Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives and to discuss the topics that are on my mind. Hopefully, you will consider these arguments as well, Mr. Speaker. I know that people across this floor and across the country have a lot of these same considerations in mind. I want to come to the floor and address the DACA situation and take you through a little bit of the history of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals which was implemented by Barack Obama in an unconstitutional fashion. He knew it, and all of America knew it. We know that Barack Obama, 22 times, said that he didn't have the constitutional authority to implement a program that granted the equivalent of amnesty--at least temporary amnesty--let alone a work permit which he added to the program by executive edict, fiat, or order. Instead, it requires legislation in order to enable such a policy. A President can't grant amnesty. A President can have prosecutorial discretion. Prosecutorial discretion is a legal term for what the Justice Department does when they are determining whether the resources they have to prosecute crimes are adequate to enforce against the most serious offenders. Barack Obama, President Obama, did implement some of those relatively prudent policies with prosecutorial discretion. He prioritized the most violent and evil criminals that he could identify, at least by policy. He turned a lot of them loose too, by the way, onto the streets of America in the course of all that. So it was a very confusing policy that emerged without consistency under President Obama. However, he exercised a legal prosecutorial discretion when they looked at each case on an individual basis. But I recall when his Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, came before the Judiciary Committee to testify about this program on DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals--or some might say the deferred action for children of aliens. Her testimony and the memos that came down, the Morton memos, set up four different categories of people who would be granted a quasi-amnesty underneath the President's policy. There, Secretary Napolitano testified over and over again, and it reflected the document itself which, seven times, referenced on an individual basis only--on an individual basis only--seven times. I can repeat it for the Record, Mr. Speaker, but that is what was going on, which told me, as I listened to her testimony and had read the documents prior to the testimony, that they knew what the law said. They knew it required--that it required--an individual basis only and a prioritization of applying the law to bring about the best effect of the utilization of the resources of the Justice Department. Yet Barack Obama, President Obama, around the country multiple times, in the 1\1/2\ or 2 years building up to his implementation of the DACA policy, multiple times he said that he didn't have the constitutional authority to implement the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Multiple times. It turned out to be at least 22 that we have a videotape on. The most recent that I recall was in a high school just outside of the Capitol here in Washington, D.C., where he was speaking to a high school group. He said: You are smart students. You know that there is a separation of powers. I don't have the authority to grant this legal status to people who are here illegally even if their parents did bring them in or even if they came in on their own under the age of 18. I don't have the authority to do that. That is Congress that has the authority. I should remind everyone, Mr. Speaker, that President Obama taught constitutional law. He was an adjunct professor teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago has a good reputation for understanding the Constitution, and Barack Obama demonstrated that when he said: You are smart students, and you know that we have three branches of government, a separation of powers. Congress is Article I. They make the laws. He said: I am Article II, the executive branch. My job is to enforce the laws. And Article III is the judicial branch of government. They interpret the laws. So when the courts interpret the laws that Congress writes, the executive's job is to carry them out. He knew he was violating the separation of powers because he defined that to America multiple times. But he did anyway. I believe that President Obama made a calculation, a political calculation. The political calculation, in my estimation, was that he could get away with it. He wanted the policy, but Congress wouldn't pass the policy because we have great respect for the rule of law, and we don't want to reward lawbreakers. That happened in 1986, and we are paying the price for that amnesty act of 1986. He couldn't get the DREAMers legislation through Congress, so he calculated that he could get away with implementing that as a policy even though he knew it was unconstitutional. So some of us went to work to initiate lawsuits to have the courts strike down the executive edicts of Barack Obama that was the foundation for DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. As it wandered through the courts. The lead in the primary case was Chris Crane, the president of the ICE, Immigration Custom Enforcement, union. His name was on the case first. It was Crane, et al. v. Napolitano, et al. in the beginning. It went through the courts, and by the time you follow it through a circuitous route, you find out that Crane, et al. v. Napolitano, et al. got shifted off to the side. It was declared to be a decision that had to do with the administrative rules that if he had a grievance, he had to take that grievance through the administrative rules process rather than through the courts to address the policy itself. So it got parked off on a side rail, so to speak. Then we saw a parallel case come forward, the DAPA case, the Deferred Action on Parents of Americans was how the President described it. I would have said parents of aliens myself. But that case was found by Judge Andrew Hanen down in Texas to be unconstitutional. It was a very similar and parallel case. The President couldn't grant amnesty to parents of children who were here, and the President couldn't grant amnesty to children who came here. That same constitutional principle applies to both. We know that Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, and others with about 9, 10, or 11 other State attorneys general, had prepared to file a suit to litigate the DACA case in parallel fashion that DAPA was litigated successfully. They set a date of September 5 and said to the President: If you don't end DACA by September 5, we are filing this case. So that is about the day and probably exactly the day that President Trump came out with his decision on DACA. I moved too fast forward, Mr. Speaker, and I need to back up to what happened. Barack Obama, President Obama, finished out his term while growing the DACA recipients by hundreds of thousands. By the time he finished his term, that number was estimated to be over 700,000 recipients who get a little card that says: You get to stay in America for 2 years, and there won't be any immigration law enforced against you as long as you don't commit any of these serious crimes, felonies, or a nasty combination of three different misdemeanors. Then also he created out of thin air a work permit. Now, Congress isn't going to grant work permits to illegal aliens, but Barack Obama did. Congress isn't going to grant a ``come out of the shadows and stay on the streets of America'' permit for DACA recipients, but President Obama did. He went outside. This Congress should have had its back up. I am frustrated. I am frustrated with the lack of conviction on the part of the Members of this Congress. Mr. Speaker, you stand in here once every 2 years, and you take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That includes acknowledging that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It includes the requirement that you understand the difference between Article I, Article II, and Article III. Article I writes the laws--that is all of us here and over in the Senate. We write all of the laws for the United States of America. That is how the Constitution starts out: The legislative powers shall be reserved for we here that are the Representatives in this Republic of the American people. We are as close to the people as anybody who is elected in the Federal Government right here in this House of Representatives--435 of us. That is what you take an oath to is that you are going to protect the Constitution of the United States. You should at least be able to defend Article I, the very authority that is the reason that you are here serving in the first place, Mr. Speaker. Then we have an obligation also to look over the shoulder of the executive branch and have oversight over the function of the executive branch and conduct hearings and bring witnesses and dig into the methods and the effectiveness of the President of the United States, our Chief Executive Officer, in carrying out the execution of our laws. The President of the United States takes an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. But also it requires that he takes care that the laws be faithfully executed. Now, that means carry them out, not kill them off. It looks like he was trying to kill off the Constitution rather than carry out the laws that are described by this Article I, Congress. By the way, some of the laws that President Obama defied and gave orders to defy and to ignore were signed into law by Bill Clinton. So the legitimacy of the United States Congress and our effectiveness has been diminished by President Obama who went outside the bounds, the lines that are drawn between legislative authority, executive authority, and judicial authority. Now, our Founding Fathers set