr. Speaker, to have watched the transformation over the last 3-plus years, 3\1/2\ years now; and we are almost halfway through and probably, by business days, more than halfway through this Congress and on to the next election in November here of 2010. It's pretty interesting to me, Mr. Speaker, that the people who made all those promises about what was wrong with the world had to do with George Bush and the Republican majority, that were going to fix the problems, now I haven't heard any of them step forward and say, You gave us the gavels. The American people trusted us with the majority--them, not me--and by golly, we've fixed these problems for America. Look how great it is, now that the people who clamored for the gavels were handed the gavels on January 3, 2007, some almost 3\1/2\ years ago. The problems that they were going to fix seem to be worse, not better. The problems we had with our economy got a lot worse, not better. The problems we had with energy got a lot worse, not better. The problems that we have with this society and the understanding and human nature seem to be getting worse, not better. I haven't yet heard the 30-Something group, those that are left of them, come to the floor and do the mea culpa, nor have I heard them point out that they've succeeded in the policies that they said that they would enact. And, in fact, Mr. Speaker, if you look back on the record, it is the exact opposite. This Pelosi Congress, when we came in by Constitution on January 3, 2007, there was a great ceremonial and factual passing of the gavel that went from the hand of John Boehner to, at that moment, Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And we saw actually right in the aftermath of the election in November of 2006 when that majority was won by the Pelosi Democrats, we saw a shift in the policy of the country. We watched as the, let me say heir-apparent at the time became chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Charlie Rangel of New York, go on the talk circuits all over the country, national television, program after program after program, booked solid. And they asked him over and over again, which of the Bush tax cuts would you want to preserve and which would you want to provide that they go away? What will be the burden on capital, and how costly will capital be for business, especially big business, moving forward from that period of time after the election in 2006 and the inauguration, let me say the installation of Speaker Pelosi in January 2007, and that period of time after that as the new Chairs of the committees, their new staff and the new members of the committees were seated and they began to assert their will on American policy. What I heard from the apparent and future Ways and Means Committee chairman, Charlie Rangel, that he would repeal or work to repeal any of the Bush tax cuts, it simply was by a process of elimination. He was asked over and over again every way that the news pundits could ask him, what would you do with the Bush tax cuts, the May 28, 2003, Bush tax cuts. Because the answer wasn't definitive, but there was a process of elimination. The smart capital in the country concluded that there were none of the tax cuts that Charlie Rangel would like to preserve. That was in November, December, January, and partway into February of 2006 and early 2007. So what we saw was a dramatic drop in the investment, capital investment that took place into industry in America because capital is smart. It doesn't last very long if it is not. It understands that the cost of capital was going to get more expensive. The more expensive capital was going to be a burden on business, and the profit margin was going to go down if the tax cuts went up and if the tax burden went up. Increased tax burden raises the cost of capital, the profit margin goes down and capital doesn't seek that kind of an environment if it gets too far apart. That is what was going on. In November and December of 2006 and January through February of 2007, industrial investment went down because the cost of capital went up and the prospects for profitability went down and that, Mr. Speaker, was the beginning of an economic decline that this country has faced and the globe has faced since that period of time. Now, the people that stood here on the floor that as Chairs of committees that made these arguments at this microphone here and those microphones there over and over again argued that it was all George Bush's fault, and if they just had the gavel, things would be better. They didn't argue that they needed the Presidency, not at that time. They argued that they needed the majority in the House of Representatives where all spending must begin according to the Constitution. Well, they achieved their goal, but they never accepted their responsibility for the effect of their actions or inactions. In the case of the Bush tax cuts, it was the inaction to extend the Bush tax cuts that became the culprit that was part of the downward spiral of this overall economy. The actions that came forward were massive spending. It was also the disruption and the suspension of the deliberative process here in the United States Congress. For more than 200 years, this Congress has had a tradition of open rules in the appropriations process that would allow, Mr. Speaker, anyone, any Member of this Congress who has their own franchise, \1/435\ of the people of the United States of America, they are duty bound to represent their wills and their wishes, coupled with the principles they have presented to them prior to their election, duty bound. This Congress has for more than 200 years recognized that duty to allow Members of Congress to do their duty and offer amendments to perfect legislation, and particularly in appropriations, where we have had the long, centuries- old tradition of open rules that allows for any Member to bring an amendment down here when there is an appropriations bill that is being considered on the floor and offer that amendment into the Record. And provided that part of the bill hasn't been passed in its deliberation, require that that amendment be debated and can require by request of the Member a recorded vote on that line item that they may be addressing. I did that more times than anyone else in this United States Congress in the appropriations process in 2007. It was, Mr. Speaker, the last legitimate process that this Congress has had in this legislative arena. The balance of it has been closed rules, modified closed rules, very much tightly held and constrained amendment process that shut down the debate here in this Congress and took away the franchise and the right of a Member who has been elected by their constituents. And, by the way, the number of constituents that I represent, Mr. Speaker Pro Tempore, or the number of constituents that you represent, or the number of constituents that Speaker Pelosi represents are essentially the same. They don't deserve more representation because they live in San Francisco and Nancy Pelosi's district, or because they live in, let me say, Miami in somebody else's district, or because they live in Iowa in my district. Mr. Speaker, they deserve the same amount of representation. And every Member of Congress needs to be on equal standing and have that opportunity to offer those amendments and require this House to be accountable for the decisions that they make up there on that voting board. But it has been shut down. Since the appropriation process of 2007, there has not been a legitimate process of debate and amendment that perfects legislation to take place since then. That is how badly this constitutional republic, that is how badly this deliberative process has been usurped by the iron fist of the Speaker. And the American people little know how badly that cripples our ability to reach out across this Nation and pull the best of the wisdom we have of 306 million people and incorporate it into our decisions. Because where I sit, I have input that comes from all over my district, smart people. Smart people that will give up a couple of days from their business and their work and they will reach into their pocket and they will buy a plane ticket here and back and a couple hotel rooms for the opportunity sometimes to sit down with my staff or some other Member's staff even for 15 minutes so they can make their argument. They deserve our more serious ear. They deserve our best effort and our best judgment. They deserve our respect. But when this process is shut down to where the Speaker decides if an amendment is going to be heard if that pleases her, all of that wisdom, almost all of that wisdom is completely shut out and this process that was devised and determined by the Founding Fathers is suspended until we reach saner times, or maybe forever. Lord only knows what happens to the majorities in this Congress. But I know this: this American Government cannot function at a high level of efficiency, nor can it produce policy that is good for the people of the United States of America if it is going to have to go through the filter in the Speaker's office before it can be considered on the floor of the House of Representatives. That would be, if it worked, if that rule applied to our speech outside of this Congress, it would be a violation of the First Amendment. This happens to fall under our rules a process so it circumvents the First Amendment rule and fortunately I and others can come to this floor and raise this subject and speak to it openly so the American people can understand what is taking place here in the House of Representatives on the floor when the people are being run out of the Rules Committee up on the third floor in the hole in the wall and we are watching partisan votes come through the committees here on the floor of the House that do not deliberate on the policy at all, but deliberate exclusively on the partisanship, which party are you with; therefore, that is how you vote, not an objective consideration of the policy. But the 30-something Group and those that have come to this floor with them and after them made the argument that if they just had the gavels, all would be right with America. Well, we have seen unemployment rates go from 4.6 percent and less on up to 9.9 percent. We have watched that number of those who are underemployed, those who no longer fit the definition of unemployed, that number go from 5 or 6 or more million, added to the 15.4 million that are unemployed today. There are more than 20 million Americans that fit the definition of unemployment as the American people understand it. More than 20 million. We have 8 million working illegals in America, and that is a minimum. And if the President of the United States directed Janet Napolitano, with a little assistance from Attorney General Eric Holder, to enforce immigration law, we could open up almost all of those 8 million jobs for the American people, and we could do so in a very short period of time. But there is no will on the part of this administration to enforce immigration law. There is no will. There is a will to pander to an ethnic group that they decide is going to be the future of the future majority of the Democrat Party. And I watched with something significantly less than respect and with a high degree of cynicism as I watched them posture themselves about fairness and how we should provide amnesty and how we can't fix the immigration problem in America unless we first provide comprehensive amnesty. And I listened to that argument under the Bush administration, and it didn't make any more sense then that it makes today to argue that we should grant people a path to citizenship because, after all, our law enforcement is being tied down by enforcing immigration law against people that are not criminals, that have minor violations, and if you just required them to pay a fine and learn English and pay their back taxes, you could give them a path to citizenship and all would be right with the world. Mr. Speaker, how does this fix anything? We have had in the past something like 4 million illegal border crossings on the southern border in a year. We encounter a single unique individual as many as 27 times down to the border by Arizona; 27 times, one individual. I have stood down there at the station at Nogales and watched as they bring them in after they picked them up for jumping the fence or coming across the border. I watched them come through. They know the drill. They have been stopped by a Border Patrol agent out in the field, and the Border Patrol agent just simply restrains them or, let me say, retains them, and along comes a private contractor with a van. These people are wearing police-style uniforms in gray, and it is a white van with, let's say, reinforcement built in the side, containment for human beings, sliding door on a white van. The Border Patrol agent picks people up, calls the private contractor, they pull the van in, load them up and drive them over to a holding cell or on up to the station headquarters. They already know that they put their personal items in a Ziploc