Steve King

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. I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma for yielding. Madam Speaker, first I would say that the canard of this court case that says the EPA will regulate CO2 regardless, it takes a little change in Interior approps to fix that. We're the United States Congress. We don't capitulate to cap-and-tax because a court made a ruling; we tell them what the American people think. Second, this bill freezes or rolls back oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, and biofuels. We'll have less. We are not going to break dependency on foreign oil with less energy. Iowa no-till corn farmers, 6.2 million acres; 5 million of them went in before 2001, and only 25 percent of those that went in afterwards will be able to qualify because they rotate. So we're down to 4.8 percent of the guys doing it right. One out of 20 are going to get any benefit out of the Peterson amendment that's been incorporated into this bill. And, furthermore, when Speaker Pelosi set up the cap-and-trade and bought the carbon credits, I can't verify that any of that changed any behavior for the positive. The ones I could verify had already been in place. We've seen the example in Spain. It's a colossal mistake there, a political and an economic error. This could be the most colossal mistake ever made in the history of the United States Congress.

Mr. KING of Iowa

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk made in order by the rule.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Chair, I yield myself 2 minutes. This is an amendment that takes a million dollars out and puts a million dollars in, and it comes from time I spent on the border and time I worked with our Border Patrol officers, our law enforcement officers on the border over the last several years. I have been down to the border, traveled along primarily the Arizona border, and had our law enforcement officers point to the pinnacles and say, There are drug lookouts, drug smuggling lookouts and people smuggling lookouts up on top of the promontories. These are the equivalent of military positions. I have actually personally walked a map around and had them put X's on the map to show me where these lookouts are, and over time, I developed this map that I have handed to the Secretary of Homeland Security. The locations are not disputed. This is a cat-and-mouse game that is going on between our law enforcement personnel all along the border, between ICE, the Shadow Wolves, and our Border Patrol personnel. I had a conversation with John Morton, who is the new director of ICE. He recognizes this concern. I am encouraged that this administration has taken notice of the lookouts that control the smuggling routes and tip them off when our law enforcement personnel converge in. Sometimes they will run a decoy, and this cat-and-mouse game has got to end. No nation can maintain its sovereignty if we are going to allow military positions, lookout positions to exist. So this million dollars is at the encouragement of ICE's people as well. A million dollars will be directed at taking out these lookout sites and removing this as a tool from our drug smugglers and our people smugglers on the border. I think it is something that is a bipartisan piece of legislation and it ends the cat-and-mouse game. By the way, their request was Congress should have a voice on this when I had that conversation with ICE. And so I encourage support for this amendment.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I would be happy to yield to the ranking member.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman, and I reserve my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes. I would respectfully disagree with the gentleman. As I read my amendment, I think the dialogue I heard was it increases and then decreases funding. Actually, this amendment decreases and then increases funding. I don't know if that changes the gentleman's analysis of what the amendment actually does. I don't add to this funding. I simply decrease it and then add it back in. I would have been happy to work with some language that would have perhaps been made in order, but in order for this Congress to have a voice on these lookouts--and this is drug smugglers that hold military positions, the equivalent of military positions that have stones stacked up like sandbags and people in there with semiautomatic weapons and have their supplies brought up to them by patrols that make sure that they have food and water and sometimes other things. They come and go as they see fit. We let them sit on top of these mountains and smuggle into the United States 90 percent of the illegal drugs that are consumed in the United States of America. And accompanying that are all of the violence, the death, the things that are associated with illegal drugs. This amendment is clearly in order, and how this Congress speaks to this amendment is how ICE and the balance of the law enforcement personnel on the border will react. I'm asking that we simply join our voices together and ask for enforcement so we don't concede these locations to the people who are smuggling 90 percent of the illegal drugs into America.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I would be very happy to yield.

Mr. KING of Iowa. On U.S. soil. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time in order to close. As the ranking member from Kentucky said, this is something that I have done a lot of work on, and I am not the only Member of Congress who has gone to these lookouts. I have gone there and walked across the desert with our Shadow Wolves, for example, and had them point up and say, On that mountain, they have a position and they have state-of-the- art optical equipment, state-of-the-art radio equipment. They are watching every move that our Border Patrol, ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and Shadow Wolves are making on that southern border. Whenever we deploy manpower, if we set up our ground-base radar that picks up humans, personnel walking across the desert, they know where our locations are. They shift their traffic accordingly. I have watched them run the decoy. I have been part of picking up 230 or 240 pounds of marijuana in one load that probably helped 2,000- some pounds go through another load. We simply cannot tolerate in the United States of America, at least as much as 70 miles inside the United States--and I will be going down next week to look at some of these locations that are actually north of Tucson on the road to Phoenix. This is the United States of America, our sovereign territory, and playing cat and mouse with people there with semiautomatic weapons, supplies, smuggling drugs through the United States has got to stop. And this Congress should join together and, with this amendment, ask them to do so to stop that activity and defend our soil and put an end to this. It would be a very good help to dramatically reduce the amount of illegal drug smuggling into the United States. I urge adoption of the amendment.