that up to be a static relationship. They expected and believed that the courts would be the weakest of the three branches of government. They expected also that since you always have ambitious people reaching for more power, they wanted to divide that power, and they wanted to restrain the power. That is why we have the system that we have today. That is why we redistrict every decade. That is why they called for a census so we can count all the people of America and set up congressional district so that there is a proportional representation in each of the 435 seats here offset by two Senators from every State so that we have a geographical representation--a small population State with a big voice or maybe a big population State with the same kind of voice--over in the United States Senate. But here in this Congress, in this House, everyone has roughly the proportional same number of constituents, and your vote means the same amount here that it does for each one of us, whatever your particular role is. So this was set up to have this balance of power. What our Founding Fathers envisioned was each branch of government would jealously protect the power vested in it through the Constitution. They didn't imagine that there would be a Congress that would be in opposite--they actually didn't imagine the two-party system, as I understand some of the history that I read, but they didn't envision that there would be a Republican majority in the House, a Republican majority in the Senate, and a Democrat President who clearly, openly, and blatantly defined it in advance and then violated the Constitution. Our Founding Fathers never expected that this House of Representatives would sit on its hands and simply let that Constitution be violated for 2 years or longer just on DACA alone. But that happened. I brought amendments to the floor time after time after time that cut off the Federal funding that supported the unconstitutional acts of the President of the United States. Those amendments passed off the floor of the House of Representatives, and they were killed off over in the Senate. Our Founding Fathers did not imagine that the Constitution could be openly, defiantly, and blatantly violated and not have this Congress hold together and shut off the funding. The power of the purse is the power of bringing that President back in line and making him keep his constitutional oath. The will wasn't there. As I went before a committee to present an amendment to get Rules Committee consent to an amendment, I reminded everybody on that panel: You all took an oath to support and defend the Constitution. If you meant it, if you take your word seriously, if your oath to the Constitution means anything, then not only do you have to open the door so that my amendment comes to the floor and we have an opportunity to debate it and force a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives, not only is that the case, if you don't support this, then your own oath to the Constitution is called into question. By the way, Mr. Speaker, I just remind people that I chair the Constitution and Civil Justice Subcommittee. There are a couple of reasons for that--more than a couple--and I have defended this Constitution every day that I have been here in this United States Congress, and I take it seriously. My father used to lecture the Constitution to me at the supper table. He would bring out the Constitution, set it down at the table. He would bring the Code of Iowa and set it down at the table. The Bible would be on the end table. The Constitution and the Code of Iowa would be on the kitchen table, and he would open it up and say: Now, we are going to trace back for you how ``pick your law out of this book'' gets back to the Constitution. Where is the authority for ``pick your law out of this book?'' He would debate that and discuss it with me. That is where I learned that I shouldn't ever utter an opinion that hasn't been thoroughly thought out. He was the most effective critical thinker I ever met in my life. But he steeped me in the great respect for the rule of law and a great respect for the supreme law of the land, our Constitution, and the structure that is guaranteed in the Constitution: a republican form of government. That, Mr. Speaker, means a representative form of government, where the people select their Representatives and send them off to be their voice here in this Congress. It was a fantastic piece of wisdom and historical knowledge that put this together in the fashion that it did. Now we have not just the oldest constitution on record, but we have the most successful constitution on record. You can put this altogether. I believe that our Founding Fathers, as they put this together, were inspired by God to write the Declaration, to fight the war, to shape the Constitution. I think that our Founding Fathers were moved around like men on a chessboard to bring about this fantastic country that we have. A big part of this fantastic country is the rule of law. When I write ``rule of law,'' for years, I capitalized the word ``rule.'' I capitalized ``rule'' with an ``R'' and ``law'' with an ``L'' so that it stands out on the page, so that it looks as important as it is when you read the phrase: rule of law. Rule of law is an essential component of American exceptionalism. It is a pillar of American exceptionalism. If you think about what went together to make this great country that we have, I would add up a whole series of things. I would trace our American exceptionalism back all the way to Mosaic Law. The Mosaic Law was borrowed by the Greeks. The Greeks kind of teased each other: Well, that isn't your original law. You borrowed that from Moses. Well, they had great philosophers and they added to the culture, but the law came out of Moses from the Greeks to the Romans. The Romans set up republican forms of government. They also had a very good and healthy rule of law so that, at least in theory, they applied that to everybody. That rule of law spread across Western Europe by the Romans all the way to Ireland. When the Dark Ages came--the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 A.D. When that happened, historians, more or less, called that the signal of the world falling into the Dark Ages. For several hundred years, not much happened that was reported to us. People lost the ability to think and reason in the fashion that they had from among the Greeks and among the Romans. Christianity had to get itself spread into all of that and then emerge. It did emerge. It emerged sometime shortly before the end of the first millennium. It became the Age of Enlightenment and the industrial revolution. We know, Mr. Speaker, these courses of history that have followed, but I would just point out what happened in America. In America, we are about ready to celebrate--we did it on Monday, because it was a Federal holiday--Columbus Day on October 12, the day after tomorrow. It happens to also be my wife's birthday, Mr. Speaker. There are a couple of reasons we should celebrate Columbus Day. He discovered the Western Hemisphere. He did so because he had a vision that the Earth was round and not flat. He was able to convince Ferdinand and Isabella that they should invest their capital in three ships to send him across the seas in the hopes that they would circle all the way around to India and maybe find a passage to come back. They could trade and be an even richer nation than Spain was. By the way, that was the same year that the Spanish threw the Moors out. That is when the kingdom of Ferdinand and Queen Isabella was established in a more stable fashion than it had been prior to that. They found the money for Christopher Columbus. He discovered the hemisphere. After that, we saw a lot of Spaniards emerge. They focused down in the south, in the Central American region, in the Caribbean, and settled in that area going south and north from the isthmus. They brought with them Christianity. They were driven by the idea of spreading Christianity around the world. That went on through the 1500s, where they were settling and developing in that part of the world, and conducting some atrocities as well, Mr. Speaker--just to address what otherwise somebody would ask me to yield and listen to. Yes, they had some atrocities. They began to develop and bring Western civilization, though, to the New World. The other end of this thing, in 1607, the first people who settled and built a permanent settlement in the North American continent were there at Jamestown, just down the road from us a little ways. It was 1607. The Christians who landed there came for religious freedom. They sat across there on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and they knelt at that cross and prayed. The prayer was: Lord, thank You for sending us to this new land. We hear Your call and we call out to You to guide us and bless us. We will listen to the mission that You delivered to us, which is to evangelize all people here and around the world and to settle this continent to please You. That is the summary of the prayer. If you read that prayer, you can see and hear manifest destiny in that prayer. You can see religious emancipation in that prayer as well. They knew why they were here. A country that is formed by people who have powerful faith, as they did, and then you have the pilgrims of Plymouth Rock in 1620, and the rest of America was built out. As the colonists began to throw off the yoke of King George, they still retained essential principles. The essential principles would include those of the Magna Carta: the idea that a man's home is his castle and that the law has to be applied equally to everyone. King John wasn't happy to sign that, by the way, but I think it came down to: It is your head or your signature. Why don't you decide, King John? He decided his signature. It has been a long time ago since the