bag and they walk into the station often, many of them, with a smirk on their face. They know right where to sit. They sit down against the wall with their little Ziploc bag of their possessions, and they know that they wait their turn. And they will be picked up and go over and have their fingerprints taken one at a time, get their digital photograph taken, now with a flash, and once that data is collected, they go into a holding pen until there is a van available to take them to the port of entry where they waltz out, get in the van, the doors close, the van goes to the port of entry back to Mexico, turns sideways, they open up the van door and the illegals that have been processed and fingerprinted and had their digital photograph taken, get out and they walk back to Mexico. The door closes on the van, the tires squeal, and the van goes back to get another load. And we do this over and over again, for as many as 4 million people that come across our border, interdicting perhaps 20 to 25 percent of them that do so, realizing that with these 4 million people that pour across our border in a year--think of it, 4 million people. Santa Ana's army was about 4,000 that assaulted the Alamo. This is 4 million people a year, a huge haystack of humanity. Now, think what it's like to make the argument that the Bush and Obama administration made, that if we would just legalize all these people, then we could focus on the bad elements that are within them. Well, first of all, if you're going to legalize 4 million people or 4 million attempts, and maybe that's not 4 million unique people. If you're going to legalize all of them, how would you avoid legalizing the people that were the bad elements? This is a haystack of humanity, and in it are the needles that are the bad elements. And so can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, sorting out, out of that haystack, the needles? So you'd approve a stack of hay, and in that may or may not be a needle. You grab another bundle of hay and you'd approve that and you would give them a path to citizenship. Then they would have a card that would give them the ability to go in and out of United States, stay in America, go to Mexico or wherever they want to go, and that card would let them travel. And we would have automatically anointed them to be acceptable to work in the United States, live in the United States, travel throughout the United States, and go back to their home country and come back in the United States. Now, first, we don't have any indication that we could possibly do a background check to approve the people that would get a path to citizenship and get this amnesty. I have asked them, I've asked the people that come into the United States, that are living here--they may or may not have come in here legally--Can you produce a birth certificate from Mexico so we can do a background check? Well, it turns out that those that are born in a hospital can generally produce a birth certificate. But about half of them are not born in hospitals and they cannot produce a birth certificate. That's just the fact. So when I ask them, Can you get me a birth certificate, their response to me is, Yes, I can do that. What do you want it to say? How old should I be? Where should I have been born? What should the birth certificate say? In other words, whatever kind of fraudulent document that is necessary to get them legalized in the United States, they'll produce that. And if they produce a fraudulent document, it's unlikely that it's going to have a paper trail of whatever laws they might have violated in a foreign country. So the very idea we could do a background check on them, it is an impossibility to do a background check on people that come from the foreign countries that we are talking about. Now, we may be able to do a background check on them just off of the fingerprints that we probably already have on record at Nogales or wherever they came across the border, probably could do that background check on what they have done, potentially, to violate the laws in the United States, but that's a very small part of their human history. A larger part is in their home country that can't be traced because we can't trace them back to an individual identity. So this argument that a huge haystack of humanity of 4 million strong can be legalized and we can focus on the needles in that haystack because they are the bad elements is simply a flawed premise. No one can present this to me in a rational fashion, how it gets easier if you legalize people; because the people that would be legalized, some would be, the percentage would be very similar to the negative elements that exist in that broader cross section of society anyway, unless you presume that the bad elements will not try to be legalized. Of course they will. They'll try to game the system. So this huge haystack of humanity with the needles in it would be legalized, granted amnesty, handed cards that allowed them to travel anywhere in the United States and in and out of Mexico or their home country. So a people that would travel more across the border rather than less will cause us more problems rather than less. We have 90 percent of the illegal drugs in America come from or through Mexico. And Mexico is not accountable for all of it, but 90 percent come from or through Mexico. And of that, all of the illegal drugs that are distributed in America, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency in the interviews that I have done with them, the illegal drug distribution chain has at least--every illegal drug distribution chain has at least one link in that chain that's provided by an illegal. So magically, if everyone that is in America woke up in their home country tomorrow morning, every illegal drug distribution chain in America would be severed, at least one link would be pulled out of that. Now, I don't propose that that would mean that illegal drugs would stop flowing into America or stop flowing into the consumers in America. I would just say that it would be temporarily suspended, some for a few minutes or hours, some for weeks or longer. But it would be temporarily suspended. Illegal drug smugglers are protected by the flow of illegal humanity. Even if they are good people, they want a job. They want to take care of their family. They inadvertently provide cover for those who come in here for evil purposes, drug smuggling, people smuggling and worse. And we've watched as Phoenix has become the second highest kidnap city in the world, second highest in the world. Highest, Mexico City. Why is Mexico City the highest? Kidnapping is part of the criminal culture in Mexico City. Why is Phoenix the second highest? I will suggest, Mr. Speaker, that the kidnapping culture that exists in Mexico City is being transferred into Arizona and into Phoenix, at least to some degree, causing that major kidnapping problem that is in Phoenix. And so 90 percent of the illegal drugs coming into America come from or through Mexico. And Phoenix has become the second highest kidnap center in the world, partly because of the drug smuggling trade, the people smuggling trade, the profit margins that are there. And in deference to President Calderon, who is in this city, I think, right now as we speak, I do reject the criticism that he has provided for the State of Arizona for passing their own immigration legislation. But I also will concede his argument that there's a powerful magnet here in the United States, and that is the use and the purchase of illegal drugs, that the illegal drugs that are the magnet that really brings about the markets that cause the drug wars in South America, Central America, Mexico, coming into the United States. If we could shut off this illegal drugs magnet--there's two magnets that need to be shut off in America. One is the jobs magnet that hires illegals and pours them into our economy, who work at substandard wages and then the taxpayers have to subsidize the subsistence for the families that should be sustained by the wages and the benefits. That's one thing that is a magnet that needs to be shut off, and there's ways we can do that, Mr. Speaker. But the other is this huge magnet, which is the demand for illegal drugs in America, that sets up the production and the distribution chain and the drug cartels that are so utterly brutal, especially in Mexico, where I saw a number that I can't substantiate. I will just tell you, Mr. Speaker, that it was reported in the news that over the last several years in the drug wars in Mexico, they've had 23,000 people killed, 23,000. Now, that would be drug cartels killing members of other drug cartels. It would be local law enforcement officers. It would be intimidation attacks on families. It would be the military personnel that are engaged in this fight. But it is a very high amount of casualties that have taken place in Mexico to shut off the illegal drugs in that country. And I understand the frustration of President Calderon that the United States is providing the magnet for the illegal drugs, and we are critical of them for the human smuggling, the drug smuggling, and the cash smuggling that comes out of the United States down into Mexico and places south. Well, it's all right for us to be critical of what's going on in Mexico, but we have to acknowledge that the drug abuse problem in the United States is a big part of that. And if we could shut off the magnet of drug abuse in the United States and the magnet of employers who are seeking to hire substandard-wage workers in America, we could solve a lot of the border problems by doing that. The rest of the border problems that can be solved will be solved by building a fence and a wall on the southern border. Now, this is not that hard to figure out, Mr. Speaker. We spend $12 billion a year on the southern border when we add up the costs going into ICE, the Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection, all the equipment that they need, the benefits, wages, and pension plans that go along with that, and we used a corridor some 40 miles wide or so along the southern border. $12 billion for a 2,000-mile border. That's $6 million a mile, Mr. Speaker. And I constantly hear the message that we have to have more and more boots on the ground, more boots on the ground. And so I suggested to the then-chief of the Border Patrol, if we could produce an impermeable barrier from heaven all the way down to hell so no one could go over the top, no one could go underneath, and they were completely impermeable, how many Border Patrol do we need to protect that border? And the answer that I got was, well, we still need more boots on the ground. Well, that wasn't expert testimony. That was the party line. If you have an impermeable barrier that no one can go over or under, you cannot argue that you need more boots on the ground, Mr. Speaker. And I make this argument hypothetically because of this: Good solid barriers on the border cut down on the need for personnel, or they improve the effectiveness of the personnel that we have. That's the equation. You can't envision that if you build a fence and you come inside of that 60 or 100 feet and you build a concrete wall that is 13\1/2\ feet high with a wire on top of it and a foundation underneath of it, and you come in behind that and you build another fence, and you've got roads on either side of that concrete wall, triple fencing with a concrete wall, wire on top, cameras, sensory devices that are there and agents that can patrol and come directly to the spots where there's activity and problems, you cannot convince me that you need more Border Patrol agents instead of less. You can't convince me that more people will cross the border if you don't have a fence--or, excuse me. You cannot convince me that more people will cross the border if you do have a fence than if you don't. Of course they're effective. And they're effective. We know they're effective. They're cash flow effective. Six million dollars a mile, Mr. Speaker, is what we're spending today on open, vast areas of the border where there was only a concrete pylon established from horizon to horizon; $6 million a mile. And who would not take a check for $6 million to guard the border for a mile? My west road, no one lives on it, a mile of gravel. If the Feds came to me and said, Steve, I've got for you $6 million this year and every year for the next 10 years. I'll give you $60 million to guard that mile from your house west. And by the way, I'm going to dock from that $60 million every time somebody gets across that border illegally. And I'm going to require you to bond that so that the effectiveness, if you--that you will guarantee that you'll get the job done. I would not as a, let me say, as an astute entrepreneur look at my west mile with no fences on it and hire myself 100 Border Patrol agents with Humvees and radios and put helicopters in the air and guard that border with hovering helicopters and Border Patrol agents that are sitting back 4 or 5 or 6 or 20 miles from that road and go catch them when they come across and get into