Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. It has been completely opaque. It is not a transparent process, and it is not consistent with the word, with the pledged oath of the President of the United States, which was that there would be an open, transparent process that would be negotiated on C-SPAN.

Mr. KING of Iowa. We're looking at 17.5 percent--round it up to 18 percent--of the economy swallowed up by the Federal Government--and the gentleman from Michigan didn't say it--under the thumb of the health choices czar, who is the guy who would write all the rules after the legislation would be drafted. The rules would be written after that, and he would then set the terms for every health insurance policy and company in America.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I happen to know the answer: 3,425 times.

Mr. KING of Iowa. It says ``shall'' 3,425 times, but the one time that it says ``may'' is quite interesting, which is that the Members may enroll in the Federal policy. It's not Members of Congress shall live under the laws they pass. They may if they choose. The gentleman from Missouri.

Mr. KING of Iowa. And 25.

Mr. KING of Iowa. It's the vitality in America that we want to preserve here. There is something unique about being an American. We aren't just an extension of Europe; we aren't just an amalgam of all the donor cultures that are here. We got the cream off the crop of every one that sent people to America. That vitality that comes from having a dream, that gave them the vision to find a way to get on a ship to come here, and they didn't all stay here. Some of them couldn't cut it in this competitive meritocracy that we have created. Some of them went back, not very many. But the ones that stayed were the best that any of the donor countries had to offer. That dream of freedom, founded upon the rule of law, the right to property, the constitutional foundation, the pillars of American exceptionalism, is what is at stake here in this Congress this week in the biggest way that I can remember in my lifetime. That's why, Mr. Speaker, we have called for the American people to come to this city, come to this Capitol. We are gathering together at noon on Thursday, and we are asking everybody in America that can get here, if you are close enough to drive, they need to drive. If they need to get on a plane, do that, and join us at noon, in the afternoon and thereafter go find Members of Congress, look them in the eye. Let them see the whites of your eyes. Let them look into your pupils and look into your soul. Tell them don't take away our freedom with this 1,990-page bill, the one that there is no one can understand; but it's noon on Thursday. Those that can't make it here need to go to the district offices as close to their home as they can or into the districts of the people that are sitting on the fence and tell them, save my freedom, or I will take your job. That's the message that needs to come. Those that can't go out that day need to pick up the phone and jam the phone lines. This can be done. This bill can be killed. It needs to be killed for the sake of freedom, for the freedom that was found with the pilgrims when they came here, for the freedom that was fought for with every generation of Americans, for those that are buried out at Arlington and around the world. We can't be turning America into a socialist state. Those companies that I mentioned at the beginning that have been nationalized, that's one-third of our private sector. If that 18 percent of the health care industry, one-sixth of our economy is added to that, we are at or over half of the private sector nationalized in the last year. We can't stand that. By the way, there are flash cards that are there, that are put out by USCIS, Citizenship and Immigration Services. In those flash cards you will have to learn this if you want to become an American. One will be Who is the Father of our Country? ``George Washington'' on the other side. You can go down through the list. But there is one that has a question that says, What is the economic system of the United States? Back side, ``free enterprise capitalism.'' I would like to see if many of those in the administration today could actually pass that test. I am convinced they don't believe in it. This is about freedom, and we need to gather here in this Capitol Building on Thursday, at noon, at the building, around the building, around the grounds, in the congressional offices. The call needs to go out to everybody in America. For 2 months they said, what can I do? What can I do? The answer is, Come to this city. Help us all out. The gentleman from Missouri.

Mr. KING of Iowa. When you name it ``No Child Left Behind,'' then it gives it momentum. But what could you possibly name a 1,990-page socialized medicine bill to convince the American people it is a good idea?

Mr. KING of Iowa. It is pretty hard to take this President seriously when you look at a quote like this. This is a quote from the President. ``Here is what you need to know. First, I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits, either now nor the future. Period.'' Date, August 9, 2009. I was watching the town hall meeting.

Mr. KING of Iowa. The gentleman from Michigan could be completely in tune and understand political speak so precisely. Not one dime. It could be 11 cents, 9 cents, or $1.2 trillion, but not a dime.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I could tell you how much corn.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Here is the corn. One trillion dollars of corn is this. We will raise about $10 billion of corn in Iowa this year. If we can get it out of the field, we will have $10 billion worth. One hundred years is $1 trillion worth. One hundred years, all the corn we can raise, is $1 trillion. The Obama deficit is $9.7 trillion. That is all of the corn we can raise in 1,000 years. So you can look at it this way: The deficit created by this bill, the $1.2 trillion, would be about 120 years of all of the corn that we could raise in Iowa if we committed the entire amount, at today's market prices, marked up just a little because they have gone down over the last few weeks. That is what $1.2 trillion is. We could pay this thing off in 120 years in Iowa if we gave you all the proceeds from our corn crop. To put it into that kind of magnitude, for the national debt, the Obama deficit is 1,000 years of all of the corn we can raise in Iowa. And the overall national debt, national deficit added to the Obama deficit, is over $20 trillion. That is all the corn we can raise from the time of Christ until today if we had today's yields and today's market prices. That is what we are looking at. We are looking at something that is unsustainable, and the children and grandchildren yet to be born will be paying the interest, and maybe their children will start to pay the principal on this debt that is created.