Magna Carta was signed, but it laid a foundation for the pilgrims and the settlers who came to America. They came here for religious freedom and to get away from the yoke of the old country, Great Britain. We should remember that the pilgrims who came in on the Mayflower didn't sail out of jolly, old England. They sailed out of Leiden in the Netherlands. Several years before, they sailed the Atlantic Ocean. They pulled out and went to Leiden in the Netherlands. There, several hundred of them lived around in the area, in a community, in various different houses and apartment complexes that were there. A lot of them went to church in Pieterskerk, which is the church in the center. They staged themselves until they were ready to go across the Atlantic Ocean to settle and land at Plymouth Rock in 1620. These early settlers were driven by religious freedom. As they began to build their farms, their shops, and trade and build ships along the coast and our harbors, we reach the year of 1776. Then, of course, we know the Declaration was on July 4 of that year. But there is another seminal event, Mr. Speaker, and that is Adam Smith published his treatise on free enterprise capitalism. The name of it is ``The Wealth of Nations.'' No one has surpassed that document at this point. If you allow people to keep their own goods, earn their own profits, invest that, he explained with utter clarity how it will improve the productivity--they will invest it in efficiency--and how the invisible hand, that is the person who is buying the loaf of bread off the shelf, if that shelf is empty, you put more bread on there and sell more. If you are selling more than you can make, you raise the price a little. If somebody thinks you are making too much money, they start up their bakery. They get their bread on the shelf, and then it competes with each other. The shelf is always full of bread and the consumers get a product that they demand. That is the concept of free enterprise capitalism. I don't hear anybody talking about that today. We also developed here a meritocracy. If you have freedom, you can be rewarded for merit. We don't talk about meritocracies anymore. We give out participation trophies for kids. They don't really want them to be winners or losers, just participants. That is not the American way. The American way is: we get in, we compete. There is bound to be a lot of losers because there is only one winner at the end, but the losers all learn something and so does the winner. If the winner gets complacent, if the winner gets lazy, then the others who are competing are going to pass up that former winner, and he is going to have to get a little sharper in his game. That makes us all better. When I look at my neighborhood, Mr. Speaker, I see that we have got some counties in particular that have excellent competition between the public schools and parochial schools. They have a number of different churches to choose from. They have a lot of banks that will loan money and compete with each other to invest back in the communities so entrepreneurs with ideas or families that need a bridge to the next month or two can have something to bridge them through that. This is the kind of competition that I see. It is not just sports competition, but it is academic competition, it is competing for students, it is competing for tuition dollars, it is competing for the business investment dollars among the banks, it is churches competing for the faith and competition to save the maximum number of souls, and it is a very healthy environment. If you take competition out, this goes flat and the vitality that exists today and just the vibrant humming of the lives that I am thinking of would be gone. It becomes complacent. I fear that is where America is going: if we are afraid to compete, we are afraid to defend our values. Free enterprise capitalism. I think every college campus in the country has some professor who will speak against it. Some of them have many professors who speak against it. They are teaching against free enterprise capitalism. They are teaching socialism. They are teaching Marxism. They are rejecting conservatism. By the way, I can't find a school in the country today that has an effective course on Western civilization itself. That doesn't mean they aren't out there. This is just me asking questions of people who should know the answer to that. They are saying: I can't name one, unless it would be Hillsdale College or maybe Liberty University. I grew up in an era where every school had multiple courses on Western civilization. Because we understand our culture, we respect it. We know that, without Western civilization, the world would be so void of the contributions that came from Western civilization. Sometime a year ago last summer, I found myself on a panel at MSNBC, Mr. Speaker. One of the panelists said: One could be an optimist and hope that this is the last Republican convention where old White people have anything to say about it. There is no way to let a comment like that pass. So I pointed out: Charlie, that is getting a little tired, this criticism of old White people. I would challenge you to name another subgroup of people who have contributed more. Then the lady on the panel started fanning herself. She was getting the vapors because I defended Western civilization. The host leaned over, almost with a leer, hoping that I would take the bait, and she said: More than White people. And I said: More than Western civilization itself. Western civilization is everywhere that Christianity has laid the foundation for civilization itself; where Christianity has been the footprint that has laid down the foundation of Western civilization itself. And you don't have western civilization without Christianity; you don't have a successful history without Christianity; and you don't have people that abide by the moral laws so we don't have to have a lot of legal laws. You can't not manage a people of 300 million people and think you are going to get that done effectively if they fail to be a moral people, a people that reach over and pay forward and take care of their families and their friends and their neighbors. I see it all over this country, Mr. Speaker. I have been to all 50 States in this country, met people in all 50 States. I have gotten behind the steering wheel in 48 of the 50, and I see good people, great people day after day after day that get out of bed, and all they want to do is help somebody. And they don't care about credit; they don't care if anybody ever notices it or sees it; they just want to help somebody. That is what makes this country turn and work the way it does. If we wonder, we should take a look at the hurricanes that we have suffered in the South and all across, from Texas, Louisiana, and now Mississippi the other day, and Florida--Irma. American people, some people fled out of the hurricane and some people come to help, and I imagine there is a traffic jam there from time to time. But I am so grateful that we have the American character that it is. American character is a can-do spirit, people that--I know that I had a banker visit me one day, and he showed me a picture. Actually, I met him at the airport. He showed me a picture of their bank, and the water was ready to run in the door of their bank. They had a flood that flooded the whole downtown. He said: Don't send us anything. We can handle this. It is only a flood. I have been back to that community, and he was right. I am glad we have people like that, these spirited Americans who are part of a culture that is a can-do culture. And I don't want to lose it, Mr. Speaker. I don't want to lose it by devaluing any of the pillars of American exceptionalism. Now, I will just list a few others. Aside from the rule of law, there is freedom of speech, religion, assembly, the press. There are all of those together in the First Amendment, and they are put up there in the First Amendment because, without them, without an open dialogue, without ideas having to compete in the public square, then we don't test those ideas, and our Founding Fathers understood that. They wanted debate to take place here on the floor of the House of Representatives. They wanted debate to take place in the Senate. They wanted these ideas to be tested. For me, I have long believed that I should engage in debate; and if I can't sustain my position in debate, I only have two choices: I can either adopt the other guy's position, or I can go back and do my homework and get that research done, up my game, so to speak, and be prepared to defend myself for the next round. That is usually what happens if I am not able to defend myself. But over the years, I pay a little more attention to preparation than I used to when I was younger, and so that is how it is, and the best ideas can be sorted forward. Sitting in a meeting here, we can be discussing these ideas; somebody brings up an idea, might get knocked down like that. I don't think the public gets to see how many ideas are not successful in competing with other ideas, but sometimes there is a power structure, too, that is involved. What troubles me is when good ideas can't have a fair hearing because others want their idea to come through to have their name on it. That is a bit of a side issue, but I point that out. So freedom of speech, religion, press, the right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances, First Amendment, all pillars of American exceptionalism. Second, the right to keep and bear arms. We have had a lot of discussion about the right to keep and bear arms, but our Founding Fathers put that provision in the Bill of Rights, not so that we could hunt or collect or target shoot or even defend ourselves. The Second Amendment is in our Constitution so that we can defend ourselves from tyranny, from a future tyrant who would come in; and if they confiscated our weapons, then