my cornfield. No, Mr. Speaker, I'd build a fence and a wall, and I'd put sensory devices on that and I'd have cameras. And when somebody approached the wall and tried to get over, we'd know. We'd see it coming, and we would call our handful of Border Patrol agents there to address the problem. That's what needs to happen where there's high crossing rates over our southern border. It defies common sense to believe that you can chase people around the desert cheaper than you can prevent them getting into the desert. And no one has put the cash to this and the cost to what's going on. I'm the only one I know of in the entire United States Congress, House and Senate, that can tell you $12 billion on the southern border is the annual cost, $120 billion for 10 years. That's how our budgets go, $120 billion. Six million dollars a mile, $60 million a mile for 10 years. Sixty million. Think what you could build for every mile that you can imagine in your neighborhood, Mr. Speaker, over 10 years if you had $60 million. This country would be so full of edifices of construction if we had $60 million to invest for every mile. We have got to have it be effective. And we have got to be smart about how we spend our money. And we have got to establish immigration policy that is good for the social, the economic, and the cultural well-being of the United States of America. And I pledged to do that. I have introduced legislation which will do so, Mr. Speaker. It's called the New IDEA Act. New IDEA stands for the New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act. And what it does is it brings the Internal Revenue Service into the immigration enforcement arena, the IRS. The IRS seems to like to do their job from time to time. In fact, let's just say that they are good at it. I don't want to necessarily accuse them of liking it. And the effectiveness of the IRS is one of the reasons that I brought them into this mix when I introduced the legislation. So the New IDEA Act stands for the New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act, Mr. Speaker. It clarifies that wages and benefits paid to illegals are not tax-deductible for income tax purposes. It provides for the IRS, during the course of a normal audit, to come into a company and run the Social Security numbers of the employees through a database. And that database would be the E-Verify database, which has proven to be well more than 99 percent efficient and effective. And if those employees, one or more of them, cannot be verified to be lawful that they could work in the United States, the IRS then will give the employer an opportunity to cure that problem. But the bottom line is that they will deny the business expense of wages and benefits paid to illegals as a tax-deductible item. So if an employer paid a million dollars in wages to a list of illegals and the E-Verify program could not verify that they could lawfully work in the United States, then the IRS would deny that business expense of a million dollars. It would go from the schedule C exemption side, the business expense side, over to the profit side of the ledger, in which case that all becomes a taxable profit event. I did this at 34 percent corporate income tax, and that has gone up, but I did the math at 34 percent, and it turns out to be this. Your $10 an hour illegal becomes a $16 an hour illegal when you add the tax liability at 34 percent and the interest and the penalty that's assigned by the IRS. So your $16 an hour illegal is a pretty expensive ticket. And the million of dollars in wages that would have been paid that were deducted as a business expense now become an additional, well, let me say $600,000 in costs to the employer. They will make a decision then not to take that risk and to hire an American worker or someone who is lawfully present in the United States that can work here. I am all for that, Mr. Speaker. It is the right thing to do. Bring the IRS into this. Pass the New IDEA Act, the New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act, and let the IRS join with the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to build a team so that the government is all on the same page, singing from the same page of the hymnal, so that the right hand, the left hand, and the middle hand all know what the other one is doing. That's the right thing to do here in America. That shuts down the jobs magnet. It doesn't shut it entirely off. Some have suggested that we should pass legislation that makes it a felony to hire an illegal. Well, you know, we have document theft that goes on with those employees. And Janet Napolitano has taken a position she is not going to enforce even against document theft in the course of people that are working illegally. We can turn our pressure up against the employers and make it a felony, and we can lock them up in jail or give them massive fines. I suggest instead we provide the incentive so that all of the employers can be under that kind of scrutiny with a 6-year statute of limitations that's written into the bill that then allows for the IRS to go back 6 years. Now, think how this works, Mr. Speaker. If you paid a million dollars in wages out to illegals in a year and the IRS came in and did the audit and they took your $10 an hour and it became $16 an hour, and $10 an hour equated into a million dollars, you would have $600,000 in tax liability for that year. And the interest and the penalty that goes back actually accrues to a greater number, but let's just say it's level across the period of those 6 years. Now your $600,000 in penalty to the employer that paid a million dollars in wages to illegals becomes $3.6 million in liability to the IRS. Now, that is a powerful incentive to clean up your employee base to comply with the law, to do due diligence, and to hire people that can legally work in the United States of America. This argument that we are in that we have to pass comprehensive immigration reform in order to solve our problems here is a false and specious argument. It doesn't hold up to any kind of logical scrutiny that I know. It's only out there because there is a political gain that is being sought on the other side. People that want to expand their political base and make a promise to different groups of people that they would be their benefactors. And by the way, when I look at the pattern that is taking place between the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, the President of the United States, the Attorney General, the Assistant Secretary of State Posner, this is an astonishing thing. The immigration law that was passed in Arizona mirrors Federal immigration law. It was designed to do that. The people that wrote it were smart people that understood Federal immigration law. They intentionally wrote it in such a way that it would not conflict with Federal law and would not be preempted by Federal law. And here are some things that I know: That local law enforcement has always had the authority to enforce Federal immigration law. One of the ways that I have described that is, could you imagine local law enforcement arguing that they didn't have the authority to enforce another jurisdiction's law? Say for example if it was a county sheriff, can he sit out there and write speeding tickets on a State highway or does it have to be a county highway? If a county sheriff happens to see somebody run a stop sign in the city does he decide that, well, that's the town of Phoenix, but I am a Maricopa County sheriff, therefore I can't write a ticket for running a stop sign that is a city stop sign in Phoenix? Does a State trooper that watches a national bank be robbed not enforce that because they can only enforce the laws against robbing State banks, not national banks? I mean how bizarre is it to believe that local law enforcement would have no business enforcing Federal immigration law? I would submit to the Record, Mr. Speaker, a case in 2001, a Federal district court that ruled in the case of the United States against Santana Garcia that established that local law enforcement has an inherent right and responsibility to enforce Federal immigration law. There are several other cases that are on point on this, but I know of none, I know of no cases that would argue that local law enforcement does not have the authority to enforce immigration law. Of course they do, just like they have the authority to enforce other Federal laws. Or for example, I believe it's a Federal violation to murder a Federal agent. I believe it's also a violation of every State law for first- or second-degree murder or manslaughter in the United States of America to murder that same Federal agent. Now, who would argue that if the Federal Government didn't prosecute the murder of a Federal law enforcement agent that the State couldn't prosecute because it would be a preemption of Federal law? It is complete irrational baloney to believe that there is a preemption that prohibits the States from protecting themselves or ordering their societies. So Arizona has written their immigration law that simply says, hey, it's against the law to be in Arizona illegally in violation of Federal immigration law. And they went to great pains to establish that there has to be probable cause in order for law enforcement to pull people over and inquire beyond that. Probable cause. So probable cause would be let's say a taillight out, a brake light out, a car that's speeding, a stop sign that's been run. How about a bank that's been robbed? They chase all of those vehicles down, they approach the vehicle, they ask for a driver's license. If they are handed a matricula consular card, that's almost de facto proof--a person that carries one has no reason to have one in America if they are here legally. If they are here legally, they have got documents that they can use. So a matricula consular card would be probable cause--excuse me, that would be probable cause, but it would be a higher standard than the lower standard of reasonable suspicion. And that law enforcement officer then would get to ask a few more questions and determine if that individual was in the United States legally or illegally. Now, if he suspects and comes to a conclusion that it's worthy of taking it to a higher level, he can call ICE and have them go through the process and take care of the situation. If the back of the van opens and 15 people start to run across the field, well, that's reasonable suspicion I would say, Mr. Speaker. But it's not targeting, it's not profiling, it's not prejudice. And all of this fulmination about the profiling and the prejudice is a great big red herring designed to create this political argument that they think they have got some traction in. And I, Mr. Speaker, have been through a number of these. It took 6 years to establish English as the official language in the State of Iowa. I had the same discussions and the same debates take place over and over again. And they argued that if we establish English as the official language of Iowa there would be people all over the State that were disparaging other languages and the people that spoke it. And so in the bill we wrote that it's unlawful to disparage any language other than English. So oddly, and I didn't accept this amendment willingly; it became part of the law nonetheless, oddly people can disparage English in the State of Iowa and no other language. Well, it never really applied. Never heard of a case where anybody was disparaging any language. And I suppose that there may be. I don't know if anybody actually is disparaging English itself either. But all of this hysteria that was being ramped up, it went on for months and in fact for years, and all of the allegations that it was going to destroy our society and it was a bitter pill, it was an insult to people, when the bill was passed and it became law, it went away. All of the worries that were there went away. I also was principal author in the Iowa Senate side of Iowa's workplace drug testing law. And that law, among other provisions, allows for a drug test to be conducted on an employee provided there is reasonable suspicion that they are using those drugs. Now, reasonable suspicion is credible, objective, identifiable characteristics. It's pretty close, although it's not quite verbatim from the statute. It's been 12 years. That gives you a bit of the idea, Mr. Speaker of the definition of reasonable suspicion. Objective, credible, identifiable characteristics. And as much noise as was made about that, that we were going to test people on reasonable suspicion, we were going to test them on random testing, we were going to test them post-accident, we were going to test them preemployment, we did all of that. We didn't ask law enforcement officers to go and be trained and come into the workforce and look around for people whose behavior was erratic or maybe their pupils were dilated, or people who were nervous or irritable or whatever it might be. We just simply directed that the employer designate an employee who would be the one who could declare that there be a drug test on someone because