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

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk made in order by the rule.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I yield myself 2 minutes. My amendment prohibits the Department of Homeland Security funds in this bill from being used to hire illegal immigrants. The Immigration and Nationality Act is very clear. Section 274(a) makes it a crime to knowingly hire or employ an illegal immigrant. There are no exceptions. Despite the law, over 8 million illegal immigrants currently have jobs in the United States, and some of those are no doubt employed by and with DHS funds under Federal contracts. Unemployment today is at over 15 percent for lower-skilled American workers. Congress should do anything possible to end the hiring of illegal immigrants and save those jobs for American workers, Madam Chair. A 2006 audit report by the Office of Inspector General indicates that the U.S. Government was the Nation's most egregious employer of illegal aliens. Seventeen of the top 100 offending employers were Federal, State, or local government entities. This report also found that, of the sample, 44 percent of the government workers were unauthorized workers, and 3 percent of government workers had no immigration status whatsoever. These numbers are alarming. The IG report raises a national security issue. The report states, ``Noncitizens who work without DHS authorization could affect homeland security because they may obtain employment in sensitive areas.'' The report goes on to say that the People's Republic of China ranked fourth and Iran ranked sixth among the top 10 countries of birth for employees that were audited in this report. With the unemployment rate at 9.4 percent, we have got to stop the hiring of illegals, and the Federal Government has to lead the charge. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Chair, I'd yield such time as he may consume to the ranking member, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers).

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, and thanking the ranking member from Kentucky, I would just add that we as employers on this Hill are now required to use E-Verify with our employees. This isn't too high a standard to ask of the balance of the Federal Government, particularly within this appropriation. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Chair, may I inquire as to how much time remains?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield myself the balance of my time. I would just reiterate that the Federal Government is among the most egregious violators of hiring illegal workers, and that's been brought out in this IG report that I spoke to in my opening remarks. Seventeen of the top 100 violating entities were government entities, with 44 percent of the government workers that were part of this study were unauthorized. It didn't mean they were all illegal; it meant they were not verified. And so I recall back in 1986 when the amnesty bill was passed, the last big amnesty bill was passed, I remember the fear that the INS would come into my office, and I made sure that I dotted all the I's, crossed all the T's, verified the identification, and kept the I-9 file on record. And they're still on record someplace in my archives. I think that is the kind of due diligence that the Federal Government-- all government ought to support. This is an amendment that one might argue that it doesn't directly change policy. I would agree with the gentlelady, the Chair of the Immigration Subcommittee, on that, but it reinforces and it reiterates a policy. There are no exceptions to violation of that section of the code. This is an amendment also that passed on this particular appropriations bill in 2007. It's something that has had broad support across this country, and it really should not be controversial. It should be something that we should all join together with, and hopefully we will be able to move along and get to the point where the right, left, and middle hand knows what the others are doing. I urge adoption of the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr KING of Iowa

Mr KING of Iowa. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the judge from Texas for yielding and for also organizing this Special Order, and the gentleman doctor from Georgia as well, who has been persistent and relentless here standing up for truth, justice, and the American way, and fiscal responsibility, constitutionality. And as I'm reading The Washington Post language, the statement that came from our Speaker on November 8, 2006, ``The American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D.C., and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, the most ethical, and the most, perhaps, moral Congress in history.'' And ``the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history'' is that language. I heard that constant drub of criticism that was coming here for several years. The 30s group came down here to the floor almost every night and made those kind of allegations. And I was looking at people over on this side of the aisle that were clearly committed to this cause and people that I would trust with everything I have, working hard, struggling to represent the American people. They took that kind of criticism, and some of the American people bought that kind of promise. But today they know different. Today they know this Congress doesn't meet that standard. The other statement here on National Public Radio: ``Under strong attack from Republicans, House Speaker Pelosi accused the CIA and Bush administration of misleading her about waterboarding detainees in the war on terrorism.'' Again: ``They mislead us all the time. I was fighting the war in Iraq at that point too, you know.'' Not really. Not really, Mr. Speaker. Here's what I remember. I remember when Speaker Pelosi grasped the gavel up here in January of 2007, and from that point in that Congress, she led at least 45 votes here on the floor of the House of Representatives that were designed to either unfund, underfund, or undermine our troops. And that's all a matter of record. It's