they can force anything upon the people of this country. History has proven that over and over again. The first thing a tyrant does is go after your guns. The second thing they do is they go after all the other rights, and pretty soon you are a subservient people. Imagine North Korea or Cuba to get a model or an example of that. And you can go on up the line: the protection against unreasonable search and seizure, constitutional right. I am naming pillars of American exceptionalism. Without them, we would not be an exceptional nation. There is no pillar that we can pull out that the edifice wouldn't tumble if we lost our First Amendment or Second Amendment or Fourth Amendment. Our Fifth Amendment, we have lost a part of it already with the Kelo decision, Mr. Speaker. The Fifth Amendment says, ``nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.'' In the Kelo decision, the Supreme Court ruled--I believe it was a 5-4 decision. And I know that Justice Scalia dissented, as did Justice O'Connor in one of her last major dissents that she had written, but the Supreme Court essentially struck out--I will say, de facto struck out--the terms ``for public use'' from the Fifth Amendment. They ruled that a locality could condemn private property and hand it over to another private interest, provided they had a government interest and the private interest being successful. And so they could take, let's say, a senior lady's home, a whole tract of land, and force that into the--and confiscate that and put it into the hands of a private investor. That decision is a horrible decision that weakens American exceptionalism, weakens our property rights in America. I had a private conversation with Justice Scalia, and he told me that he expected the Kelo decision to be reversed one day. But to amend the Fifth Amendment, effectively, by a decision in the Supreme Court, ``nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation,'' this private property was taken not even for public use, but for private use. Now, they didn't write in there ``nor shall private property be taken for private use'' because that was a given that that would not be the case. It is absolutely implied in the Fifth Amendment itself, but the Supreme Court ruled the way they wanted to rule, and they have weakened a pillar of American exceptionalism. Trial by jury, no double jeopardy, you can go up the line. The powers that are not enumerated in the Constitution are reserved, respectively, for the States or the people. All of these are pillars of American exceptionalism. Free enterprise capitalism, another pillar of American exceptionalism. And, by the way, if you take the naturalization test, there is a series of flashcards, laminated flashcards, and these flashcards, you can hold them up and you can ask these aspiring citizens some questions. And part of some of the questions are this: ``Who is the father of our country?'' And then you flip that card over and it says: ``George Washington.'' ``Who emancipated the slaves?'' ``Abraham Lincoln.'' ``What is the economic system of the United States of America?'' It is on a flashcard: ``Free enterprise capitalism.'' That is under assault. Our religious values are under assault. Our family values are under assault. The very definition of the Constitution itself is under assault, and Barack Obama landed some heavy blows to it while he was President of the United States. So as we began bringing forward a nominee who could compete effectively and hopefully be elected to the Oval Office as President of the United States, 17 Presidential candidates came through my State. Many of them I knew before they announced, and I think I can say that all of them I knew by the time they got through with their campaigns. Out of that all, hard fought, there was a platform that was hammered out, and Donald Trump earned the nomination. His platform is awfully close to the platform of Ted Cruz, who was the second to the last man standing, and that platform is a platform that I appreciate, I respect, and I worked for, Mr. Speaker. I have watched as Presidential candidates can see themselves as President of the United States. They may not have all of their positions hammered out when they present themselves as candidates--in fact, I don't know if any of them ever actually did have all their positions hammered out when they presented themselves as candidates-- but they give their speeches. There is a crowd reaction. There is some polling information that is there. They have a team, a team of advisers. We all talk to them and we try to convince them of the priorities that they should be bringing forward. In the end, throughout all of this, by the time you get through the national convention and confer the nomination on your Presidential candidate, there is a platform to run on from June or July on through, all the way to November 8 it turned out to be last year. Donald Trump's platform was clear. He said to me, one day, about the events that he has done for me--and I am very much appreciative of President Trump and the times that he has come in to help me politically, Mr. Speaker. He made that reference in a discussion among several of my colleagues, and I said: Yes, you helped me, and I appreciate it, Mr. President, but I market-tested your immigration policy for 14 years, and you knew how Iowans were going to respond and how most people across the country were going to respond because I market-tested it. And he did a great job with it, and he gave it more clarity than I have given. But throughout all of that, it was: build the wall and secure our borders and enforce domestic immigration law and reinforce ICE and reinforce Border Patrol and CBP, put that all together, and the birthright citizenship. Support English as the official language. These are just some of the pieces along the way, and we have refined some of this since then. And also, it was the New IDEA Act, the act that denies deductibility for wages and benefits paid to illegals, and let's see IRS come in and do the enforcement through the normal audit process. So if the IRS came in under the New IDEA Act and did a normal audit, they would run the Social Security numbers and other pertinent information of employees through E-Verify. If E-Verify confirmed that these employees could legally work in the United States, the employer will get safe harbor for having hired them; if they couldn't verify it, the employer gets 72 hours to cure, we see, 72 hours to correct the record. But, if he is hiring illegals, then the IRS would say: All right. But you can't deduct this $10,000, $20,000, $100,000 that you paid this illegal, and so we are going to have to charge taxes on that because that deduction is not a business expense; it is actually income instead. So the tax that would be applied to that $100,000, so to speak, plus interest, plus penalty, and it would turn your $10-an-hour illegal into about a $16-an-hour illegal. That is the essence of it. And we require, also, that the IRS and the Social Security Administration that is collecting Social Security deposits from workers all across this country, sometimes multiple sources on the same Social Security number--I mean, scores and scores of people on the same Social Security number. Social Security stopped sending out no-match letters some years ago under the Obama administration. We put that all back together, and we require the IRS communicate with and trade information with the Social Security Administration to target and flag those false Social Security numbers. And then also bring the Department of Homeland Security to the table so that the IRS, Social Security Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security are all working together to cooperate to enforce immigration law and denying, then, the deductibility of the employer. The employer will have all kinds of incentives to clean up his workforce. In fact, we have a 6-year statute of limitations that compiles or accrues over the years. And so if you are sitting there with a 6-year potential liability, you are going to want to be with a clean workforce. That is another piece that is a policy that the President has been for, at least in the past. Now, things move on, but we are--we have an immigration policy that became part of the platform for the President of the United States, and in that policy and throughout, there are multiple times in speeches he announced that he is going to end DACA. He is going to end DACA, and we all expected that that would happen at noon January 20 of this year when the President was inaugurated out here on the west portico of the Capitol not very far from where I stand right now. That would have been consistent with his campaign promise: build the wall, and the unconstitutional DACA. And so while he was signing executive orders--and I give him credit. He went to the Oval Office, and at least he had a formal signing of multiple executive orders that day, launched his Presidency with work right on the spot instead of--he shortened up the parade for himself and went to work for America. Hats off to President Trump for that, and I support his entire agenda, and I am going to do my best to help him keep his word on that entire agenda. But we found out weeks later that DACA permits were still being issued, and they were still being extended, and those permits also included work permits. So President Obama's unconstitutional DACA--deferred action for children of aliens--program was continued, and it continues actually to this day under the Trump administration, completely in contradiction with the campaign promises he made. I would say many more times than Barack Obama made the statement that he didn't have the constitutional authority. Barack Obama violated the Constitution. President Trump has continued that violation. And I am calling upon him to keep his campaign promise, restore the respect for the rule