of reasonable suspicion. And the standard that's written into the bill is that employee has to go through an initial 2 hours of training, 2 hours, and then each year refresh that training with a minimum of 1 hour of training. So that might be the truck driver, could be the nurse, could be the janitor, it could be the CEO. Actually, if it's a small business, it could be about all those things wrapped up in one person. But these are not people that are necessarily trained by their profession to identify a reasonable suspicion. They are just simply trained within their job to do so. And we for 12 years, for 12 years we have had reasonable suspicion in Iowa applied by employees of companies who have received 2 hours of initial training for the first qualifier and then each year thereafter 1 hour of training. And they have pointed their fingers at employees and said, I have reason to be suspicious that you are abusing drugs. You go and provide a urinalysis now because that single individual's judgment thinks so. Now, that would give an opportunity for people to be profiled, for them to be discriminated against, for a law to be abused in a broader way than it could possibly be done in the State of Arizona. And yet in 12 years, in Iowa under the reasonable suspicion law, we don't have a single case of any type of persecution or prejudice or profile that has emerged. Now, it doesn't mean there aren't some people who have not complained along the way. But I know of none. I've not had a complaint come back to me. There's not been a case that's been filed. The language for reasonable suspicion in Iowa that's granted to someone with 2 hours of initial training and 1 hour of annual training after that, it doesn't necessarily have a specific background required, has worked beautifully. And hundreds of companies now provide a drug-free workplace because they have the tools to work with. And why would we think that an immigration law that applies in Arizona right now, if it's enforced by the Federal Government, somehow becomes a discriminatory law if it's enforced by local government? The very people that have to live with their neighbors and friends. The law enforcement officers that in Arizona are more likely to be Hispanic than the Federal officers that are enforcing immigration law. In some of the communities, that's true. So why would we presume that law enforcement officers are inherently racist or bigoted or they would use their job to target people? I think this: I think the level of hysteria that exists in Arizona and across the country, especially with the boycotts that are out there, is proportional to the fear of the open-borders crowd, the whining liberals crowd, proportional to their fear that Arizona's immigration law will actually be effective. That's the answer to what's going on. They don't want to see a law passed that will be effective because they're for open borders, they're erasing the United States of America, they're for allowing people to flow back and forth at will. And, you know, you can't be a Nation if you don't have a border, and you can't call it a border if you don't defend the border. And we are a Nation that has great respect for the rule of law. All of the people that come here to this country don't have any experience of respect for the rule of law. They don't understand that justice is blind here in America, or is supposed to be blind. They don't understand that there is a provision of, I'll say, a statue of the Lady Justice who holds the scales in her hands and she's blindfolded because she's weighing this justice without being able to see who the person is that the justice is being provided for. And so this immigration law in Arizona that the President of the United States played the race card on and played to, unnecessarily, to fears falsely and erroneously when he made the statement in a speech a few weeks ago that a mother and her daughter that didn't quite look the right part--and I've forgotten the exact language that he used--could be going out to get some ice cream and they could have somebody stop them and demand their papers. Well, that's inconsistent with the law that I read. It is demagoguery, Mr. Speaker. It's inaccurate. It's willfully scaring the American people for political reasons. And it fits right down the path of the President standing right back here and saying to the Supreme Court who sat here that they had unjustly decided a case before them and seeking to intimidate the judicial branch of government, in fact the Supreme Court of the United States. And so if the President read the bill, he didn't understand it or he willfully misrepresented it. We know if we take his word under oath, and that was the Attorney General Eric Holder last week when he was asked by Congressman Ted Poe of Texas, did you read the bill--meaning the Arizona immigration bill--he had to admit no, he hadn't read the bill and he hadn't been briefed on it either. Now an Attorney General of the United States coming before the Judiciary Committee to testify before the committee would be intensively briefed on subject after subject. He would be so boned up and ready that he could respond to anything. And this Attorney General couldn't see fit to bother to read a bill that's less than a dozen and a half pages long, double spaced? One that he felt free to speak to and make allegations about and imply that it could lead to discrimination and racial profiling or flat out say so in his public statements. I was shocked to think that the question that I would have not considered was even one that legitimately just couldn't imagine that the Attorney General of the United States would not have read a bill that he was so critical of, but he did not. Thanks to Ted Poe, we know that. So the President didn't read the bill or he willfully misinformed the American people. Attorney General Eric Holder said he didn't read the bill, but still he misinformed the American people. The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, admitted before John McCain, her colleague from Arizona, that she hadn't read the bill. She was aware of it, but she hadn't read the bill, but she felt free also to talk about the potential effects of Arizona's immigration law. And then we have the assistant Secretary of State, Posner, who repeated to us that they brought up the Arizona immigration law to the Chinese early and often and apparently made the statement of mea culpa for the United States that we had laws that were discriminatory and perhaps bigoted. But he hadn't read the bill either. The President of the United States didn't read the bill. He misinformed the American people, unintentionally or willfully. The Attorney General of the United States, who is looking into suing the State of Arizona, hadn't read the bill, but he misinformed the American people unintentionally or willfully. The Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, hadn't read the bill but was misinforming the American people unintentionally or willfully. And the assistant Secretary of State, Posner, hadn't read the bill or intentionally was misinforming the Chinese. All of this going on in the Department of Justice has been directed by the President of the United States to investigate Arizona's immigration law. Now, if the President gave that order without reading the bill, you would think he would have someone around him who had read the bill and had briefed the President. There's no sign of that. So apparently they're taking their marching orders from MoveOn.org or the ACLU. And so the Department of Justice is investigating. They're looking for a way to bring suit against the State of Arizona on what could the basis be. And I asked the Attorney General this last week before the Judiciary Committee, Can you point to a single component of the Constitution that may have been violated by Arizona's law? No. Can you point to a Federal statute that would be in conflict with Arizona's immigration law? No. Can you point to any case law, any controlling precedent that would indicate that Arizona doesn't have the authority to enforce their immigration--the immigration law? No. But still at the direction and order of the President of the United States, the Attorney General is using the force of the Justice Department to investigate Arizona and Arizona's immigration law all while inside that Justice Department they have canceled the most open- and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of America--that's the New Black Panthers--smacking billy clubs in their hand, calling white people coming in to vote in Philadelphia ``crackers'' and intimidating them from voting. And the Justice Department says we don't have enough evidence to convict. And the Assistant Attorney General, whose name is Thomas Perez, testified before the Judiciary Committee that they achieved the highest possible penalty. And the highest possible penalty was to put an injunction against one of the four New Black Panthers, prohibit him from standing at that same polling place with a billy club and intimidating voters in the 2012 election. But after that, it's apparently not a problem. It was a false testimony on the part of Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez. They didn't achieve the highest penalty that was available to them, even though he testified otherwise, and the Justice Department canceled the case, the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of America. And then we have the case of Kinston, North Carolina, where the people of Kinston, North Carolina, voted that they wanted to have nonpartisan elections in their citywide elections. A lot of communities in America opt for that. Something like 70 percent of the communities in America don't want to have partisan elections. So they say you can't put a Republican or a Democrat, no ``R'' or ``D,'' by your name. You get elected to represent this city without having a party identification. Kinston, North Carolina, voted to do that overwhelmingly. The same person inside the Justice Department that dropped the charges for the voter intimidation in Philadelphia, Loretta King, also sent a letter to Kinston, North Carolina, because they are a covered district and covered by the Voting Rights Act and they have been labeled discriminators since the middle 1960s, have to get approval if they are going to change any system of their elections under the Voting Rights Act because they are a covered district. So she denied the will of the people of Kinston on the basis that African Americans who wanted to vote for another African American wouldn't know to vote for that African American unless they had a ``D'' beside their name. Well, that seems to me to be a race-based decision, not one based in law or logic. I don't think it's logic that people can associate necessarily a ``D'' with skin color. I'd like to think that they were voting without regard to skin color, that they were actually voting for people that will do the best job of representing them in Kinston, North Carolina. That's strike number two against Loretta King and the Justice Department. She had a third strike against her, and that was a rule 11 being applied for filing a specious case that was unfounded, and it cost the Federal Government $570,000 to pay that out because she brought a case that couldn't be supported that was false and specious and unfounded. And there's better language for that to be found under the rule 11 language that's there. All of this the Justice Department can investigate and continue with the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case. They canceled the will of the people in Kinston, North Carolina, based on a race decision of Loretta King who had brought this false and specious case that cost the American people $570,000 all while this Justice Department that has enough resources to investigate Arizona with no rational reason why, with no constitutional thing that he can point to, he can't even investigate ACORN. With that, Mr. Speaker, I would yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to be recognized by you to address the House of Representatives in this most deliberative body that we are. I often come here; and in the 30 or so minutes that I spend waiting and anticipating my opportunity to address you, I also can't avoid lending an ear to the gentleman who often presents ahead of me. I sometimes think about what it would be like if I just could walk in here in the last 30 seconds and not feel compelled to rebut the previous 60 minutes. I am going to just compress this a little bit so I can get on to the subject at hand that I came here to talk about; but, yes, many Republicans, and perhaps every Republican, will oppose this financial bill that has the Barney Frank bill sent to the United States Senate and become the Chris Dodd bill. In fact, I don't know any two people that would probably have less favor in rewriting the financial laws in America than those two individuals. They have had a long time now to investigate what has happened with the finances in America and what has happened with the downward spiral of our economy, and