all on a spreadsheet in my office, and I can lay it all into this Congressional Record, and actually I probably put it all into the Congressional Record at one point or another. But this isn't fighting the war in Iraq. She was fighting against the war in Iraq. And the goal was to get our troops out of there, declare defeat, and bring disgrace down upon the Bush administration for whatever that motive might be. But it was clear in the rhetoric that came that it wasn't in support of victory in Iraq, but every move, all 45 votes, as a matter of Congressional Record, undermined our troops. And yet President Bush issued the surge order, and the surge strategy has clearly been a success. I traveled to Iraq with the gentleman from Texas, and I recall some real hot days over there. And I can remember that there was a time when we couldn't go to places like Ramadi or Fallujah because they were too dangerous, and I can remember coming back 6 months later and going shopping in Ramadi. And I can remember coming back a little later and meeting with the mayor of Fallujah, who declared Fallujah to be a city of peace. This all happened because of the nobility and the sacrifice and the courage and the bravery and the dedication of our U.S. military. And you cannot talk about our military without talking about the Commander in Chief, and it was President Bush who gave the order. And now we have reached this point where we have achieved as a Nation a definable victory in Iraq. And it's definable in a lot of ways, but it wasn't because of this quote that we're reading here about the Speaker fighting the war in Iraq at that point too, you know. No. She was fighting against it here on this floor, and it's a matter of record, and that point can't be allowed to pass. So what has been achieved is a definable victory that's there. The ethnosectarian deaths have dropped 98 percent from their top. The civilian deaths have dropped 90 percent. Our American casualties there over the last year, and my data will be brought up to date on the 30th of this month, but as of the last day of June last year, and I pray to God that we don't have any more casualties there for all time, but the roughly accidental deaths in Iraq to Americans are roughly equivalent to those deaths that are hostile deaths, categorized as hostile deaths. Now, that is a very good statistic if you are looking at war zone statistics. If you are at as great a risk from getting killed in a rollover of your Humvee as you are by the enemy, there has been a lot of progress that's been made there; a lot of progress made in the local governments with free elections. They've had a number of free elections and ratified a constitution. The last election they had was at least as peaceful as our last election and probably at least as legitimate as our last election as well. I think there is a lot to be celebrated in Iraq in the Middle East. And I didn't mean to divert from the subject matter, but I think we should raise up to the CIA subject and ask what about the national security of the United States of America when the Speaker of the House declares those who are briefing her up in the secure room on the fourth floor to be a group of felonious liars that have continually, according to her, misled the Congress of the United States of America and lied to the Speaker of the House. And why would the Speaker go back up and be briefed again by people that she declared to be liars, and how could anyone separate the CIA from the other 14 members of the intelligence community? Would anyone actually go brief the Speaker after they had been declared to be a liar, summarily declared to be a liar, with no evidence, with no proof, simply an allegation? Now, in this country if you believe that someone is not telling the truth, you don't raise that subject. You just accept what they say without challenging them unless you can prove they're wrong. That's the way it is in a Western Christiandom, as Winston Churchill declared Western Civilization. And I believe it's rooted in the Book of John when Christ stood before the high priest Caiaphas and Caiaphas said, Did you really do those things? Did you really preach these things? And Jesus said, Ask them. They were there. This all happened openly. And the guard struck Jesus for his insolent answer, supposedly. And Jesus said, If I speak wrongly, then you must prove the wrong, but if I speak rightly, why do you strike me? If someone speaks wrongly, the one who challenges their integrity has the responsibility to prove they're wrong. Jesus said that to the high priest. The least we could do is ask the same standard of our Speaker to prove the wrong of the CIA. And this will not go away. We cannot tolerate a situation where there's a mistrust between the highest levels of intelligence-gathering services in the United States of America that gather the intelligence information, that direct our military, our overt and our covert operations, and that go in and preempt terrorist strikes against Americans and other free people in the world and to have them intimidated by an allegation of telling a lie, which would be a felony, and there's a specific section in the code punishable by 8 years in the Federal penitentiary if a member of the intelligence community should lie to the United States Congress. And there it is: title XVIII, U.S. Code 1001, 8 years in the penitentiary for that. It's very specific. So this has got to stop. It's got to be resolved. And this Congress has got to bring it to a head. I appreciate the gentleman from Texas for having this Special Order and raising these issues, an opportunity to echo this out to the American people.