of law; and DACA, by the executive action, just sign it off and end it. If we fail to do that--and I have worked for 31 years to restore the respect for the rule of law with regard to immigration. In 1986, Ronald Reagan signed the Amnesty Act. At least he was honest about it. He called it the Amnesty Act. I listened to what I could on the debate from the House and the Senate. And I didn't believe it would pass either Chamber, but it passed both Chambers, and it was messaged to President Reagan's desk. I read the material and I thought that through. I thought: I don't have to worry about this. Ronald Reagan will know that, if he signs the Amnesty Act, it does great damage to the rule of law and it will take years to restore it. Now, the deal was to be that if you sign the Amnesty Act, we will give you the reinforcement and will enforce the law from this point forward, and illegal immigration will no longer be a problem in America. That is what the deal was. They promised us that this Amnesty Act in 1986 would be the last one ever, that they were going to then set about establishing respect for the law. Well, it seems to me that most everybody in this Congress has lost any memory they may have had about what was going on in 1986. Things haven't changed. There is nothing really new under the Sun. Human nature is human nature. It is what it has been for 2,000 or more years. But when there is a promise made that is ``first you give us this, and then we will see to it that you get that,'' let me see, we had Ronald Reagan's successor, Bush 41--George Herbert Walker Bush, a great American as well--who took the promise and said: ``Read my lips: No new taxes.'' He said that more than 22 times, too. But when it got to the point where he was wanting to get some spending cuts, the Democrats went to him and said: Do you know what? We have to raise taxes if you are going to get spending cuts. We will follow through on our part of the deal if you just sign the tax increases that they pass. So Bush 41, dealing honestly and straight up in believing that the people he was dealing with had the level of integrity that he had, signed the tax increase in exchange for the promise of the spending cuts. And we all know the answer to that, Mr. Speaker. We know the story. When you make a deal like that and you don't have the things on the table that you are supposed to get for that deal, never comes first. You don't see them. So George H. W. Bush 41 signed the tax increase. He violated his pledge of: ``Read my lips: No new taxes.'' Not only did he sign that and not get the spending cuts, but they beat him over the head with that at his reelection. He lost his reelection because of it, and we ended up with Bill Clinton. I think that lesson should be enough to make us all smart enough to know not to make a deal like that. Ronald Reagan recanted and regretted that he signed the Amnesty Act because of the damage he did to the rule of law when he signed that. There were to be 1 million who would be recipients of the Amnesty Act of 1986. It turned out to be 3 million because, let's say, the estimates were wrong, but there was a lot of fraud and corruption, and people slipped through because we didn't have tight enough security on it. So 3 million people got amnesty in 1986, and that was a path to citizenship--a fairly short path to citizenship--as well. I have talked to some of them, and they say: It was great for me. And some of them think that amnesty for another group of people is all right. But if the law means nothing to someone and they violate the law, or it is an obstruction and they slip around that law, or, as we have today, some number that is 750,000 to 800,000 DACA recipients, they are demanding that we grant them amnesty. Illegal aliens came here to the Capitol, right out here on the grass, 2 weeks ago, on a Monday, gathering around, demanding that Congress grant them amnesty. Now, how do you go to a foreign country and be unlawfully present in that country and you go protest to the government that they should ignore their own laws because you have something that you want that you slipped across the border to have access to? And I do not buy the idea that most of these DACA recipients are kids. The average age is 23. Some of them go all the way up to 37. Some of them are bald. Many of them have gray in their beard. Some have a build like mine. I don't think of them as kids when I look at them. Yet there are some who came across the Rio Grande River on their mother's arm. And, no, they didn't know and they didn't form intent. But there are a whole lot of them who would qualify under this, who did have intent and did know. And we know there are a whole lot of them also--and I have witnessed this with my eyes and helped to collar some of them as this goes on, and I have walked through the desert and seen the burlap backpacks that they haul marijuana in into the United States. And it is not only marijuana. But some of these will qualify under DACA. Drug smugglers will qualify. And they say: We will do background checks. Well, how do you do a background check on somebody who doesn't have a legal existence in their home country? If there is no record of them existing there, then they will say: Well, we didn't find anything negative. Of course not. The person didn't exist. I know I had an individual I wanted on my Hispanic Advisory Committee. A smart, personable, young businessman. I said: I would like to have you sit down and I would like to hear your advice. I would like to have your finger on the pulse because I want to know what is going on in the minority communities, and I want to make sure that I am doing a good job of representing them, too. And he said: That is fine. I am interested. And I said: But before I put you on this committee, I have to make sure. So I want to see--and he said he was born in America--no. Excuse me. He said he was born in Mexico, but he is a naturalized citizen. And I said: Well, I would like to see your birth certificate. And he said: Okay. I can get it for you. And I said: How long will that take you? And he said: Well, it will only take me a few days. What do you want the birth certificate to say? Now, that is a legal document, and you don't get to ask that question if you have respect for the rule of law. I just dropped him as a potential candidate on my advisory committee. And a year or two later, I found out that ICE had come in, picked him up, and deported him. I didn't know that he was illegal, even at that time. I just didn't trust him any longer when he asked me that question. So that is another individual that could have been, and may still be, qualified to be a recipient. Those that come across the border, I have gone down and looked into the jail cells of the Border Patrol, and there were hundreds there at the times that I have been there--hundreds of them. They are sorted between children, women, men. And the men far outweigh the numbers of women or children. Some of the numbers we looked at were 80 percent men. Some of these men will present themselves as under 18--many of them will. And I have seen the cell with those minor males that are in there. And some of those, supposedly, minor males have gray in their beard. They would also qualify, or at least apply for. And if we didn't have a way to do a background check on them--and many cases we don't--and they give you a false name, what do you do after that if they had never been printed? They would qualify. And MS-13. We know that there have been a significant number of MS-13 gang members, who also are DACA recipients. That has been published multiple times throughout the last couple of years. So many people that we would want to get out of this country would be granted a path of citizenship to stay in this country. That is why it is so wrong. And it disrespects natural-born American citizens. It even more disrespects naturalized American citizens, who came here the right way, applied the right way, and spent maybe 7 years to get in a position where they could take the naturalization test and then the oath; which is a grand day, by the way, Mr. Speaker. I look forward to every opportunity I have to speak to the naturalization services that take place in the Federal building in Sioux City, Iowa. And I always tell them: Remember this date that you became an American citizen, and I want you to memorize it. I hand them a Constitution with the date on it and my signature on it. Hopefully, they will have the reverence for the Constitution that I and many have developed as well. But we have a vigor that comes into America. These are self-selected people. If you have ten kids growing up in a family in Bangladesh or Ireland or Italy, or wherever it might be, and one of them has the inspiration to come to America, you are going to get the one who had the greatest aspirations, the one with the strongest ambition, the one with the deepest convictions in themselves. The most can-do sibling out of 1, 5, 6, or 10 is the one that has the dream to come to America. So they line up and come here legally. And they built this country for over 200 years. We need to respect the rule of law that they came here to embrace. We have people who are leaving countries that don't have the rule of law, that are corrupt. And when I go to Mexico, I see the problems down there. Any country that I go to, I can put together a formula to put that country into the First World from the Third World, except for corruption. How do you address the corruption? Law doesn't mean law in Mexico and points south the way it does in this country. If you get pulled over by the police, they might pull you over because they might need an extra tip that week. You may not be speeding, you might not have run a stop sign, they might just pull you over, and you have to pay the ``bribe,'' ``mordida.'' That is corruption itself. That doesn't happen in this country