when this happened. It started before this seminal date, but the seminal date, Mr. Speaker, was September 19, 2008, when then-Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson came to this Capitol and asked for the $700 billion in TARP funding. Then-Senator Obama, and now-President Obama, supported all of those moves. President Obama as Senator and later as President supported the takeover of the banks, the insurance companies, Fannie and Freddie, General Motors, Chrysler. And, by the way, the student loan program, not to mention ObamaCare. And now we have the financial world and an effort to take that over. And yes, I will stand and oppose these changes. I will stand and oppose them for a lot of reasons, perhaps that I will have an opportunity to get into a little bit later in this hour, Mr. Speaker. The Federal Government should not be making arbitrary decisions on which businesses succeed and which ones fail. They should not be in a position to be evaluating. And if there is credible evidence of an entity, a corporate entity, a financial credit entity--credible evidence as to whether they might be in trouble, that would give the Secretary of the Treasury the authority to pull the plug on a company, take it over by the Federal Government, separate it any way he so chose; or, bring regulators in to intimidate them before or after the fact. This bill, this Chris Dodd bill or Barney Frank bill, gives the Federal Government the authority to take over any business in America that is a credit business that they should choose. Now, again, I hope to get to this. But at this moment, Mr. Speaker, I would transition this subject over to the subject that I came here to speak about, and that is right now we have Attorney General Holder testifying before the House Judiciary Committee. I came directly here from there, or I will say almost directly here from there, having listened to a measure of his testimony and his response to some of the people that are on the Judiciary Committee. And as this unfolds yet, I come here because I am dissatisfied with the responses that I have received from the Attorney General. I actually think that he is a fine fellow and he would make a good neighbor, but I am concerned about the politicization of the Justice Department. And even though Attorney General Holder made remarks at the end of my question period that their office would not be political, they would be impartial, they would function under the law, I happen to have a special view of Attorney Generals. And whether they be State Attorney Generals or whether they be U.S. Attorney Generals, they have to understand the Constitution. They have to understand the rule of law. They can't know every Federal statute. I wouldn't hold anyone accountable for that. But when they have had an opportunity to do an investigation or had an opportunity to brief themselves on a subject matter that is bound to come up, I would expect that they would be conversant enough with the law and with the Constitution to be able to make an argument that would defend the actions of the Justice Department at a minimum. And so I made the remark and posed this situation. And this is off of the opening statement of Congresswoman Judy Chu, who said that Arizona law--and this is with Attorney General Holder, the sole witness before the committee and he was the audience that she was speaking to--she said, Arizona law is cruel and it institutionalizes racial profiling. She also said that people are ``already being detained because they forgot their driver's license at home.'' She continued and said that it's burdensome and unnecessary for people to carry multiple forms of identity, which reminds her of living in a Cold War state. I don't know what Cold War state she may have lived in. But I made this point to Attorney General Holder and asked him if there was anything in his knowledge that the Arizona law could be doing now that would affect the activities of the law enforcement officers in Arizona in such a way that the allegations by Ms. Chu could be accurate; that they're already detaining people because they forgot their driver's license at home, and that it would institutionalize racial profiling. Mr. Speaker, this is the highest level deliberative body of the world and this dialogue has gotten down to this point where we have people that are representing a State law that's very well known by now that specifically prohibits racial profiling and prohibits the utilization of even the factor of race if it's the sole factor. That's by law. It's an Arizona law. And to have a Member of Congress say to the Attorney General in a hearing when the Attorney General is under oath that people are already being detained. People are already being detained on an Arizona law. Here's the quote: ``Already being detained because they forgot their driver's license at home.'' They also said the law is cruel and it institutionalizes racial profiling. It's as if this law had already taken effect. And it's a fact that Arizona law, unless specified otherwise, does not take effect until 90 days after the Governor signs the bill, which was some couple or three weeks ago. It's certainly not 90 days, Mr. Speaker. As I point this out to the Attorney General, one would think that a person that is at that high level in this country with this very high- level responsibility could at least concur that the Arizona law hasn't been enacted yet. But he could not bring himself to do that because that would have caused him to come into a political disagreement with the activists on the Democrat side of the Judiciary Committee, the most polarized committee on the Hill. Now that's a presumption on my part on his motive, but it seems to fit a pattern. He admitted that he has an investigation going on looking into Arizona immigration law. And when I made the point that the President of the United States had announced that he had directed the Attorney General to look into Arizona immigration law, I heard no rebuttal. I twice presented to Attorney General Holder that the President has directed that this happens. So if the President of the United States directs the Attorney General to conduct an investigation into State statute, on what basis is the follow-up question to Attorney General Holder? They've been investigating now for some weeks. And what is the basis of your investigation? Well, Constitution, statutory, the principle of Federal preemption of State law. Now that's a general answer that you can pick up in any law school or many articles in the newspapers these days about Arizona law itself. And so when I followed up with a question of specifically where in the Constitution do you have concern about Arizona law and where in the Federal statute would you have concern about Arizona law perhaps violating the Federal statute and stretching beyond the bounds of Federal preemption, I got a generalized answer that, Well, it's been the practice that the Federal Government has dealt with immigration law. The practice, the implication. We have the Justice Department investigating Arizona. We have the Justice Department investigating Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County. They have targeted him for months and months and months because he's politically incorrect. He enforces Federal immigration law. It violates the activists that help support the President. But we can't find out that it violates any Federal statute, any constitutional requirement that's there. I believe from what I've seen--and I've visited Tent City and Sheriff Joe Arpaio on the border and I have gone to that border many times. And I'll go back again, Mr. Speaker. But when we have an Attorney General that's committing the resources of the United States and the resources of the taxpayers to investigate a law in Arizona that enjoys at least 70 percent support of the people of Arizona, a significant majority of the support of the people across this country--that mirrors Federal law, and when you have a Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, who's a former Governor of the State of Arizona, who admittedly had her tugs of war with Sheriff Joe Arpaio when she was the Governor and he was the sheriff, one would think that an administration, a President of the United States, an Attorney General, a Secretary of Homeland Security would have jumped for joy that Arizonans have decided to use their State resources to enforce the Federal immigration laws that the Federal Government is not enforcing adequately enough. Instead of jumping for joy, instead of going down and giving Sheriff Joe Arpaio a high-five or maybe the Governor of Arizona another high- five or a good ``atta girl'' for signing that bill and for the work that was done in the State legislature, particularly that led by Russell Pearce, whom I have watched for some time and appreciate a great deal--we can't have the Federal Government, obviously, supporting something that the American people want, the Arizonans demand. It was almost a primal scream of desperation that caused the Arizona legislature to pass the legislation that mirrored Federal law so that they are going to prohibit sanctuary cities within Arizona and require local law enforcement to support Federal immigration law by setting up a State law that makes it against the law to break Federal immigration law. That's not technically correct, but it is the analysis that best describes it, Mr. Speaker. Our Attorney General is spending resources to investigate Arizona and still can't point to a single place in the United States Constitution or a single Federal statute that he thinks could be the cause of concern. When I asked him, he said, Well, it's under investigation, and it's inconclusive at this point. Well, I read through the Constitution and I came to a conclusion. As far as the constitutional understanding is concerned, it is this: there's two places in the Constitution that could be relevant with regard to Arizona immigration law. One place where it says the Federal Government has a responsibility to guard against foreign invasion. Well, now, we could talk about what a foreign invasion is, but when it's 4 million people a year pouring across our border illegally and at best we can interdict a fourth of them; when we have twice the size of Santa Anna's army coming across our border every night, one might define that as an invasion. They aren't all carrying weapons. In fact, very few of them are. But I will guarantee you there have been more weapons carried across that border in the hands of people who are coming in here illegally than all the weapons that were carried in the hands of Santa Anna's army when he came across into Texas that 150-some years ago. So, Mr. Speaker, the Constitution requires the Federal Government to defend against invasion, but it doesn't prohibit the States from defending themselves against invasion. I would hope the Attorney General would understand that principle. I address that because there's only two places in the Constitution that address immigration. And I think that I have handled that issue so that it's essentially not rebuttable. Then the other point is article I, section 8 of the Constitution, the other place where immigration is dealt with, where it says that Congress shall have the power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization. A uniform rule of naturalization. Well, what can that be? That means that Congress sets the legal immigration laws with regard to how people come into this country and become citizens. We do that. We have set those standards. But there's nothing in the Constitution that prohibits the States from passing their own immigration laws unless they are attempting to preempt existing Federal law or unless those laws are unconstitutional. So one would think that an Attorney General that had all of these resources investigating Arizona law and was aware of the investigations that are going on of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, when there are allegations of violations of civil rights down in Maricopa County, all the resources poured into that, I've yet to find any substance. And still, millions of dollars are being spent, all kinds of time is being burned. There's all kinds of politicization going on. And the Attorney General swears there is not, that his office will not be political. Well, I will submit, Mr. Speaker, that when the President of the United States says, Here's what could happen under Arizona law if a mother and her daughter are going out to get some ice cream, somebody can come along and say, Where are your papers? Anybody remember that? I do, Mr. Speaker. And so that was making this law political. The President of the United States made it political. And he's the man that ordered a Justice Department investigation of Arizona? And he alleges-- the President alleges--that it's race-based and racially motivated when the law itself specifically prohibits that from happening. We can't have the presumption on the part of the President of the United States or the Attorney General that the law enforcement officers in Arizona are motivated by something other than race. Maybe they're motivated to support the rule of law. Couldn't we presume that that's it? That's the case. That's their oath. Can't we tell by their practice that they have enough to do without targeting? Look at the crime across Arizona. Phoenix, the second highest in the hemisphere. And kidnapping. The kidnapping, the smuggling, the deaths, the murder rate, crime rates over the last 10 years in Arizona have gone up. The illegal border crossings may have tempered down just a little bit, but on the other hand, it might just be that Janet Napolitano's operation isn't as aggressive as it was under even Michael Chertoff. But I suspect that even then they had diminished their enforcement. When you make the argument that your interdictions on the border have gone down, therefore you're getting the border under control, it might just be you're not doing your job as aggressively as you were before. There can be twice as many people crossing the border, and you can be picking up half as many as you were before. But that doesn't mean the half as many you're picking up equates into fewer people crossing the border. That may be. In fact, I expect it is true that fewer people are crossing the border. But it doesn't equate that the enforcement is any better than it was. It may be better. It may be worse. But it's not conclusive. What is conclusive here is the Department of Justice has become political. It is a political tool. It saddens me to see this and hear this and to have to make this argument here on the floor of the House. But I didn't come, Mr. Speaker, lightly armed. I only point out the Arizona component of this because that's the dialogue that just took place within the last hour or so. The Department of Justice is investigating Arizona for constitutional statutory violations but cannot point their finger to a single place in the Constitution or a single controlling Federal statute. And, by the way, I would point out also that, according to Federal case law, the precedence that we can find, that there is ample precedent that local law enforcement has the authority to enforce Federal immigration law, with or without a 287(g) agreement and a memorandum of understanding, which has been somewhat gutted by Secretary Napolitano. The precedent that I would cite would be U.S. v. Santana-Garcia, a Supreme Court decision that establishes that local government has the ability--local law enforcement--has the constitutional authority to help enforce Federal immigration law. I would go on further with this: that Sheriff Joe Arpaio is on solid ground. They would have found a way to crack him by now if he were not. It's been, I believe, politically motivated. The effort to go down and make race the issue when it is law enforcement that is the problem and that Federal immigration law that's not being adequately enforced is the problem. The Attorney General should be able to at least defend the actions of his Justice Department, even though implicitly agreed that the President had directed that there be an investigation. Based on what? The President's supposition that a mother and her daughter would be perhaps of the wrong skin tone and they would be picked up and asked for their identification because they went out to get some ice cream? It seems the President has an inclination to engage in these kinds of things. When he had an Irish cop and a black professor, who did he side with? He jumped to a conclusion without having heard the facts, and he ended up having to have a beer summit. Well, maybe we could have a summit with Sheriff Joe Arpaio on the South Lawn of the White House, and they could sit down at the picnic table together and discuss these things so that all of the resources of the Federal Government don't have to be tied up in knots on these suppositions for the unfounded presumption that there is something unconstitutional about Arizona law or something that violates Federal statute. I see that I am joined on the floor by the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, who has just come from the hearing of the Attorney General. I would be so happy to yield as much time as he may consume to Mr. Smith from Texas and thank him for joining me here on the floor.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, and I asked if the gentleman from Texas could yield for a question before he moves on to his other important duties. And that is, I am a bit perplexed that the Attorney General couldn't or wouldn't point to a part of the Constitution that he thought might be violated by Arizona law or point to a Federal statute that might be violated by Arizona law or point to a piece of Federal case law that would prohibit local law enforcement from enforcing Federal immigration law. And would the gentleman from Texas have any idea how that question might have been answered by an Attorney General better informed?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, and I very much thank the gentleman from Texas for illuminating the subject matter and especially the polling component of this. One would think that the Attorney General, as he was preparing to come before the Judiciary Committee-- and historically, the Attorney General has briefed himself for several days with people who will ask questions and, I will say, play out a role so that he can be tested, prepared, and ready to testify before Congress. One would believe that the Attorney General, that the first thing that he would be briefed on is Arizona immigration law. The Justice Department is investigating Arizona, and yet there seems to be not a realization of what's going on. He admits to the investigation. And to not have read the law and perhaps not read the summary---- Mr. Speaker, I need to put the little bit of this in the Record from memory of what I have read of the immigration law, which is actually most of it. That it mirrors Federal immigration law, and it makes it against the law to violate Federal immigration law, but it's the law that is set up--it's mirrored and written by the State of Arizona. And I thought I had a summary of it here. Should I be able to find that, I will speak to it factually, but otherwise from memory. But in any case, it allows for--if a law enforcement officer encounters someone in the normal practice of their doing their duties, they have to have probable cause to stop someone. Probable cause might be speeding, an accident, a crime that's taken place, a traffic violation. And once they pull over a vehicle, for example, they can ask for identification, like they would for anyone that is driving under any other stop. If then at that point, they have probable cause to stop the vehicle or encounter an individual, then, if the identification isn't adequate for, let's say, driving, then there's a reasonable suspicion for that officer to ask a few more questions. That officer can ask some questions such as: Where are you going? What are you doing? Where are you coming from? Where were you born? Why don't you have a driver's license? And if the individual hands the officer a Matricula Consular card, that's pretty much conclusive evidence that they are in the United States illegally, and there isn't any other purpose to have one other than to function in the United States by those entities that will recognize it. It's issued by the Mexican consulate. It's not a valid U.S. ID. And if they're U.S. citizens or if they are lawfully present in the United States, they will have immigration documents or U.S. identification. And the immigration documents for legal immigrants, they are required to carry on their person. So people lawfully present in the United States who are not citizens--let's just say they have a green card, and that green card allows them to legally work in the United States, they are required to carry it on their person if they're 18 years old or older at all times. Arizona law just respects that. That's a Federal law. Arizona law respects that as well. So this is probable cause to stop someone, reasonable suspicion that they're unlawfully present in the United States in order to follow through with any further questions or any further inquiry. Now if people boil out of the back of the van and start to run off into the desert, that's more than reasonable suspicion. And yet the objections that are coming from the people who are protesting against Arizona law are the objections that we're hearing from--I guess before the Judiciary Committee and a person of Representative Judy Chu, who already alleges that Arizona's law is cruel and it institutionalizes racial profiling. No, it prohibits racial profiling as far as an exclusive component of reasonable suspicion or probable cause. She said, People are already detained because they forgot their driver's license at home. Who's doing that? They're not detaining people because of that, not under the color of this new Arizona immigration law, because it's not enacted yet. We're already hearing the fears, and the Attorney General is investigating because the President has apparently decided for some political reason that they need to do something to suppress Arizona from enforcing Federal immigration law, instead of saying, attaboy, attagirl. It's about time that the State stepped up to help out of frustration. If the Federal Government had done their job, there wouldn't be an Arizona immigration law. But they are not. They are ineffective. They lack the will. And that's our problem. It's not lack of resources; it's lack of will to enforce Federal immigration law. It's not lack of resources. Three years ago or so, a little bit more, we were spending $8 billion to protect our southern border. That's a 2,000 mile border. So, Mr. Speaker, I know you've already done the math. That's $4 million a mile, $4 million a mile to protect our southern border, and I said then, If you give me $4 million to protect a mile of border, I will be happy to take that check, and I can warranty my work. I could guarantee you that we aren't going to let anybody cross that mile for $4 million. Now the price has gone from $8 billion to protect our 2,000-mile southern border to $12 billion to protect our border, and still we have ineffectiveness because we have a lack of will and a lack of clarity of mission. And it comes from the top down. If it's clear that the President doesn't want the borders enforced, the Secretary of Homeland Security seems to not want to enforce against illegal workers in the workplace. She seems to want to just simply posture to enforce against employers. Now I admit that there are many Border Patrol officers and CBP personnel and ICE personnel who go to work every day who do their job very well. In fact, I congratulate them for that. They want to do that. They put their lives on the line every day. They deserve our support. They deserve our adulation many times. But they're burdened by a lack of mission, and even though the mission is posted on the wall down at the station in Nogales, that mission has got to be something that the top articulates. And if the President of the United States articulates something else, when Arizona passes an immigration law that mirrors Federal law, and the President attacks Arizona law and inflames public fears in an erroneous fashion, what more could he do to undermine Arizona law and Federal immigration law? He has said to everyone that's enforcing--not just local law enforcement that's enforcing immigration law. He has said to all of his Federal officers from the White House down, ICE, CBP, Border Patrol, all of them, well, he really doesn't want to see immigration law enforced. And it's clear, of course, that he doesn't want to have racial profiling used, and I would agree with him--as an exclusive component. However, if it's part of the other indicators, it had better be used. Would we say that we can't use as an indicator when it comes time to enforce the law against international terrorism that a young Middle Eastern male cannot be considered as one of the factors? We've kind of said that when people go through the airport. I think it's wrong. I think it's foolish. And in fact, Mr. Speaker, I think it's downright stupid to set aside our common sense for the sake of political correctness. So an Arizona law, though, goes to great lengths to make it clear that race cannot be the sole factor when evaluating reasonable suspicion or probable cause. How much further could they go? It reminds me of the official English law that I spent actually 6 years getting established in Iowa. We have demonstrations and protesters. I would say, Come into my office, sit down, tell me what your concerns are. Hour after hour, I listened. We had witnesses before the committee. And it was about how their language would be disparaged. So we wrote right into the law that it was unlawful to disparage any language in Iowa other than English. And do you know, I don't know that anybody's disparaged English either, but they haven't disparaged any other language in Iowa. These fears that are mounted by that 1 percent or 2 percent or 3 percent of the aggressive