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding. You've raised a scenario here that disturbs me a great deal about what happens to the indecision when you don't trust your intelligence community because of an allegation that's made by the person that's third in line from the President of the United States. This isn't somebody sitting on a street corner somewhere. This is the person third in line to the President of the United States. The indecision that could come because of the doubt that's been planted, and every day that goes by there's no doubt because it's not resolved. Let me submit another way that this hurts America's security beyond this point that you made, Judge, about the indecision that could allow a missile to land and hit the United States or to do an early strike, because we don't really know. But here's another scenario. This cloud has been cast over the intelligence community, and it echoes over the top of our entire defense network that's there. There are people in this Capitol that work to please the Speaker, and many of them are staff. And these are staff that are on committee. They are the Speaker's staff. They are in a position to write these bills in the middle of the night that get dropped on us about the time that the rooster crows in the morning. And then we are to figure out what's in them and what's not in them on a closed rule or a modified closed rule, and the Rules Committee deciding the debate now is in the Rules Committee. And so we don't even get any debate here on the floor on the $1.2 billion, an opportunity to put people on the record--we may not, I think we probably will not, at least get that vote, but to put people on record and find out what this Congress thinks the collective wisdom of the American people is to be reflected here. And we can see the funding for the defense intelligence all the way across the board systematically and summarily undermined and reduced by staff people who are protected because we can't even offer the amendments here on floor, who are seeking to please the Speaker because she has made a comment into the record. And how do you fix that lack of trust? It undermines the resources, I believe, going into the intelligence community that's there, and it causes others to look more critically upon the intelligence group all together with the CIA and others, which undermines the support of the public, undermines the support of Congress and undermines the resources that they will have to use. And if we have people whose lives are out there on the line every day, and we do, they have got to be questioning themselves as to why do they do this. Do they really want to put themselves up for this kind of scrutiny, this kind of allegation. And if I were Leon Panetta, and if I was seeking to send somebody up here to brief the Speaker, I don't think you would ask for volunteers, because I don't think you would get any. I think that has to be a direct order from the CIA. If you like your job, brief the Speaker. You might have it when you are done.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas, and I think I am watching the clock tick down here, and I will just conclude in a couple of minutes. But as I said, I just came from the Rules Committee. And there is really not room in there for a tripod and a camera and not really room for the press to operate the way they need to, and there is not room there for staff to come and make sure they are there to run the errands we need. I know the gentleman from Georgia knows this very well. He served on the Rules Committee. It occurs to me that if the debate is where the rules will take place in this Congress, let's move the Rules Committee down to the floor of the House of Representatives. And let's elect the members of the Rules Committee from the full House and let's make sure they are equally represented between Republicans and Democrats and put the C-SPAN cameras on them and have an opportunity to have a full- throated debate on every amendment that would be offered to the Rules Committee as if this were actually the full House. Because they are functioning, with the function of the House of Representatives in the Rules Committee, we have got to turn the sunlight on what's going on up there. Either that, or we are going to have to go back to the open rule process that has been the long- standing tradition here in the United States Congress. This is unprecedented to see the systematic destruction of deliberative democracy taking place up there on the third floor out of sight of the public eye.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina for yielding to me and for her stalwart representation on the Rules Committee of her constituents and of all Americans. It is a difficult place to serve when you find yourself outvoted almost 2-1 and when you're back in a corner of a room, up on the third floor, where the press seldom goes, where the cameras almost never are, where behaviors that are not consistent with the balance of the committees on this Hill are common, and where the rights and the franchises of the elected Members of this Congress are diminished significantly by the most recent behaviors, over the last 2\1/2\ years, of the Rules Committee. This is where this Congress is controlled. I rise in opposition to this rule. I rise in opposition to rule after rule that comes out of that little room up there on the third floor. For example, there was the previous bill, Justice appropriations, the one that the gentlelady mentioned. Out of all of the amendments that were offered, Republicans, I believe, were offering 94 amendments. I recall that the Rules Committee wrote a rule. It was unprecedented. It wasn't an open rule for appropriations the way we thought we might get back to. Even though Democrats were afraid to have appropriations votes in 2008, we did have some in 2007. We have always fought this through. We'll stay late at night if we need to. Leadership can get together if it gets too long and if we can't get our business done, and we can negotiate unanimous consent agreements. That didn't happen. I've been what I thought was a victim of negotiated unanimous consent agreements that were struck quickly, where the bargain was met before we really got a chance to catch up with what it all was, but that was at least leadership coming together, compromising, negotiating and agreeing. This was the Rules Committee, I suspect directed from above, that had written a modified open rule that required us all to print our amendments into the Record. Once those amendments were printed, then, of course, the other side of the aisle had the opportunity to read through all of the