Mr. KING of Iowa. A tax on oxygen bottles and all the medical equipment is there, but the tax on small businesses approaches half a trillion dollars too.

Mr. KING of Iowa. We are doing this at a time when the economy is as wobbly as it has been in our adult lifetimes, and we have been adults for a while, the three of us.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, to take us back and put this in a perspective, in 2006, Speaker Pelosi became the Speaker with a Democrat majority in this Congress. Charlie Rangel became the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. We had this whole series of Bush tax cuts that went into law May 28, 2003, that stimulated the economy, and they were the right thing to do to bring us out of the downward decline that we were in. And the chairman, Charlie Rangel, went before news media after news media, pundit after pundit, and they asked him a whole series of questions: Which one of the Bush tax cuts will you save? Which ones do you want to eliminate? Which ones do you like? How would you configure these taxes? There never was a straight answer out of the whole bunch. But in the process of elimination, over a period of about 5 weeks, it was determined that Charlie Rangel didn't support any of these taxes. And in that period of time, by February, we saw industrial investment drop in this country dramatically, and that, I believe, was the first indicator of what was going to happen to our economy. Since that period of time, capital is smart. It will always do the rational thing. Well, when capital sees that it gets a tax increase, it invests less, takes less risk, because there is less return on that investment. That started in 2007, February 2007, and it has been in a decline ever since, until such time as we end up with the Henry Paulsen $700 billion TARP money in this government that decided they want to borrow trillions of dollars and buy up the private sector of the United States. By the way, one can go to the Web site, the socialist Web site, dsausa.org, the Democratic Socialists of America, and there's the playbook for much that's happened, and that's been posted and hanging out there for some years now. But they'll argue that, first, they're not communists. There's a difference. Socialists don't want to nationalize the barbershop. They just want to nationalize the Fortune 500 companies, the oil industry, the refinery industry, and the energy industry. And they don't need to do it all in one fell swoop. They can do it incrementally. A lot of Americans think it's happening almost in one fell swoop. But the playbook's there on that Web site. The people that are running this country do not believe in free enterprise. They believe in a managed economy that's run, and it's on the Web site of the socialists, companies run for the benefit of the people affected by them. Guess who that is? That's the workers or the customers, not the investors. That's why the investors got aced out in the car companies, as we heard from Mr. Hoekstra earlier. That's the backdrop, Mr. Akin.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Speaking of the turtle and the toad, the fence for the turtle, there's a reason and we've seen the film on why you can't supposedly put a fence on our southern border, and that's a little video of this toad that hops along and hops up and bumps his little nose on a fence, and, therefore, we surely couldn't have one to protect America because this toad can't figure out how to hop around it. So hunker down like a turtle in a what?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Or a turtle that's lying up against a fence. The gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I'd like to----

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I don't think it really does justice to what actually happened on this floor. It has to be brought to a close, and that is to give full credit to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert). He took that Parliamentary inquiry with the Speaker to the point where he said, Madam Speaker, if the House of Representatives passes a bill that doesn't exist, then is it possible to message a bill that doesn't exist to the United States Senate? And apparently it was, because that is what happened. A bill that didn't exist was passed. That was cap-and-trade. It was messaged to the United States Senate. Not one person in this Congress read that bill, let alone understood it. I know. I don't have to ask because it didn't exist at the time it was passed on the floor of the House of Representatives. Now I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Was there a right to escargot?