liberals, they wouldn't come to pass. They didn't come to pass when we passed an official language law in Iowa or the 20-some other States. And furthermore, the fear about reasonable suspicion, giving law enforcement an excuse to target someone that they don't like because of racial reasons, that isn't going to come to pass. It may be a wild exception somewhere out there in the barest little minority of law enforcement officers, but it's not going to come to pass. This is a presumption that the law enforcement officers are racist and that they're biased and that they're bigoted against a particular race. And many of the communities in Arizona have a significant percentage--and in some communities, a majority of their law enforcement officers are Hispanic, and yet we're going to label all law enforcement officers in Arizona as racist without one scintilla of evidence and have allegations by Members of Congress, as Ms. Chu, or the President of the United States, or, by his silence, or refusal, or his reluctance, I should say, to respond to the points that I raised with him, the Attorney General of the United States. It creates a perception that this is a racist society and that we can't even have logical laws that uphold the rule of law because somebody will abuse those and stretch the limits and target someone. Now I will tell you, and we heard from Mr. Smith, statistically, the law enforcement officers in Arizona have enough to do without that. They are faced with the highest kidnapping rate in the United States, second highest in the entire hemisphere. They have murder rates that have gone up, kidnapping rates, drug smuggling rates that have gone up, and violence that has gone up. The coyotes are taking the lawlessness from Mexico into the United States. Ninety percent of the illegal drugs consumed in America come from or through Mexico. And 100 percent, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency, 100 percent of the illegal distribution chains in America have at least one link that is the link that is provided by an illegal that is in the United States. So, if by some magical formula everybody woke up tomorrow morning in a country that they were lawfully residing in, it would at least temporarily sever every illegal drug distribution chain in America. Now, it probably wouldn't take very long to rebuild some of those, and it would take longer to rebuild more of those, and eventually we would still have this illegal drug distribution chain in America because the problem we have is that the demand for illegal drugs in this country is so powerful and so great, somebody is going to find a way to meet that demand. Until this Nation understands that we have to line up against the consumption of illegal drugs and shut down that magnet that brings illegal drugs into America, we are going to have billions of dollars come out of our economy that are going to flow to and through Mexico to other points where drugs are originated. We have $60 billion a year that are wired out of the United States to points south; about half of that to Mexico, and the other half goes to the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. About $30 billion into Mexico, about $30 billion to points south. Some would argue that those are legitimate wages that are being wired back to family and loved ones. Yes, I would agree some of that is legitimate wages that are being wired back to family and loved ones in those countries of origin of people who are working here in the United States. A lot of it is illegal wages that is going south that should not have been earned in the first place if we had enforced our immigration law. But a whole lot is being wired, shipped, laundered out of the United States to pay for the drug buys going south in places like Mexico and on down through Central America to South America. And we don't have a Drug Enforcement Agency that understands this equation adequately enough to intercept them. I have talked to them. I don't blame them entirely for that. We need a mission at the top. The President of the United States has got to articulate a mission. Instead, he is playing race bait games to undermine the law enforcement in the State of Arizona and across the country, and undermining the efforts of our Border Patrol, ICE, and customs border protection. And, by the way, the Shadow Wolves down there, the cells whom I admire so much and have a good friendship with, they are out there doing their job every day. The Attorney General isn't willing, cannot, and I asked the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee to point out for me what I am missing in the Constitution that would prohibit Arizona from passing an immigration law like they did, or what is in the Federal code that would prohibit them from doing so, or what is in case law that might apply to that. And, of course, Mr. Smith, an excellent lawyer with a wonderful staff in his own right, doesn't fill out the answers to the those questions because I don't believe there are any. And I don't believe the Attorney General fills out the answers to those questions because I don't believe there are any. When I raised the issue that the office of the Department of Justice is playing, is politically motivated, of course he rebuts that. He has to give the ``I am pure'' and ``we don't do political things within my department.'' Well, I will raise some points that I believe are definitive rebuttals to that. I believe that the Justice Department has demonstrated a political nature well beyond immigration, and I would take us to the case of the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of the United States of America, and that was in Philadelphia in a previous election where we have video of members of the New Black Panthers standing outside of a polling place in paramilitary uniforms and berets, and one of them is standing there with a billy club, a nightstick, smacking it into his hand and calling people, white people coming in to vote, calling them ``crackers'' and telling them that they are going to take over the country and he is going to be out of power, those white people. It was intimidating to the individual that collected that film. There is much other investigation which has gone on, and this investigation that was carried on by the Justice Department before President Obama swore into office and before Eric Holder became the Attorney General, there was an open-and-shut case that was completed against the Black Panthers that were intimidating voters. And I don't believe I need to say at this point ``allegedly,'' because I have seen the film. It is the most open-and-shut case. But, when Eric Holder took office shortly after that, we saw the most open-and-shut case in the history of America of voter intimidation cancelled by the Justice Department. The case was there. They had everything but a plea, and perhaps they had a plea and I didn't verify that. Now, the New Black Panther Party, there were two lawyers involved in the dismissal of this who have a bit of a reputation: Steve Rosenbaum and Loretta King. According to an article written in the National Review by Hans von Spakovsky, who has a personal knowledge of most of the lawyers involved in Justice on these issues, that Rosenbaum and King are two of the worst political hacks to be found in the career ranks of the civil rights division. That is an exact quote out of his article. He goes on and says: I have previously written about King's ambition to run for office in Maryland and on the Democratic ticket. But putting that aside, Rosenbaum hasn't worked on a voting case since he left the voting section in 1994; yet he came in in 2009 to cancel the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of the United States. That is the New Black Panther Party members standing in paramilitary uniforms and berets, billy club in hand, calling white voters coming in ``crackers'' and intimidating them, and at least implicitly threatening them. And they cancelled the investigation when we have video of the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of America. And then von Spakovsky goes on in his article to say that Loretta King hasn't worked on a voting case since she left the voting section in 1996. Yet the assistant attorney general on that case was Thomas Perez, who testified before the Judiciary Committee, and I believe he did so dishonestly, not just deceptively, when he told us they had achieved the highest punishment allowable under law. That was not true. That was not true. They accepted simply an injunction to prohibit one of those four members of the New Black Panther Party from doing the same thing again in the next election at the same location. That's the highest penalty allowed by law for intimidating voters in America? When the very underpinnings for our Constitution are legitimate elections, and even as important as legitimate elections it is the American people having faith in the legitimacy of our elections, canceled the case. And he said that according to Tom Perez, the assistant attorney general, who should have to answer for some of this, he had two attorneys who had deep experience and he relied on their professional experience, their 60 years. Well, their 60 years didn't have to do with civil rights cases in the voter rights case, at least since 1994 or 1996. And there were others that were involved in this that actually did the investigation that had substantial experience. In fact, they have more than 75 years between the two of them, the investigators that were involved in the actual investigation of that suit. And by the way, Tom Perez, the assistant attorney general, in his testimony twice claimed that rule 11 mandated that the case be dismissed. Rule 11 provides sanction against lawyers who file frivolous and unwarranted lawsuits. So our Department of Justice investigators, our attorneys trained specifically in that, who are bringing a lawsuit against voter intimidation for the New Black Panthers Party, when we have them on videotape, were intimidated because they thought there would be a rule 11 brought against them and there would be damages that would have to be paid because their investigation was frivolous? Frivolous or unwarranted, to be specific with the language. But to any lawyer, that is incendiary, to allege that a charge, a case that is being investigated professionally and legitimately might have a rule 11 brought against it and they had to drop it. It is an insult to the professionalism of our investigating attorneys whose names in this article are Coates and Adams. And they have prohibited them from defending themselves against such a charge, that they might have pursued a meritless case. And the Attorney General, in this case Perez, the assistant attorney general, operating under the authority of Eric Holder, has even ordered these attorneys not to comply with subpoenas before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights when the law directs that they do so, the Federal law, and directs all these Federal agencies to ``cooperate fully with the commission.'' And the Justice Department isn't political? When they can cancel the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of the United States of America, I submit that is starkly and bitterly political and the direction that was given by Loretta King would not cause me so much to focus on her if I didn't see her name pop up elsewhere. Well, it turns out that Loretta King, long time supposedly not a political appointment of the Department of Justice, has been involved in some other cases, cases in which attorney's fees were awarded against the Justice Department, and that would be rule 11. In the civil rights division of the Justice Department for filing a meritless case, Loretta King, whom Perez claims made the dismissal decision, and I accept that description because her name pops up enough other place so I believe that is true, was one of the lawyers on record in the case of Johnson v. Miller, which was a redistricting case that went all of the way to the Supreme Court. And not only did Loretta King lose that case, but both the Supreme Court and the Federal district court severely criticized the civil rights division's handling of the case. They found its practices ``disturbing.'' The district court found ``considerable influence of the ACLU's advocacy on the voting rights decisions of the United States Attorney General to be an embarrassment.'' So to read this in its continuity for the benefit of your attention, ``The Supreme Court and the Federal district court severely criticized the civil rights division's handing of the case, finding its practices disturbing. The district court found the considerable influence of the ACLU's advocacy on the voting rights decisions of the United States Attorney General to be an embarrassment. It was also surprising that the Department of Justice was so blind to this impropriety, especially in a role as sensitive as that of preserving the fundamental right to vote.'' This is what is going on with the case that Loretta King worked on that was rejected by both the district