amendments and to understand the strategy of the Republicans. Then, having written the rule to produce a certain result, they decided it probably would not produce the result that they'd intended, so they shut down debate after the very first Republican amendment, 20-some minutes into that debate, and they went back to the Rules Committee. I sat there until nearly 1 o'clock in the morning with a number of my colleagues who had offered constructive amendments, amendments that were designed to perfect this legislation. I saw Member after Member have to ask the Rules Committee, Will you please make my amendment in order so that my constituents can be heard? They didn't say it, but it was also so that the American people could understand the shenanigans that had been going on here. We were afraid to say that because they were afraid that their amendments wouldn't be made in order. I watched that parade in front of the Rules Committee, and I will tell you it's unprecedented that Members of Congress are reduced to having to beg, in a little room on the third floor, to be heard. Each of us has a franchise: \1/435\ of the United States of America is embodied in each one of us. Speaker Pelosi said--I believe the date was June 14, 2006--that every Member has a right to be heard and, on a different date, that this would be the most open Congress in history. Well, it's anything but that. It's becoming more and more closed-- even to the point where we lose the right to offer a motion to rise or adjourn, the right to offer an amendment on an appropriations bill. And so I had offered six amendments up there. I didn't ask the Rules Committee to make my amendments in order; they had already made my amendments in order. Every single one of them complied with the rule that was written and had been made in order. But when the majority understood that they were going to have to take some votes, some tougher votes on some subject matter that they had been ducking from, then they changed the rules. I just said, Keep your word. You set the standards to begin with. We all met those standards. And then you made our amendments in order. We shouldn't have had to do that. It should have been an open rule to allow any Member to offer an amendment down here at the well unless that title of the bill had passed. That's the standard that's here. That's what the Founding Fathers imagined and envisioned. But we get anything but that. And so, this Congress doesn't get to debate on important topics. We have to have a motion to recommit in order to discuss the issue of giving Miranda rights to enemy combatants in foreign continents. That's what it takes. And that little window will be closed, too, if it makes the majority uncomfortable. We don't get to debate on the very critical national security issue, Mr. Speaker, of the Speaker of the House declaring the CIA to be a group of felonious liars and having lied to the Congress of the United States of America and then stated that she's going up to receive briefings after this. The United States of America's national security has got to be put at risk when the person third in line for the Presidency declares our intelligence community to be lying to Congress. Decisions get made, on this floor, in committee, behind the scenes--sometimes by staff--based upon the allegations made by the Speaker. The staff wants to please the Speaker. The Speaker is ducking this issue. We need to have a vote, and I offered an amendment to get a vote on the CIA. We aren't going to get that vote because the Rules Committee shut it down. I offered an amendment that would also clean up some of this-- amendment No. 2 increases and decreases standing committee by $1 million--so that we can broadcast the activities in the Rules Committee. When you go into a committee and you realize that you're sitting in front of a camera, it causes people to have a little better demeanor, and the decisions are there accountable to the public and some of that actually ends up on YouTube. But the Rules Committee doesn't have that. The room is too small and it's too secret what goes on up there. We need a big room for the Rules Committee because that's where the decisions are made in the United States Congress today, Mr. Speaker. So I offered an amendment to do that. As I moved through this process--and by the way, not only the criticism of the intelligence community came from the Speaker but now she's taken on the Congressional Budget Office and said, Well, no, they're the most pessimistic group that there are. We always overestimate things that work against us. Well, if you challenge the integrity of the Congressional Budget Office, it isn't long before you have intimidation of the Congressional Budget Office. When you challenge the CIA and you control their purse strings, it isn't long before you have intimidation of the CIA. You don't get the same information if you have a trust relationship going on. And by the way, the legislation, the appropriation that passed last night was managed by an appropriations subcommittee chair that by all the news reports is under investigation, and he received the gavel from the Speaker of the House. She knew he was under investigation, and 2 years ago he recused himself from the discussions. But we've not heard any announcement as to that investigation being lifted or any of the subpoenas that may have been served have been withdrawn or that had been shut down. There was no announcement whatsoever. How can we have confidence in this Congress if the Speaker declares the intelligence community to be lying to Congress, if the Rules Committee shuts down the debate, if this House is recessed in the middle of important business, if an impeachment of a judge is shut down so you can go raise money, or if the chairman of the subcommittee who is managing the funding for the FBI, is being investigated by the FBI? This Congress has a long way to go to get where they're going. I would just conclude with this, Mr. Speaker. I'm going to paraphrase Joe Welch, Let us not assassinate this process further. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency at long last? Have you no sense of decency left?