Mr. KING of Iowa. The thing that's forgotten by the other side is that they're creating a dependency society, a society that the more dependent people can be, the more government can grow, the stronger their political power is, Mr. Speaker. That's a piece over here. We are about independence and the vitality of that. You can't beat the guy that has a vested interest. The entrepreneur who started a business, who risked their capital. Like me, I had a negative net worth of $5,000. There was a way to go down from there. I had to make it work. I made no provision for failure. A lot of nights I worked all night and the next day to hold it together. When that happens, you can't beat that person that is determined that way. But if government replaces all of the needs and all of the wants and sets the safety net out there and turns the safety net into a hammock, the vitality of a nation is diminished. We have, if this bill should pass, it takes away another incentive for personal responsibility and it says to the person who is not responsible, you don't need to figure out how to climb up from here because we will deliver. We will do a delivery of anything it is that you want. It reminds me of FDR's ``Four Freedoms'' speech, and that is cut into the wall down at his monument, and I don't go there very often. And he got it a little wrong, four freedoms: Freedom of religion, freedom of speech. They are freedoms. They are constitutional freedoms. But the other two were freedom from want and freedom from fear. Freedom from want and freedom from fear, and some of America has been duped into thinking somehow those are rights. They are not rights at all; those are wants. Now we have gone to the point where we have catered so much to the people of this country and the lust for political power that we have said to people, You should have a constitutional right to freedom from fear of want. So don't worry, we'll give you everything you want. You don't have to fear not having what you want, a complete nanny state being created in this great gulp of socialism of one-sixth of our economy, 17.5 percent of our economy, and the freedom not just from cradle to grave, from conception to the grave. That is because this bill funds abortion. I don't think there is any way that the Speaker allows an amendment to come to this floor that will pass because you can't create a whole national health care act and make this thing work the way things are scenarioed today. This bill funds abortion. This bill funds illegals, gives them a health insurance policy, and it takes care from the time people are conceived, if they are fortunate enough to be allowed to be born, even though the subsidy will be there to promote abortion, it takes care all of the way up and makes children out of us all. A great diminishment of American freedom. And it would, if the Founding Fathers could stand in here tonight, the tears would be running down their cheeks thinking of what is staged to happen in this Congress. That is why we need the American people to come to this city and be here by noon on Thursday, gather together, come to the Capitol, surround this place, bring your passion and your love for this country, bring your patriotism, and bring your signs while you are at it. Mr. Speaker, the American people need to come here, to this Capitol, and we do the press conference at noon on Thursday. It will have a list of people that have migrated from across this country. People are coming from the Pacific Ocean. There are buses are coming in from State after State, converging on this city. People are dropping what is important. It is as if Paul Revere had ridden across America and said, Here is the call. Here is the call of your country.

Mr. KING of Iowa. And it was a Member of Congress.

Mr. KING of Iowa. There has been a little bit of that PC speech police effort, but I submit that this is a free country and we do have First Amendment rights. If we want to call it a rally, we can call it a rally. We can call the American people to come to this city and listen to the model of the people from Oregon who are willing to drop everything and head to the sound of the microphone, some would say head to the sound of the call to this mission to save freedom. At the core of everything that we have said here tonight is the threat to American freedom, and it can be saved by the American people and no one else. And nothing that we say in the debate, no Member of Congress can come up with a new argument that is going to sway the people that have gravitated towards their power and their political base, or their fear perhaps of maybe losing a chairmanship, or their desire to get a gavel and be a Chair, or somebody who needs a project in their district, all of those things have to be taking place. But what can happen is real American people can let these Members of Congress know that they want to hang onto their freedom. If they are willing to come from the Pacific Ocean, from the Midwest, from Michigan, across, up and down the Atlantic seaboard, to come into this city, the Members of Congress are going to have to hear and they are going to listen. And, by the way, I don't believe it will be something that a bill comes to the floor with the American people all around the outside of this Capitol and that the bill gets voted down on this floor. It doesn't really work that way. It would be more likely the majority leader coming to the microphone and saying, We have a few technicalities to work out on this bill, please stay tuned, and he will walk off the floor.

Mr. KING of Iowa. We have grown government instead.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I just went in and looked at a Web site, Constitution Daily, and it has on it this: 682 Federal agencies. Now, think about what that means. You have subagencies, departments of 682 regulators. And one thing that you will never see is a single company, not one company, a Fortune 500 company, a small little business, not one company in America would be foolish enough to put on their Web site or announce that they are in compliance with all the regulations that can be generated by 682 Federal agencies, let alone the State agencies that are there, plus the taxes that are on top of that and all the bureaucrats that have to be paid for out of the profit of the private sector companies. There are two sectors to this economy. There is the private sector that produces goods and services that have value. And the way you determine that value is, are people willing to pay for that service and it is essentially rooted in the necessities of life. And then the surplus income goes to recreational and those kinds of investments. That's the private sector. The other sector, the government sector, is--and that's where I am not very charitable--I say that's the parasitic sector. It drains the vitality off the private sector. And this government has been growing and growing the public sector, the government part, increasing taxes, hiring more regulators for the 682 agencies, and they want to create new agencies. There are 111 new agencies. So our 682, what would that be, 793 agencies? I have the list here of 111 new Federal bureaucracies created by the Pelosi health care bill. It's on both sides.

Mr. KING of Iowa. The Committee for the Establishment of the Native American Health and Wellness Foundation, that's the last one.