court and the Supreme Court. It went all of the way to the Supreme Court. The American taxpayers were forced to pay $587,000 in attorneys' fees and costs that were awarded to the defendants to compensate them for an unwarranted lawsuit, one in which Loretta King and the other Justice Department lawyers commanded the State of Georgia, as the Supreme Court noted, to engage in ``presumptively unconstitutional race-based districting.'' That's what we are working with. So it looks like the antithesis of the allegation made by the assistant attorney general. It looks like Loretta King has been involved in some cases that had to do with race-based quota direction and distorting I think equal protection under the law. And this isn't the only case for Loretta King. I have named two now. She is a principal player in the dismissal of the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of America in Philadelphia, the New Black Panthers Party. She's an attorney in the case that has been reversed by the United States Supreme Court resulting in $587,000 in settlement costs because of the unjust case that was brought before the Court. And now I move, Madam Speaker, to the third component of this, and this is Kinston, North Carolina. In Kinston, North Carolina, they had a referendum. They had a vote to decide to take their local elections and move them away from partisanship, to make them nonpartisan, so that the candidates that would be on the ballot for mayor and city council and whatever offices they may have in that city of Kinston, North Carolina, would not be labeled as Republicans or Democrats. They would be labeled instead as candidates to serve their community. Well, it happens, that's the case in most of the city government in the United States. They are nonpartisan. People want to elect a mayor that's not a Democrat or a Republican, a mayor that's going to serve them in their community. They want to elect city council members of the same thing. They don't want them identified as Republicans or Democrats, and I'm glad that it is that way, as nonpartisan as possible in local government. And whenever local government passes a referendum to make their elections and their office holders nonpartisan, we should champion that. We should be working against partisanship. But the opposite happened in the case of the decision of the Department of Justice. Now, you might ask yourself, Madam Speaker, why would the Department of Justice stick their nose in a local decision. Madam Speaker, you might ask yourself, had you been focusing on my dialogue here, why local governments would want to have a referendum, why they would want it to be nonpartisan. We know the answer. They want to get away from the bitter partisanship. But furthermore, Madam Speaker, you might ask, why would the Justice Department inject themselves into a local political decision and deny Kinston, North Carolina's decision made by a significant majority of their people that they wanted their people elected, not as Republicans or Democrats, but just simply as nonpartisan servants of their community. Well, it happens that Kinston, North Carolina, is one of those covered districts that are defined under some of the Voting Rights Act that was authorized, reauthorized here some three or more years ago in the United States Congress. These covered districts cannot change anything within their election law or practices without being approved by the Justice Department, the civil rights division of the Justice Department. And so if you're in a covered district--now, covered districts are generally those districts that would have had a high percentage of minorities in them, presumably, also that have a history of, let's say, the institutionalization of Jim Crow laws or racism that goes back to the civil rights era of the 50s and 60s. When the Civil Rights Act was passed in, I'm guessing now, I believe it was 1964 or 1965, these covered districts were restricted from making changes in their election practices without approval of the Justice Department, in fact the civil rights division of the Justice Department. So in Kinston, North Carolina, or many other places across the country, if they had a voting booth that was in an old city hall building and the city hall was falling down, and they wanted to move that voting booth across the street into the new city hall building, they would have to get the approval of the Justice Department to move that voting booth over there, and the Justice Department would then be doing an evaluation as to whether that voting booth was being moved for some race reason. That's the minutiae of what's going on. It's a bigger picture, and there are other ways to analyze it. But I'll boil it down to the minutiae because this is minutiae, Madam Speaker. This Kinston, North Carolina argument is minutiae. They decided they wanted to have nonpartisan elections. I couldn't imagine why that would be race based or have anything to do with race. Well, they were denied, and the will of the people in Kinston, North Carolina, was wiped out and negated by a decision that was written by Loretta King, who said, and when the case referred to a change to nonpartisan elections, and I have the letter that goes to the city and it says this--now, imagine, this thinking. It is beyond my ability to get my mind around this. It says: Removing the partisan cue in municipal elections will, in all likelihood, eliminate the single factor that allows black candidates to be elected to office. Now, how could anyone get to this point where, if your motive is for black candidates to be elected to office, you have to identify them apparently as Democrats, or otherwise people going to the polls wouldn't know how to vote for the black candidate if they didn't have a D by their name. This is, if there's a rationale in Loretta King's writing, that's it. And it's pretty much a stretch, in my view. But she writes this, and I'll repeat this into the Record, Madam Speaker, because this is breathtaking: removing the partisan cue in municipal elections, meaning identifying as either Democrat or Republican, the D or the R, in all likelihood, would eliminate the single factor. Eliminate. Now it didn't say one of the factors or a primary factor. It said it would eliminate the single factor that allows black candidates to be elected to office. In other words, she's saying if you don't have a D by your name and you're a black candidate, you can't be elected to office. It's the single factor, according to her interpretation. So she wiped out the will of the people of Kinston, North Carolina, with this Justice Department decision under the hand of Loretta King. And she goes on and writes: In Kinston elections voters base their choice more on the race of a candidate rather than on his or her political affiliation. Wow. Do I read that that she's defining the people in Kinston, North Carolina, as racists at their core? They base their choice more on the race of the candidate than on their political affiliation. And she goes on to write: Without either the appeal to party loyalty or the ability to vote a straight ticket, the limited remaining support from white voters for a black candidate will diminish even more. And given that the city's electorate is overwhelmingly Democratic, while the motivating factor for this change may be partisan, the effect will be strictly racial. Oh, my gracious. These kind of decisions, the decision that wipes out the will of the people of Kinston, North Carolina, identifies them as a bunch of racists that can't decide who they want to be their mayor, without having a label of an R or a D beside them because that's an indicator of race. A D is an indicator that you're more likely a minority candidate apparently, according to her analysis. There's nothing here that's based on anything that has to do with law, except that it tears asunder the equal protection clause of the Constitution that makes it a race-based decision on her part, that sets up and accuses people of being racist. And by the way, the Voting Rights Act and the covered district component of this label somebody's granddaughter who was born a generation and a half or two after her grandfather was labeled a racist by this law, also a racist. It makes it, you inherit racism under this covered district Voting Rights Act. But I suggest Attorney General Holder, if he's going to be a nonpoliticized Justice Department, has an obligation to take a look at all of the actions of Loretta King. If she can go in and wipe out the will of the people of Kinston, North Carolina, define them all as a group of, well, a significant majority of them anyway, as a group of racists, if she can cancel the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of the United States of America, if she can bring a case that's so unmerited that it ends up costing the taxpayers $587,000 under rule 11, and if the Justice Department, under the direction of Eric Holder and under the decision and under-the-oath testimony of Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez, if the Justice Department can do the things that they have done and argue that they had to close the Black Panthers voter intimidation case because of the fear of rule 11 when, in fact, it's the other way around, and the Attorney General of the United States would sit before the Judiciary Committee an hour and a half or so ago and tell this Nation that his office isn't politicized, with all of this evidence to the contrary, and put all of the resources that he has into the investigation of Arizona immigration law, the constitutionality of it, whether there's a Federal statute that prohibits it or whether there's any case law out there, any case precedents that might affect it, and still not speak to any of those three issues, so the resources of the United States of America are being used in a politicized fashion, Madam Speaker, and I think I have made my case. I appreciate your attention. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

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

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, I thank the gentleman from Missouri for heading up this Special Order hour and for talking so much common sense into the Record himself. And as we watched, there are two different paths one can follow. The road that's being traveled by the Obama administration and the Pelosi House and the Reid Senate is a road down the path of Keynesian economics on steroids. And the path that we should have followed, and the path that we've got to get back to, is more of the Adam Smith, free market component of our free enterprise economy. And if we look at all of the components of this free market that have been nationalized, taken over, or are under a great threat of this Congress taking them over, we can add up, as I've many times said, the banks, the insurance companies, Fannie and Freddie and the car companies, the student loan program completely, the nationalization of our bodies under Obamacare, our skin and everything inside it. Now we have the financial services bill sitting over there in the Senate about ready to get shoved out of there and back here for a conference report, and it could end up on the President's desk. If we add all of that up, and if we add to that cap-and-tax, which is another huge endeavor on the part of the President, the Speaker and the majority leader in the Senate----

Mr. KING of Iowa. Let me add up the percentages of the formerly private sector from a year and a half ago, and it comes to 74 percent of the private sector would be either nationalized today or nationalized with the two acts that are pending that they're trying to bring at us, that being cap-and-trade and the financial services, Mr. Akin, and I'd yield back.

Mr. KING of Iowa. We are at least at 51 percent that has been nationalized, and that's the banks, the insurance, Fannie and Freddie, the car companies, and then Obamacare. That's 51 percent.

Mr. KING of Iowa. It's based upon the private sector activity as analyzed by Dr. Boyle of Arizona State University, who's written the analysis and the article on it, Mr. Akin.

Mr. KING of Iowa. We have seen history being made. And those things are what one would consider to be a done deal. And then we are on the cusp of the financial regulations, which is another 15 percent of the economy some say. And then add to that another 8 percent, and which I think is a very low estimate of what cap-and-trade or cap-and-tax would actually do to us. So I don't know what's left. Whatever part of the economy they would like to take over. But from my standpoint, every bit of free enterprise that's out there increases the vitality of Americans. They have got a reward for working and producing more effectively. It's not enough to work hard; you have got to work smart, too. And everything that the Federal Government takes over diminishes the vitality of the American worker and lowers the average annual productivity of our American people, which diminishes us as a people and reduces our gross domestic product and takes our standard of living down.