hardly ever because we get their badge number and they are out of a job. No country is free of corruption, but we have a healthy country with a rule of law. It is a pillar of American exceptionalism. We cannot, Mr. Speaker--and my message is to the President--we cannot reward lawbreakers. It destroys the rule of law. Our hearts cannot be leading ahead of our heads. There is a DACA recipient that I would like to adopt, if that is what it takes to keep that individual in America. I think that much of that individual. I like this individual a lot and respect this individual a lot, but I love the rule of law. I love the rule of law because, without it, we descend into the Third World. So this debate about, ``don't you have a heart, don't you know that these are just 800,000 kids, and can't we just give them the confidence of having a legal status in America,'' I say, no, not if you love the country, you can't do that. And it is not our doing. They either came here of their own volition, formed the intent, or their parents did. The law is the law. We don't tell the judge: Don't be putting this criminal in prison because he has kids at home. We don't worry about the separation of families when it comes to enforcing the law against American citizens, but we worry about enforcing the law against people who have intentional and willfully divided themselves. Now, what happens if we should grant amnesty to DACA recipients and then deport their parents? That splits up the family. I say: Get right with the law, go to your home country and apply to come in the legal way. By the way, when you arrive in your home country, if you truly are characterized for DACA, you will have a free American education that the American taxpayers pay for. You will be bilingual. You will have familial connections in your community. You will have a skill set that is there, a good educational set. You will know what it looks like to live in a country where things work generally right. And if you think of the 7,000 Peace Corps workers that are working in about 130 countries in the world and how much good they do, they go to countries without speaking the language, they don't know where they are going to land, they find a way to help out and contribute. People going home is not being condemned to hell. People going home is like sending out 750,000 or 800,000 fresh Peace Corps workers back to their home countries. What could be a greater economic development plan for Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua than for their best and brightest to go home and build their countries while they apply to come back to the United States? That is the best solution we can have, Mr. Speaker. And we don't even have a serious debate on that in here unless I bring it up. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives this evening. I am hopeful that we made a little bit of progress. I will continue to defend the rule of law and the Constitution. I challenge my colleagues to do the same. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to address the House of Representatives on this issue, as I seek to do on each pro-life issue that we have come before this Congress. This is a powerful piece of legislation that has had a lot of hands on it to produce good work; and the difference in this debate that you hear here, Mr. Speaker, is anecdotes on this side, looking for exceptions that might sway, somehow, the people on the side that understand the rule is this: life begins at the moment of conception. Human life is sacred in all of its forms, and these little babies that are 20-weeks mature can and have and do survive outside the womb, and they can feel pain inside the womb. And doctors that are doing surgery on pregnant mothers give anesthetic to those children because they don't want them flinching in the womb and suffering while they do the surgery. How can we support a ghastly procedure of abortion on demand to end the life of the miracles that we need to put this country in the right condition? Sixty-five percent of the babies 22 to 26 weeks old survive that are born premature. As I said, we know they feel pain. So I applaud everyone who has done the work on this. I stand solidly with the entire pro-life movement we have in this country. We have a long ways to go to get to where we need to be, but this is a step in the right direction.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for yielding to me, and I appreciate the years that we have sat elbow to elbow on the Judiciary Committee and on the Constitution and Civil Justice Subcommittee and have done the battle for life. What I am reflecting here, tonight, is the sequence of pro-life leaders that I have had the privilege to walk these floors and halls with. When Trent Franks and I arrived at this Congress, Henry Hyde had the lead, and he did so many glorious things to lay the foundation for life now. Chris Smith was there at his side the full time that I was here, and then Joe Pitts. I want to remember Joe Pitts, as well, and Trent Franks. So I put those four gentlemen in a category of the leaders in this movement here on the floor of the House of Representatives. I remain counting those moments precious that I have to serve and work on this cause with each of you. This bill that we will bring to the floor tomorrow on a rules vote and a final passage vote will pass this floor of the House of Representatives--I have every confidence that it will--and it will be messaged over to the Senate. There is a lot of work that has been put into this, the 16 States that have passed the legislation that is similar to H.R. 36, Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. I just add that, when Mr. Johnson mentioned the seven countries that allow for an elective abortion after 20 weeks, of course, the United States; the other six--he mentioned a couple of them--North Korea, China, which will impose forceable abortions on mothers, that cruel and heinous activity, Vietnam, Singapore, Netherlands, and Canada. I think Canada might have been affected with the United States along the way. The Netherlands is one of the more liberal countries in the world. And this list is not a list that I want the United States of America on. I want us out. I want to be able to send this message that a baby who has a chance at survival at 20 weeks of development from conception, that at 20 weeks, that precious little baby that Vicky Hartzler so well described in her presentation here, 65 percent of premature babies born in the range of 22 to 26 weeks will survive--65 percent. We all know one or two of those little babies who are walking around. I ran into a friend after church a couple of weeks ago at the grocery store who I hadn't seen in several years, and I asked him how his son was doing. And I am not going to use names here on purpose. I asked him how his son was doing. He said: Oh, he is doing fine. He is 30 years old now. He has got a great job out there. He has got a family. I have got grandchildren. All things were wonderful. He knew why I asked him, because we were doing a job that he was on back then when that little premature boy was born 21 or 22 weeks old. When he came back from 2 weeks of sitting next to that child where he could come back home again and go to work because he now had a good chance that that little boy would be able to survive, I said: We will spend all kinds of money, won't we? We will do anything. We will go to any length to keep a child alive who is born premature. A child that is born at 20 weeks, 21 weeks, 22, 23, 24, 26 weeks, there is no expense that we will spare ourselves from because that life, we know, is so precious. Well, the life in the womb is as precious as the life out of the womb, and the pain that that child feels at 20 weeks, 22 weeks, 24 weeks. But this little boy--he remembered what I said to him that day. I said: You are doing everything to save this little child's life, but when you go into the polls and vote, you are going to vote on the other side of that issue like you always have. And he called me a name that day, kind of like the President did some of the NFL players, but he remembered exactly what I had said to him 30-some years ago. And he said: You know, you really straightened me out that day--because I gave him my remarks on that. Now, that is a change in heart and a change in minds. America has undergone a change in heart and a change in minds. In fact, I stepped into a member of my staff's office here just last Friday, and the frame of the ultrasound of his firstborn is there, and it has been there for 9 years beside his desk. That little child, that little child they first bonded with him by looking at the ultrasound. That little child, by the way, is my godson. So each one of these lives are so utterly precious, and we are not going to stop. We are going to defend every life we can. We are going to protect every life we can. We are going to do the right thing that we can for the babies that we can save. Meanwhile, this goes on the conscience of America when we fall short. But we are going to fall short tomorrow. We are going to succeed. We are going to find a way to move this legislation and others through the House and through the Senate to a President's desk who will sign that legislation. When we contemplate the litigation that is bound to take place-- because there are people that are dug in deeply on promoting and defending abortion--we are going to have a new Supreme Court. One more appointment to that Court and we will get this past them, and a number of other pieces of legislation as well. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for his attention, his years of work on this very precious cause, and all of the rest who have done so much to step up and defend these lives. I am looking forward to tomorrow. There should be a great shout of joy coming off the floor of the House of Representatives.

Mr. KING of Iowa

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

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This is the amendment that doesn't allow Federal funding to support any project that enforces Davis-Bacon rules. Davis-Bacon rules have--actually, it is the last remaining Jim Crow law left on the books in America. It was established by a couple of Republicans in New York back in about 1932 or 1933, when they realized that of the few construction projects that were going on during the Great Depression, there was an Alabama contractor that underbid the local unions in New York to build a Federal building up in New York. That contractor who came out of Alabama brought his labor out of Alabama, African Americans out of Alabama. So they got together and decided, let's pass a law to have a little trade protectionism between Alabama and New York. We are going to control who is in the union, and we will control the wages, and we will control the benefits. I have been in the construction business, as of last Monday, for 42 years. We have paid Davis-Bacon wage scales most of those years, if not all of those years, and King Construction understands what this does. First, it inflates wages, and the inflation of wages is dictated by a little board and committee that is supposed to be evaluating what is described as prevailing wage. But it is not prevailing wage, it is union scale, and it is a BOGSAT is what it is. BOGSAT, meaning a bunch of guys sitting around a table deciding that they are having trouble competing with the rest of the private sector, so they want to raise the wages of their construction workers so that they can get the pick of the cream of the crop of the construction workers to go to work for them rather than their competitor or another industry. That is how this has gone on for all of these years in the private sector, the Federal Government deciding what wages and what benefits should be paid. And now we are seeing benefits that are being paid in the fringe benefit category to people who have a health insurance program that is funded by the taxpayers, premiums funded by the taxpayers under ObamaCare. So now, Davis-Bacon is even worse. It pays wages and it pays benefits that are designed to pay for their health insurance benefits, and they are doubling down on that and on the ObamaCare subsidy of their premiums. And so these wages no longer reflect prevailing wage. They haven't for a long time. They have long, and maybe always, been union scale. The union sits at the table with a few contractors in the BOGSAT, and they make the deal. And I have a private contractor, a merit shop contractor, who has worked with this for 42 years. I have seen the inefficiencies it has created within our company, and competing companies as well. And, yes, we like it when we can pay our labor the highest rates known to man. It makes our employees happy. And if I can look at our competition and we can sit down and say, you know what, we would like to give each of our employees a $5 an hour raise or a $10 an hour raise, and let's make sure that any other industry can't compete with the wages we are paying, because, after all, it doesn't really come out of our pocket as contractors. It comes out of the pockets of the taxpayers, borrowed from the Chinese. That is what is going on, and the wages increase is a 20 percent increase on balance. So, for example, if you want to build five bridges, repeal Davis-Bacon. If you want to build four bridges, stick with the imposed Federal union scale, the legacy of Jim Crow. If you want to build--let's just say a USDA building, the same formula applies. You can build five buildings; you can build four. You can build four stories, or you can build five, but we need to have competition in this U.S. economy. Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Aderholt), the chairman of the subcommittee.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, and expending the balance of it, I would point out that some of these wages that we are looking at here, here are laborers in Indiana, a total of $34.63 an hour. Here is an asbestos worker, $46.05 an hour. There are more here in the records, and I don't think that these are the kind of numbers that the gentleman is talking about. And I constantly hear the script read to us from the other side but never a response. Mr. Chair, I urge its adoption, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this is an amendment that requires that new hires under this appropriations bill are verified under E-Verify before they can go to work. It ensures that those funds that are made available in this appropriations bill will not be used for new hires unless they use the E-verify program as a responsibility that the Federal Government requires as a matter of law. Current law requires the Federal Government to use E-Verify to enhance enforcement of Federal immigration law in all hiring. However, it has been brought to my attention that it isn't consistent across the different departments. We need to ensure that it is. It is in response to those concerns that I offer this amendment to require E-Verify. I will just describe E-Verify. Conditional to the hire, employers who have a prospective employee may go onboard the Federal internet site, which is the E-Verify site, and type in the valid information or perhaps the presented information of the prospective employee that has been offered a job. Should they clear E-Verify, you punch in what I just euphemistically call name, rank, and serial number. It is a short piece of data that includes birth date, name, and often birthplace. Then that goes into the internet site. It comes back to you and lets you know that you can legally hire the individual that is identified in this data. That is E-Verify. Hopefully, in this Congress, the Federal Government will pass and make E-Verify mandatory for private sector employers. Hopefully, we will do that in this Congress. But the Federal Government needs to, Mr. Chairman, address this, and it needs to do so with our own employees. That is what the King amendment does. It ensures that E-Verify is used by our own employees. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. BISHOP Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Aderholt), chairman of the subcommittee.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I would add for clarification, Mr. Chairman, that the provision the gentleman referred to is section 408 of the Foreign Service Act of 1980, which exempts those employees in foreign countries that surely would not want them uncovered under E-Verify. In response to the gentleman's objection, I have tried to fool E- Verify by punching data into it. The longest delay I could create was 6 seconds. So as far as undue burden is concerned, a 6-second wait in the most extreme circumstances I don't think is extreme at all. This is the right thing for the Federal Government to at least exercise the laws that we pass and we want to impose upon the rest of the country and upon ourselves. So it is a clarification amendment, Mr. Chairman. I urge its adoption, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This is an amendment, a Davis-Bacon amendment, and it will be brought on each of the four segments of this appropriations bill that we are considering here in the House this evening and perhaps tomorrow morning, Mr. Chairman. Just to make it clear, the text of the amendment is very simple. It says, ``None of the funds made available by this act may be used to implement, administer, or enforce the prevailing wage requirements in subchapter IV of chapter 31 of title 40, United States Code,'' and this is commonly referred to as the Davis-Bacon Act. What the Davis-Bacon Act is, it is a statute that exists from about 1933, and its genesis is back during the Great Depression when there was, let's say, labor protectionism brought about by the unions in New York City. When a contractor from Alabama bid a Federal building contract--and there were not many of them in those days--that Alabama contractor was successful and he imported African-American labor out of Alabama to do the work in the trade zone of the construction unions in New York City. And so two Republicans, a Republican Senator and a Republican Member of the House, got together and wrote the Davis-Bacon Act, which is defined as prevailing wage. In my 42 years in the construction business, which we just concluded as of Labor Day, this past Labor Day, we have dealt with the Davis- Bacon Act quite a lot. Our math goes somewhere between an 8 and 35 percent increase in the cost of the projects. We use an average of 20 percent. I believe you will see some of those sophisticated studies go to a 22 percent increase in prices. So we are dealing with taxpayers' moneys here in a fiscal time when we need to get to a balance. There never was a time we should be wasting taxpayers' money. A prevailing wage, a real prevailing wage is a merit shop wage, not a union scale imposed by a BOGSAT, which is a bunch of guys sitting around a table deciding whether they want to give raises to the different classifications within the labor force. I have long opposed the Davis-Bacon wage scale. It messes up the efficiency within our companies and makes us less efficient. This just doesn't raise the cost and impose the union scale on the taxpayers, but it erodes the efficiency that you can provide in a private sector approach. And so after all of these years, I am pledged to see the day when this is finally repealed. I urge the adoption of this amendment which strikes the use of Davis- Bacon enforcement in the underlying appropriations, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I would like to point out that I hear the script read every year that I bring the effort to repeal or undo Davis-Bacon, but I don't really hear a lot of response to the fact that Davis-Bacon is a Jim Crow law designed to keep minorities, particularly African Americans, out of the construction trades, particularly in the unions. The assertion that it is a prevailing wage doesn't hold up when you live in this universe where I have for 42-plus years--and that is just as an owner, and working out, I saw that also for other companies. So when I see these rates and I talk to a contractor that is building bridges in rural Missouri down there in the whoops and hollers, as we say, and they are paying for an unskilled laborer who, for a number of those hours, does lean on the shovel while he waits for other things to get done, $23 an hour for wages, $22 an hour for fringe benefits, $45 an hour out of pocket for the contractor really just transferred to the taxpayer. That is an example. There is much of it that is here that goes in 46, 57, here is $51.60 an hour, Mr. Chairman. So, no, this is not prevailing wage. There is no study that I have found in all the time I have dealt with this that would demonstrate that prevailing wage is a merit shop earned wage. Instead, it is set, as I said, by a bunch of guys sitting around a table. It reflects almost always union scale. Many of the merit shop contractors will not report their Davis-Bacon prevailing wages because they know that just brings union organization up against them. They want to avoid that, so they are not reporting what they are actually paying in wages. In many of the States that have adopted a mini Davis-Bacon for their State or the States that are highly unionized, they press this thing to the point where the difference between the merit shop wages and union scale is very close together. We have also double-breasted operations where you might have a company that is Company A and Company B wrapped up, and one-half of the company is union and the other half of the company isn't. That is to comply with Federal regulations. There is a gentleman who used to serve this Congress in Massachusetts, who was famous for saying that the Federal Government has no business intervening in between a relationship between two or more consenting adults. I agree with that. An employee and an employer should be able to decide what they want to make as their business agreement. If I decide I want to pay someone $100 an hour or $1,000 or $1 an hour, that should be up to me. Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, this is an E-Verify amendment. It was offered in the previous segment of this appropriation bill as well. What it does, it just simply reinstates and clarifies Federal law, the requirement to use E-Verify in the forms of all Federal contracting. Under this T-HUD bill, that is what would apply. We have run into cases where there has been, let's say, concerns that the Federal agencies are not uniformly and consistently abiding by Federal law. This says that the funds will not be used for new hires, unless they are verified through the E-Verify program. The E-Verify program--we worked this now for quite a few years, brought to us by Ken Calvert of California--even though in its early days it hit a couple of bumps in the road, it has gotten better and better. We use it, I have used it, it is efficient, and it is not time- consuming at all. This reiterates Federal law. In fact, the Federal Acquisition Regulation Act of 2009 reinforces and requires that compliance be there for new hires, and to use E-Verify on all new hires affected by this appropriations bill. Mr. Chairman, I urge this adoption, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, in response to the gentleman's comments, I am not at all convinced that it is needless. The reports that I am getting are that E-Verify has not been adequately enforced, especially at the contractor and subcontractor level. This is Congress reminding those who consume Federal dollars and Federal contracting under this T-HUD appropriations bill that they shall comply with the law that was referenced by the gentleman. I don't know why it would be divisive, if it is Federal law, and needless, supposedly. Let's go ahead and pass this and remind those that follow Federal law and this debate won't happen next year. Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of this amendment, the E-Verify amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

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

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to modify my amendment with the modification at the desk.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this eliminates the funding that would go to Davis- Bacon and enforcing Davis-Bacon, the Federal wage scale that advertises prevailing wage but turns out to be union scale. We debated this twice earlier this evening. The modification for the edification of the people who might not have picked up on that rolls this Davis-Bacon amendment together with the appropriations component that we will debate tomorrow so there is clarification here on the floor. I have long been for the repeal of Davis-Bacon. I have made a statement that the Federal Government doesn't have any business dictating to an employer and an employee what they should be able to agree to on wages. We have been in the construction business for 42 years. We started on our 43rd year this week. We have paid Davis-Bacon wages in most of those years, if not all of those years, and it upsets the efficiency of being able to manage the job, and it interferes with that relationship. If it is going to be prevailing wages, then let the market decide that. But the studies that we have out there, there is no study that I know of that would show where there is an imposed Davis-Bacon wage scale that it costs less money. It always costs the taxpayers more money to do a particular project. Our records of these years run between an 8 percent greater than it would be if we had merit shop or as high as 35 percent greater than the cost of the projects. We average it out to 20 percent. There are studies out there that say a 22 percent increase. So I describe it this way: if the Federal Government is going to mandate union scale on construction projects, whether it be for building a wall on the southern border or an interstate or a bridge, a highway, a building, whatever it might be, you can decide whether you want to borrow money from China to build 4 miles of road or 5, if you want to build four bridges or five, or if you want to build four buildings or five. That is what it comes down to in the end. We can build five of everything instead of four if we just repeal Davis-Bacon. So this scores well for us. The fiscally responsible people will come down on the side of eliminating Davis-Bacon. This country would not adopt such a policy if it happened today. By the way, this is the last remaining Jim Crow law that I can find in America. As so many things are being taken down left over from that era, it is time we took down Davis-Bacon, too. So I would urge adoption of my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter).