Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I would yield myself the balance of my time. To reiterate these points that I've made, it may not serve a purpose here, but I would take us back to where we stand with the Federal spending that exists today. This Federal spending that doubles our deficit in 5 years and triples it in 10 years, this spending, this profligate spending that's rooted in the Keynesian philosophy--John Maynard Keynes--who said, ``I can solve all the unemployment in America.'' This is during the economic crisis called the Great Depression of the thirties. How did he propose to solve all the unemployment problem in America? He said, If I can just go out to an abandoned coal mine and drill a lot of holes into the bottom of that abandoned coal mine and put U.S. dollars in those holes, fill them back up again and fill the coal mine full of garbage''--and that was the word he used, was garbage, which I thought was interesting--then he would turn the entrepreneurs in America loose and they could go about digging through that garbage and that would put everybody to work and it would solve the unemployment. This is the mindset that prevails in this psychology that comes from those who are spending trillions and trillions of our grandchildren's dollars. It's interesting. I don't know that John Maynard Keynes when he talked about digging holes and burying money and filling the coal mine up with garbage, he didn't talk about the signage necessary to be able to direct the entrepreneurs to the landfill or the coal mine so they could begin to dig through that garbage and come up with this money. In fact, Keynes said: The more foolish the spending, the better, because at least when you spend it in a foolish way, it's not competing directly with the private sector that has, by virtue of it being able to compete, demonstrated that it is a more prudent expenditure than government can possibly make. So I don't submit that we bury money in the coal mine or fill the coal mine up with garbage. I think that the EPA would probably raise an objection with that, Mr. Speaker. But I do submit that we get our wits about us, get a handle on what we're doing with our expenditures, get control of this profligate spending that's taking place and take responsibility in our time, in our generation, this year, now, here, in the House of Representatives, instead of delaying it off onto future generations. Let's tighten our belt now like a family would tighten their belt now. Let's make sure that the entrepreneurs in America have the tools they need to help us recover from this downward spiral in our economy. Let's keep the taxes low, let's keep our spending low, let's keep our borrowing low. Let's keep our regulations low and let's put our signs up high so everybody can see where to turn off to the small business and do business there. I yield back the balance of my time. announcement by the speaker pro tempore

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his leadership on this issue. This is one of those issues that has a lot of support across the country because there are a lot of reporters across the country that are interested in making sure they have the last full measure of protection they can possibly have for their particular profession. And all of us, in whatever profession we are, see ourselves as the consummate professionals without regard to competing professions. I would ask the question, what are we trying to fix here? What is the problem that this legislation seeks to address? And one of those is the lack of conformity between the States; I recognize that. But we only have, in the last 25 years, 17 incidents of reporters that have been incarcerated for their refusal to divulge their sources. The most public of those would be the case of Judith Miller in the Scooter Libby investigations that were conducted by the Special Prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, Madam Speaker. And I asked myself during that entire investigation, why didn't they just ask Robert Novak? That would have answered the question. And if I ask the question today, what was truth and what was fiction in all that? That may be a matter of record, but it is not a matter of public knowledge, even among us here. So it turned out it was Richard Armitage and not Scooter Libby. Scooter Libby was still prosecuted and convicted. I think that Judith Miller's 85 days in jail, if she had that to do over again, she still testified and she still had her agreement with her source. This goes on and on, 200-plus years, and now we have journalists that have to have special protection without having at least a breadth of statistical data that would support this advocacy that is part of this bill. And I will tell you, as one who has been in the public eye for some time today, Madam Speaker, that I don't think I am treated objectively by all of the media. I don't think I need to bring a law to this Congress and ask that, for example, to give a Member of Congress a cause of action to bring litigation against a journalist if they happen to be unethical or inaccurate or untruthful. We just go ahead and take that, because that is part of being in the public eye. The protections are there. There is already sufficient judicial restraint on moving to bring to cause these journalists who speak. Their sources are protected substantially by the tradition and the effects of the court. And I will submit also another argument, Madam Speaker, and that is that special professional protection is preserved by the States for certain professions. Priests and pastors, for example. They are considered to have a certain privilege with the people that they counsel and minister to, and we try not to crack into that source. And there will be other examples. For example, a medical doctor or any type of a doctor who has patients. The patient and the doctor relationship is protected in confidentiality. And we have attorney-client relations, too, that we are very well familiar with in this Congress. All of those are professional relationships. All of those are relationships with people who are skilled.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas. Madam Speaker, all of those professions that I mentioned are professions where we have people that are trained, that are essentially certified, whether it is by their denomination, by their education, or by their licensing, and those privileges are preserved for clear reasons. This is a privilege that is preserved for the sake of protecting the journalist only, and without an abuse of that confidentiality at this point, without a judicial abuse. Seventeen cases in 25 years, I would make the argument that this is a solution in search of a problem. It is something that I think sends a message out to the journalistic world. And maybe those of us who will stand up against it will be subject to a certain amount of public criticism. I can face that. I have faced a lot of it. It is part of the price of being in the public eye. Part of the price of being a journalist then is to on a rare occasion, out of the thousands of journalists, 17 in a quarter of a century have been brought forward and said it is in the interests of the court that you go ahead and divulge your source, or at least divulge the information. And I know that there has been an effort made to tighten this legislation up a little bit, and I appreciate the gentleman's work and due diligence on this. One of the words that was added to the definition of a covered person is the word a person who regularly, the word ``regularly'' gathers, prepares, collects, photographs, records, writes, edits, reports, or publishes news or information. This definition of a covered person is tightened up because they have to be regular rather than irregular in their behavior; but I think this covers about anybody that is a journalist, unless they are listed in the exemptions rather than the definition of the bill, Madam Speaker. So I will submit that the level of professionalism that has been demonstrated, although there are many high-quality professionals in the journalistic business, has not risen to the level where I am willing to give that kind of professional special protection, especially because we have had national secrets that have been divulged into the national and international media arena, done so out of this posturing of it is a public service to divulge national secrets. And I will submit, Madam Speaker, that that is not in our national interest, and I oppose this bill.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to be recognized here tonight. Before my colleagues leave the floor, I hope they can hear a little bit of an alternative viewpoint, that being that this news flash, for especially my colleague from Iowa, corporations don't pay taxes, Mr. Speaker. Corporations collect those taxes from end users, consumers, retail people, and then they aggregate the taxes from the consumers and they pass them on to the Federal Government or State government or whatever the tax collecting body might be. For that reason, no matter what the circumstances are, we are not going to be able to chase these corporations. We're not going to be able to chase these corporations around the world and collect that taxes from them because they will always find another way to pay taxes or, of course, the obligation they have it to pass it onto the consumer. This is a fundamental principle when it comes to holding this economy together and how we're going to build the economy in this country and how we're going to compete with the rest the world. If we get that wrong, if we get it wrong and we think that we can somehow squeeze this capital out of these corporations that have lost about 40 percent of their asset value over the last year or so if you just simply look at the Dow, you'll find out that you can drive this free-market economy into oblivion and the free world will not make progress. So we need to get that fundamental principle correct. We can't simply get corporations to pay taxes without them passing it on to consumers. And that is the bottom line, Mr. Speaker. I didn't come to talk about that, but as I listened to my colleagues from the Populist Caucus--I discovered a new caucus here in the House of Representatives, Mr. Speaker--I raise another issue, the very vague and undefinable position of being for fair trade. If someone stands up and says they're for fair trade, that means they're not for free trade. They can be for free trade and for smart trade, but you can't be for fair trade and also be for free trade. Now that might seem like a little bit of alliteration gobbledegook, Mr. Speaker, but the truth is that there is no such thing as fair. Anyone who has raised more than one child--two or more children, I might further define--understands there's no such thing as fair. A three-year old can figure out that their four-year old brother or sister got an extra benefit along the way. They'll argue: That's not fair. As soon as they argue that, of course its subjective. There's no such thing as fair when it comes to raising children, there's no such thing as fair when it comes to trade, because another country will have a different view on what is fair trade compared to what we will here in the United States. Those are the fundamental principles. If we go down this path of this nice feeling rhetoric of fair trade as opposed to having justice and equity and balance and free marketing, if we go down this path of seeking to tax corporations and punish them, then we will continually be frustrated by trying to shape a policy that will never be achieved. And that would be my comments to the gentleman who I think gave a heartfelt presentation here over the last hour, Mr. Speaker. I didn't come, as I said, to talk about that. I came here to the floor of the House of Representatives tonight to talk about an issue that has to do with innocent unborn human life and these timeless values of the sacredness of the unborn child and the sacredness of all human life. I have often made this case, especially to our high school and our middle school students, but also across this country, that we have these rights that come from God, and they are delineated in the Declaration of Independence, Mr. Speaker. What our Founders drafted in the Declaration of Independence are the right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That was not a random stream from the quill of Thomas Jefferson, Mr. Speaker. That was very specific, very carefully thought out, very prosaic designed phrase--the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Prioritized rights, Mr. Speaker. That right to life--the right to life is paramount to anyone's liberty. And the right to liberty is paramount to pursuit of happiness. So let me say that in my pursuit of happiness, if I should encroach upon someone's liberty, my pursuit of happiness loses its right out of deference to a higher priority right of liberty trumps pursuit of happiness. In pursuit of liberty, if I were to choose a pursuit of liberty that would violate someone's right to life, the right to life trumps anyone's pursuit of liberty. So our Founders understood these are prioritized rights. There's a right to life. That human life is sacred in all of its forms and we have to choose a time, we have to choose an instant when life begins because we simply cannot err. So I choose that instant at conception. Today, it's conception/fertilization. When that happens, we have the biological beginning of life. I believe that's the moment that God puts the soul in that little child. From that instant on, they're a unique individual. There will never be another one identical to that unique individual. And they are all the solutions to the problems in the world, aside from those that come from above, come from those little children that are coming into this world. They have a right to life. We need to guarantee that right to life. That right to life trumps anyone's right to liberty, as much as the right to liberty trumps anyone else's pursuit of happiness. I can continue to give these examples, Mr. Speaker, but I think where we are at this point is, having laid the foundation, I recognize I have the gentleman here from New Jersey, who has, I think, put together a very strong and compelling case here in this Congress; someone who I can count on every time to be with us every day as we stand up for the innocent unborn human life. He's someone who brings a passion to the scholarship, the conviction, the faith, the core principles to this cause, an individual I get to count as a friend and a colleague and someone who it's an honor for me to be serve with. I'd yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith).

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey. And I appreciate the privilege to stand here and hear those words, the nonviolent, life-affirming philosophy that we are here and that we join together in, and the question that was presented, that is this question: Did Hillary Clinton understand? Did the Secretary of State understand the cruel, racist, elitist philosophy of Margaret Sanger in whose name she accepted the award? Did she understand the implications that come with such an award? And I don't know the answer to that, Mr. Speaker. But I have to believe that someone who has been engaged in public policy all of her life, even as an undergraduate at Yale, this is not something that has not crossed her mind. I cannot believe that the Secretary of State would be ignorant of the philosophy of Margaret Sanger. I cannot believe that. If that were the case, then I would suspect that she is ignorant of many other things, and I don't buy that. I think this is a well-educated, very astute lady, a smart lady. And as I listened to the gentleman from New Jersey's presentation, I think about something that takes us even to another level here, and this is a statement where we have an individual that has been nominated into this administration in a confirmation, a Senate confirmation position, Office of Legal Counsel, who actually is even more of an advocate of abortion and someone who even takes the position of Margaret Sanger to another level, and that is Dawn Johnsen, Office of Legal Counsel. And I have a quote. Now, Dawn Johnsen has been appointed, Mr. Speaker, to head up the Office of Legal Counsel. This is the most influential, most powerful position that you have never heard of if you are an average, regular person in America. The Office of Legal Counsel provides opinions on the constitutionality of the activities of the entire administration, and gives advice to the President of the United States. The Office of Legal Counsel, the person who heads that up, this would be Dawn Johnsen, should she be confirmed by the United States Senate, has the opportunity to whisper into the President's ear over and over again Constitutional recommendations, which are actually considered to be binding precedent unless it happens to be overturned by the courts, so very seriously taken, and the opportunity to advocate for policy. This is Dawn Johnsen, who says that: Abortion should not be rare. And actually went so far as to take issue with Hillary Clinton whom, in the presidential campaign, who said abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. At least rare is the right direction to go, and legal is another question. But here is Dawn Johnsen's statement: The notion of legal restrictions as some kind of reasonable compromise, perhaps to help make abortion safe, legal, and rare, thus proves nonsensical. In other words, she even took issue with Hillary Clinton's position that abortion should at least be rare. I will give Hillary Clinton that, Mr. Speaker, that she has at least made the statement, whether she has followed through on it or not. And she has accepted the Margaret Sanger award, which would actually contradict this statement about abortion being rare. Margaret Sanger's philosophy was very elitist, very racist, very much focused on the idea of eugenics, and that we could perfect the species of Homo sapiens by selective breeding processes and by selective abortions. And data shows that in the African American community, as much as 50 percent of the African American babies conceived in the United States of America meet their death by abortion. Half of the population that would be here, that could laugh, live, love, play, contribute to this society, be part of this whole America, could enjoy a right to life and the right to fulfillment of that life lose that right to life in the abortion clinics. And if I listened right to the gentleman from New Jersey, 300,000 altogether meet their end annually here in the United States of America at the hands of Planned Parenthood and their abortion clinics, 300,000 out of perhaps a number that is around 4,000 a day, multiplied across every day here in the United States. And this is just the United States of America. Then we have the Advocacy for International Abortion, which comes continually here. Every year we deal with that debate. Mr. Speaker, I remember this debate that we had on the floor here where we stand. It was the first debate on the Mexico City policy that took place in the 110th Congress, the first debate on Mexico City policy that fell underneath the gavel of Speaker Pelosi. And I remember those of us who stand up for innocent, unborn human life lost that debate and lost that vote here. And I will never forget looking across over on this side, Mr. Speaker, where I saw the advocates that thought that they wanted to compel American taxpayers to fund abortions in foreign lands clapping, cheering, jumping up and down, hugging each other, maybe even in tears of joy, for compelling Americans to fund abortions in foreign lands, something that is abhorrent to I believe a majority of Americans. And yet, the cheer came up over here, Mr. Speaker. Nearly impossible to understand. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey. And I would hope that he can stand by. I have a couple of questions I would like to present that way and first make a statement. And that is, Mr. Speaker, with regard to partial-birth abortion, it has occurred to me that if an abortionist can go in and turn that child around so the baby is born breech, that being feet first, and bring that baby to delivery for everything but the head and in fact, part of the head, and then, hold the baby there so that the baby isn't fully born and then take a scalpel and insert that into the back of the skull and put some scissors in there and open up the hole and suck the brains out of that child while that child struggles for life and struggles for mercy, it occurs to me as I picked up the film, ``Silent Scream'' years ago when our children were about 10 or 12 years old and showed that to them one time, and one time was enough, that silent scream, the word of that movie that showed the violence of abortion, it occurs to me that this society can't abide the screams of the innocent. And so they had to devise a means of abortion that would stop the life of that innocent child an inch before that child could fill its lungs full of free air and scream for its own mercy. That, I think, is the psychology behind this. Even the abortionists couldn't stand the sound of the scream of the child screaming for its own mercy. And I think that is how partial- birth abortion was devised. I would pose this question to the gentleman from New Jersey, and having been the individual that offered the amendment to preserve the Mexico City policy and having lost that debate and lost that vote on this floor, and having seen the display of glee and joy and hugging and clapping and cheering and perhaps even tears of joy on this side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, the joy that they were going to compel the American taxpayers to fund abortions in foreign lands, what kind of a person, the sons and daughters, the grandsons and granddaughters of Margaret Sanger, the mother of abortion, the mother of ``family planning'' in quotes, the eugenic idea of producing a more perfect race, Hitlerian idea, what could cause a person to be so full of joy about compelling you or me or the people who agree with us to fund abortions in foreign lands? I can't understand that, Mr. Smith. And I would be very interested in your analysis.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey. And as I listened to that description of the audience breaking into applause at a video of a baby who has been a victim of partial birth abortion, had its brain sucked out and stopped struggling, it became apparent that the baby was dead, that they would cheer, break into applause, that indexes to the cheer and the applause and the hugging that went on here when the Mexico City Policy was defeated on the floor of the House of Representatives, Mr. Speaker. And I understood it differently. And I think it was because of a gap in the knowledge and experience that's been filled in by Mr. Smith from New Jersey. I explained that emotion over here as not being a rational, logical emotion, but an emotion that simply divorced itself from the sacred nature of human life, and was simply cheering because they had scored a victory over our side. And how could anyone go through life and think they had accomplished something by compelling others to fund abortions in foreign lands? That's a psychology that I cannot connect with, Mr. Speaker. And so I could only rationalize it on the part that they know we hold innocent life dear. We hold all human life dear. And we believe that it's sacred in all of its forms, from the instant at conception and fertilization to natural death. And Mr. Smith, among others, have been one of the stalwarts in leading and defending innocent human life, especially in this Congress. And I thought that that cheer was for having scored points against the value system, the core value system of those of us on this side. Mr. Speaker, I'm not sure of that, because the people sitting inside that room who were watching that film of that partial birth abortion, the struggling child who ceased to struggle when it's obvious that the baby was dead, that broke into a cheer, they didn't do that because they scored points on the other side. That doesn't relate over here to a political contest which should always transcend our fundamental, timeless values. However I might try to rationalize their emotions, when you tie the two of them together, it's almost unexplainable. I can't explain an emotion or thought process that would want to end innocent human life and consider it to be a right, a fundamental right. So I ask this question, and I ask this question continually in our public schools and our parochial schools across the land when I have the chance. And I say, especially to young people, you'll be called upon to make a profound moral decision in this society and this civilization; if you're 14, 15, 16, 18 years old, 19, 20 years old, you will, or you will be among those who will have to make that profound decision, the moral decision. And you ask only two questions. It's very simple, and it's this simple. The first question is, do you believe in the sanctity of human life? Is human life sacred in all of its forms? Is your life sacred? Is the person next to you, is their life sacred, people on either side, are their lives sacred? And it becomes almost a universal yes. I've actually never had a student say, no, I don't think so. I don't think my life is sacred and I shouldn't be treated in a sacred fashion. I've never had that happen. They nod their heads. It's universal that we believe that life, human life is sacred in all of its forms. So once we establish the answer, yes, to the first question, is human life sacred, the only question to follow that up with is, then at what instant does life begin? You have to choose an instant. And I describe it this way. You can't guess at it. What if somebody came by the gymnasium or the auditorium and stuck a gun in the door and turned their head the other way and pulled the trigger and ran down the hallway without looking back. If they were captured outside the building, you could ask them, did you kill somebody or didn't you? And their answer might be, I don't know. But we know that if the gymnasium emptied and there's someone in there who's dead, with a bullet hole in them, yes, the answer is, he did kill somebody. And if it results in a dead baby, someone was killed. And you cannot guess when it comes to life. You can't err when it comes to life. You must choose that instant that life begins. It can't be a first trimester, a second trimester, a third trimester; it can't be viability outside the womb. We know it goes up beyond 24 weeks or below 24 weeks for viability today. There's no baby that's born, now, 9 months, full- term that really is viable without being nurtured by its mother and by its parents. And they've got to be nurtured. And so whether it's the instant before they're born or the instant after, when does life begin? I remember asking that question when this first little miracle, that firstborn of our family, was put into my hands. And I looked at that child and I was struck by the awe of the miracle. And I don't remember that I thought this through on that day, but I remember going to work the next day and I was sitting there thinking this through. And I still believe there's a certain aura about that firstborn child. And I asked myself, here's this miracle that's been in my arms within the last hours. This little child, this miracle, could someone take his life today? And of course the answer is no. Could they have taken his life yesterday, the day he was born? No. Could they do so the minute after he was born? No. The minute before he was born? No. What about 10 minutes before or 2 hours before or a day or a week or a month before he was born? The answer is no, no and no, Mr. Speaker. And so if you can't do that, if it's abhorrent to us to think about the idea of ending the life of our unborn child a day, a week or a month before they're born, just as we couldn't think of that a day a week or a month after they're born, then we've got to take this back to an instant, an instant that their life begins. And it's that simple. And this has become a political argument that's destroyed the lives of 50 million babies, to the point where we argue that this civilization has a hole in it, in the generation. I remember standing down on the Mall, this would be, I believe, a year ago, January 22, on the March for Life. And if you looked out across that Mall, there were over 100,000 there that day. This year there was a far bigger number in the March for Life, many, many young people. And I made the point that if you are under 30 years old, and you're standing next to somebody that's under 30 years old, look at each other. And the ghost of one-third of your generation stands between you. That's the aborted generation, the generation that didn't have that opportunity for life, the generation that are the victims of Margaret Sanger, the victims of a political agenda, the victims of a lack of belief in the sanctity of human life, the people that would argue that babies are inconvenient, that an abortion should never be rare, the people like Dawn Johnsen who would argue that mothers are fetal containers. My mother a fetal container? Chris Smith's mother a fetal container? That the only emotion you feel--this is Dawn Johnsen again--the only emotion you feel when you have an abortion is relief, not trauma; that it never comes back to you; that it's simply off one's conscience. We know that that has motivated--that women deserve better--the organization that Chris Smith talked about. Dawn Johnsen spoke that women who get pregnant are simply the losers in the contraceptive lottery, and that they no more consent to pregnancy than pedestrians consent to being struck by drunk drivers. And yet, I'm standing in my kitchen on Sunday, talking with my daughter-in-law, who's the mother of our third grandchild. And I told her that I'm jealous because I'll never get to be a mom. And yet, no matter what she wants to do with her career, some of that career is going to be slowed down because she's busy being a mom. And she looked at me and she said, I know you're jealous. You've told me that before. You'll never be a mom. And I think being a mom is worth the tradeoff of slowing down my career because I think it's great being a mom. And that's the love that flows. That lady is not a fetal container. She's a mother, a mother that's brought love to each of the children that God's gifted this family with, just like the millions and millions of mothers across the planet who have done so, done so out of love, out of faith, out of conviction. And I can't understand the people that would cheer and celebrate the tax dollars of American people going to any place that provides abortion services and counseling. That is what happens, Mr. Speaker. And I know the gentleman from New Jersey has a few more words.

Mr. KING of Iowa. And I very much thank the gentleman from New Jersey. And it brings to mind an image that many of us have seen of an in-utero surgery where that--not only does that little unborn child feel the pain, but that little child reached up out of the incision and grasped the finger of the surgeon. I'll never forget that image. And it was something that floated around the Internet for a long time, and I think it would be worth bringing to this floor. Very, very human. And as I listened to Mr. Smith, the gentleman from New Jersey, I have to reflect back on our dear departed friend and colleague, Henry Hyde, who was a stalwart on the life issue. And I wrote this down from the back of the program at his funeral in Chicago that day. His last day on this Earth was November 29, 2007. And I think it's a good place, Mr. Speaker, to close this special order with a quote from Henry Hyde. And he said this: ``When the time comes, as it surely will, when we face that awesome moment, the final judgment, I've often thought, as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it's a terrible moment of loneliness. You have no advocates. You are there alone, standing before God. And a terror will rip through your soul like nothing you can imagine. But I really think that those in the pro-life movement will not be alone. I think there will be a chorus of voices that are not heard in this world that will be heard in the next, beautifully and clearly. And they will plead for everyone who has been in this movement, they will say to God, spare him because he loved us, and God will look at you and say not did you succeed, but did you try.'' Mr. Speaker, I will yield back.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the privilege of being recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, this Nation's great deliberative body that we are. I listened with interest to the gentlemen who have made their presentation in the previous hour, and I think back as we start this discussion, this 60-minute Special Order about what has taken place in the country. And many of us watched the President do his press conference. I wouldn't be very surprised if President Obama has at this point reached the threshold for press conferences in his career that would match that of Ronald Reagan's. Ronald Reagan didn't believe in coming before the American people a lot of times in a row. That is clearly not the case with President Obama, Madam Speaker. We are here dealing with a full-court press across this Nation that seeks to, as the President seeks to, sell his budget to the American people. We have watched the Congressional Budget Office come out with their estimates on what this budget is going to cost. I have watched the target move. I have watched the irresponsibility of the spending grow. And if you add up the cumulative total of the money that has been spent, taxpayers' money borrowed and spent, I don't really know anybody that has that full total. We need to put it down here on the floor and ring it up every day, just like you put the little thermometer up when you have got a fund-raising drive for a new library. The only thing will be that there won't be any new libraries for our children and grandchildren if we continue on this path. I recall, Madam Speaker, the President making a statement that, in order to repair this economy, we need to construct this multi-legged stool, and the stimulus plan is only one leg of a multi-legged stool. That is by his words. So I made the remark then that one leg of a multi-legged stool that wasn't a milking stool, that would be one leg. It wasn't a two-legged stool, I have never seen one of those. There would be no practical reason to have a two-legged stool, it would fall over. And so a three- legged stool, he would have said so. But we know it is multi-legged. So that is at least four, maybe more, with the legs of this stool that he would like to construct to solved our economic crisis at a price tag per leg of $1 trillion to $2 trillion each. And when I said that a month or so ago, there was a significant amount of criticism, that I was exaggerating the President's budget. Madam Speaker, I submit that, no, now the Congressional Budget Office has exceeded my exaggerated estimate in their objective conservative estimate of what this budget is going to cost this country in debt, and cost the American people. As I listened to the press conference today, I have been familiar with the term that was trotted at nearly every press conference, of which there have been many, and there are two things we can't get a total on: How much money is being spent, and how many press conferences we have had that set policy for this economy. But I have gotten used to the term that the President had inherited a $1 trillion debt from his predecessor. Madam Speaker, I point out that no President inherits a debt from his predecessor President. A President can't spend any money. A President can't initiate any spending. In fact, a Senator can't initiate spending. It has got to be initiated, by Constitution, right here in the United States House of Representatives. That budget, that spending, that deficit for the 110th Congress and the deficit coming into the 111th Congress, that is the Pelosi debt, the Pelosi deficit. That is the money that was appropriated by this Congress that established much of the debt that was inherited by the 111th Congress that would be administered by the Executive Branch, which would be the President of the United States. His job is to carry out the policies we set and take care to enforce the laws with due diligence. But his statement has been he inherited a $1 trillion debt. Today we have another milestone I hadn't heard before, Madam Speaker; and that is, now he has inherited a $1.3 trillion debt. So the inheritance is growing for the President, but it is shrinking for our grandchildren, unless we consider that they are inheriting debt, as well, and the burden of supporting this government and taking it out of duly-earned profits in future, future years, without a prospect of being able to pay for this, without a plan to come out of it. And the argument that if we just do something to establish socialized medicine, that will solve our economic problems? I cannot connect the dots on that kind of a statement, Madam Speaker, and it concerns me a great deal. So the inherited debt, which is not inherited from his predecessor the President, President Bush, but it is debt that is inherited from the 110th Congress and previous Congresses, has grown to $1.3 trillion. But the debt the American people inherit out of this is over $8 trillion, perhaps over $10 trillion. And we are still configuring and constructing more legs of this multi-legged stool that is supposed to bring us out of this economic crisis. I listened as that language unfolded, and you have to listen very carefully to understand the meaning of the President's words. It is usually an artful job of crafting this ambiguity of language, this ambiguity of language that allows me to pull out of it the meaning that I want to know and hear, and allows someone, my ideological opposite, to draw an opposite meaning from the same words and the same phrase. There are a lot of different ways to describe it. I am going to be generous and call it a classical ambiguity style. And I find myself sometimes turning down the volume and waiting for the newspaper the next day, because you really have to parse all this language and analyze it, and it is hard for me to find time for that. But some of this language is more clear than others. I intend to take up the issue in a moment of the President's appointment to the Office of Legal Counsel, but prior to doing so I think it would be appropriate to transition into the economic circumstances, and recognize the gentlelady from Minnesota for so much time as she may consume to talk about whatever it be on her mind.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentlelady from Minnesota for the eloquent presentation on the economic side of this thing and the very smooth transition into the life side. And this is an important issue that sits before this Congress. Before I go to that issue, I would comment that in looking at the chart of the debt and the cumulative effect of the debt of President Obama's debt compared to the sum total of all the previous administrations, Congress has started, the President signed the appropriations bills, there is another statistic that I saw that was a calculation from the Congressional Budget Office that took this debt in the budget that has been proposed by President Obama and lays it out into the future. The greatest share of our gross domestic product that we have had as debt in a budget was 1945, right at the end of World War II. And this Obama budget projects to be not 100 percent of gross domestic product, but twice as high, 200 percent of gross domestic product is the calculation that comes from numbers produced by the Congressional Budget Office. Madam Speaker, I point out another component of this, that yesterday there was a plan that was rolled out that was played off of former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, who argued that he should have $700 billion to pick up toxic assets from the lending institutions, and that proposal was rolled out yesterday. And here is how this calculates, and that is that the Federal Government--and I want to make this point, Madam Speaker, before we move on, because I think it is so essentially important that we all understand what is taking place in this country with the nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, reaching into the auto makers with the partial nationalization that is going on there, the nationalization of AIG. The taxpayers own 80 percent of the shares of AIG. They are not worth a lot, but taxpayers own 80 percent of them. We have a big investment in Citigroup. And as the Federal Government swallows up financial institution after financial institution, now this administration reaches in to the mortgages themselves, into institutional investors and individual investors, perhaps, to deal with these toxic mortgages. Now I have argued, and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and I have signed on to a piece of legislation last fall and argued that we should use private capital to solve this problem with the toxic debt that exists, the toxic mortgages that are out there, those mortgages that aren't performing and that are going in the tank. It is always preferable in a free-enterprise kind of an economy to have private- sector capital come in and rescue. The rescue fund, the rescue act was a piece of legislation that I introduced that we are original cosponsors of, and one of the things that it does to put private capital into this very thing, these kind of mortgages. It would suspend capital gains taxes on rescue capital that would come in to pick up the toxic debt. Each time that we have pushed out into the middle of the table the argument that we should be either suspending or eliminating capital gains taxes so that investors could come in and pick up these toxic mortgages, and then if they yield a profit, let them keep the profit tax-free, they will reinvest those dollars and pay taxes on their capital at a later date, Madam Speaker, but we can't get that simple idea of suspending taxes on capital gains to stay on the negotiating table any longer than it takes Chairman Frank's back of the hand to sweep it off. Why? Why would the most logical proposal that can be devised, and the simplest one at that, that brings free-market solutions and private- sector investor capital that is looking for a place to go, why would it not be part of the plan to resolve this economic downward spiral that we are in? I will submit it is because the people that are in charge of devising the plan don't really believe in the free markets. If they did, they would want investors to come in. So the White House has proposed a plan that would partner up the Federal Government, the White House and the taxpayers with private sector investment. Now I'm saying that we could get trillions of dollars of private investment to come in and pick up this toxic debt. You don't want to buy it at any more than the market price is. There is no reason to overpay for it. But you want to take it off the books of the banks and the lenders and let them move on and heal up. So here is the proposal, and it works out to be like this. If an investor wants to put $1 down on the table to invest in these toxic debts that we are not supposed to call ``toxic'' anymore, these mortgage-backed securities, that investor can lay $1 down, and the Federal Government will lay $1 down, and then the Federal Government will guarantee another $12 worth of debt. So, if I'm an individual investor, and I can come up with $1, that means the Federal Government puts another $1 in cash up to match it, and then they guarantee the loan on the balance of that, another $12, so we have got a $14 investment here. Thirteen of the $14 are guaranteed by the Federal Government. The risk for the investor is $1 out of $14, 7 percent of the whole. The Federal Government's risk is 93 percent of the whole, and if this thing goes down, if it washes out, we are, as taxpayers, holding the bag for 93 percent of the loss. And the result--oh, wait a minute. What happens to the profit, Madam Speaker? Well, the profits are shared 50/50 between the Federal Government, the taxpayers and the investor. So if I can come out and put $1 down and somebody else will guarantee or put down $13, and out of that whole $14 worth of investment I'm going to get half of the return off of my 7 percent investment, and the Federal Government gets half of the return off of their 93 percent of their investment, I think you know what has happened here. They have rejected the idea that we should just not tax the profits, and instead, in the lust for sharing in the profits themselves and expanding the role of the Federal Government, they have rejected a free-market solution and come up with a Big Government solution that buys the Federal Government in in a big way with no way back out again and not even a respectable platitude that would give us a way to define it out of the ambiguity of the language that that is what is going to happen.

Mr. KING of Iowa. If the gentlelady will yield for a question. It just occurs to me as you speak of this, let's presume that you had $1 million to invest. And you had been looking at a bundle of these mortgage-backed securities with the idea that you could go in and buy up this bundle with $1 million in investment and then manage them in such a way that you could get your money back out and make a profit. It would be a good thing for our economy. It would be a good thing for the investment in that capital. Now, if you're ready to invest that $1 million in buying up a bundle of mortgage-backed securities, how would you be able to compete with someone who also had $1 million and who had $12 million from the Federal Government, between them then $13 million, to match up against your $1 million? What happens to the free market in this? And how does someone who doesn't want to participate and make an investment like that in direct competition with the Federal Government, how do they possibly find a profit? How can they compete?

Mr. KING of Iowa. And reclaiming my time, the gentlelady mentions the institutional investors. And we have also watched the institutions on Wall Street such as Goldman Sachs, AIG, Citigroup and let me see, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch. The list goes on and on. It occurs to me that some of the same names and faces are inside the room when these decisions are made over and over again. I think back to AIG, and the situation that flowed across this floor that would go back and back tax those retention bonuses that were paid to the executives. Who makes that decision? Who had the opportunity to say ``no''? Some of the same people that are configuring this program now. It looks like it is designed for the institutional investors.

Mr. KING of Iowa. We know that there won't be any opportunity for the American taxpayers to be made whole. And I'm asking for the taxpayers to wake up. Take on this personal responsibility. Get out the tea bags. The American people can come together and say, enough is more than enough. This is too much. And it is time to put the brakes on this.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Written statements with binding precedent, and the ability to write that into statements or whisper into the President's ear fetal containers, Mr. President.

Mr. KING of Iowa. As I reflect on your discussion about this attitude about the Federal Government deciding what executives should be paid, what businesses are viable and which ones should be nationalized, I recall there is a fine and stellar company that is domiciled in Minnesota that had one of their pieces of their investment that was nationalized. It was a rice processing plant in Venezuela. A Hugo Chavez move, that took over a rice plant in Cargill in Venezuela. And this is a pattern. I think if you would read the story about that and then bring it back and just change the names, the places and the dates, put some American companies in there, I don't think you could discern the difference between the specter of what is hanging out for the American businesses that is coming out of the White House and what has actually happened to Cargill in Venezuela.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady. And it occurs to me that at some point, that the NBA, the professional baseball leagues, the NFL, hockey players all are going to eventually come under this scrutiny, and maybe even the Hollywood actors and actresses. If there is something that you can dictate what it is, the wages and benefits of executives in private business, then there is no line by which you wouldn't cross to tell anybody in America what they could or couldn't make.

Mr. KING of Iowa. And the point that is being made, the undercurrent of this point that is being made is what the gentlelady from Minnesota made at the beginning of this hour, and that is, getting to the foundational principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, these rights that come from God that are clearly articulated in the Declaration of Independence and flow through the Constitution that are part and parcel of our law and our culture and rooted in biblical values. These are the things that have made this a great Nation, along with property rights and free market capitalism, the rule of law, which is God's law transferred into this country. And so today it brings us to this point, this point of the subject of the law itself and how it is interpreted, how the Constitution is interpreted, the profound constitutional questions and how the laws that are written within the parameters of the Constitution are interpreted, and how the President himself is advised by the Office of Legal Counsel. And I will submit that the President's appointment to the Office of Legal Counsel is one of the most important appointments that is ever made. And it is an appointment that, according to the Newsweek magazine, the Office of Legal Counsel is the most important government office you have never heard of. This is the job that advises the President and other branches of government on all constitutional questions, evaluates executive orders as to their constitutionality and anything that might come before the President for a signature, a piece of legislation that would come out of here, for example, Madam Speaker, that is also something that would come under the purview of the Office of Legal Counsel. The President issued, he rescinded the Mexico City Policy on January 23rd of this year, and that Mexico City Policy is a policy that prohibited Federal dollars, our tax dollars, yours and mine and everybody across this country, from being used to fund abortions overseas. That is the Mexico City Policy. I think the President wanted to issue his Executive order on January 22, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, but out of respect for the hundreds of thousands of Americans that poured into this city to make their case about the protection of innocent unborn human life, I think out of the fear of backlash, plus he was a little busy signing his Executive order that closes Gitmo a year to the day, it will be on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade on 2010. But on January 23, the next day, he issued the Executive order that rescinded the Mexico City Policy, opened up the door to compel American taxpayers to fund abortions in foreign countries, under the guise of what shall we call it, population control, reproductive rights. And then, on top of that, we have the appointment of Dawn Johnson to the Office of Legal Counsel to advise the President on executive orders, constitutional questions, and someone who comes to this job with a real track record, a track record of a built-in bias as an assistant to the Office of Legal Counsel, under President Clinton, and someone who has made a whole series of outrageous statements, mostly that have come in conjunction with her doing her job as a legal counsel herself. So these are not, this is not talk that is coming along in the coffee shop. This is language that flows out of legal briefs that she has written.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time. I thank the gentlelady for that further clarification of the Office of Legal Counsel, the most important government office that most have never heard of, Madam Speaker. And so, as we saw this appointment be made, and looked through some of the documentation of Dawn Johnson, we put together a letter to the President. And this letter is dated March 24 of this year. And there are 62 cosigners on here, both of us, Michele Bachmann and myself included. And it addresses a letter to the President and it says, essentially, Mr. President you stated when you rescinded the Mexico City policy, that no matter what our views, we are united in our determination--and this is a continuing quote--to prevent unintended pregnancies, reduce the need for abortion, and support women and families and the choices they make. I will just close that quote there. If it is your intent, Mr. President, that we really reach for those kind of goals, and another component of that statement, we must work to find common ground. Close quote. I hope the President picks up on this. There is no way to find common ground with an individual who holds such utterly biased views. And this is, in my judgment, one of them. And this is a quote from Dawn Johnson, and the notion of legal restrictions as some kind of a reasonable compromise, perhaps to help make abortions safe, legal and rare, which is a statement that has come out of a many leading Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. This proves to be nonsensical in her view. And I think it is the rare part that she objects so much too. And she goes on to quote in a different location, progressives must not portray all abortions as tragedies. Absent unforeseen technological and medical changes, abortion is unlikely to become truly rare, and certainly not nonexistent. In other words, this is a rejection of the position, the most, I will say the most friendly position that I get from people that do not support the protection of innocent unborn human life. At least they will concede that there is a moral abhorrence to it, and it should be minimized if they aren't willing to eliminate. And that was something that Hillary Clinton said. But this statement by Dawn Johnson, I think, makes it clear, Madam Speaker, that she says that abortion will never be rare and safe, legal and rare, as a matter of fact. It will not be. And that just opens up the door to further dialog on this particular issue. There are many issues that I would object to. But I focus this on the abortion side. And another one of these statements that we carry to the President is this: And this, Madam Speaker, is among the most offensive statements that the American people are asked to accept as part and parcel of the package that you get when the President appoints someone to be, to head of the Office of Legal Counsel who carries this kind of a bias against the people who stand up for innocent human life. And this is her statement on abortion regulation. The State has conscripted her body for its own ends because the State has an interest in babies being born. If a State is not interested in that, you will see a civilization ultimately die. So she goes, recognizing a compelling State interest in protecting the fetus would provide States with an open-ended invitation to force pregnant women to act in whatever ways the State determined were optimal for the fetus, thereby, and I pay attention to this, thereby reducing pregnant women to no more than fetal containers. That is a remark of contempt towards mothers, toward the cherished role that they have in bringing these young children to birth and nurturing them with all the love they possibly can. It is offensive to me to think that someone has called my mother a fetal container.

Mr. KING of Iowa. And reclaiming my time from the gentlelady from Minnesota who has lived her life in demonstration to that commitment to life, your own children and the numbers of foster children that you have nurtured, you are the woman that lives in Minnesota and had so many children but always knew what to do. And I have not quite figured out how to put that into the proper alliteration, but that is the concept.

Mr. KING of Iowa. It definitely helps to have a good husband. I remind my wife of that, and I appreciate that comment. Going back to this, as you mentioned, it was the Office of Legal Counsel is a perfect position to whisper things into the ears of the President, to get the President's attention, to be on his agenda, to make legal arguments, to make arguments that are going to help him rationalize and set the policy, a policy like the Mexico City.

Mr. KING of Iowa. And it would limit the ability of each of the agencies to react to the very policy that this Congress has established, this Congress might establish. And this kind of pejorative language has no place in law. And it has no place in the dialog of America. It has no place in families and humanity, has no place in nurturing little children, and it has no place in taking care of the mothers, the brothers and the sisters with the idea that a fetal container, that reduces the unborn child, that innocent little baby, to being a term that hardly makes it as a medical term. These aren't the only comments that have been made by Dawn Johnson. I just picked them up as they come along. There is quite a stack here. And I don't know if I will get through them all, Madam Speaker, but here is one that is also indicative of a similar kind of language in the previous quote where Dawn Johnson, again, the President's appointee to head up the Office of Legal Counsel, the argument says the argument that women who become pregnant have in some sense consented to the pregnancy belies reality. I would like to think that most women who are mothers have consented to the pregnancy. Not all, but most. The large number of women who never receive proper information about contraception and others who are the inevitable losers in the contraception lottery, no more consent to pregnancy than pedestrians consent to being struck by drunk drivers. Pregnant mothers equivalent to being struck by drunk drivers when they become pregnant? That reduces this thing down into an act of almost negligent violence, if not willful violence. I think it is an act of love.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, even when they make that decision themselves. I as a new grandfather myself 3 weeks ago today, I think of those children who are loved and wanted and planned and of those families who are not able to have children and who are lined up to adopt children who might become available. There are many more families in this country who are waiting for a child to come along who they can adopt and nurture into the bosom of their family and raise as one of their own than there are unwanted children in this country.

Mr. KING of Iowa. By God.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, raising up on the point made by the gentlelady from Minnesota, it is true that every child is both wanted as is wanted, but also, every child is planned and wanted by God. It is his will, and we need to acknowledge that will and nurture and love these children with all of our ability and with all of our will. It takes me to another quote by Dawn Johnson. This one fits right in with the category. Perhaps it is more egregious. This is the infamous KKK quote where she says, ``The terrorists' behavior of petitioners,'' meaning those people who are praying for life outside the abortion clinic, ``is remarkably similar to the conspiracy of violence and intimidation carried out by the Ku Klux Klan against which Congress intended this statute to protect.'' Madam Speaker, I am watching my constituents by the hundreds on these 40 days of Lent, praying outside Planned Parenthood in Sioux City, Iowa throughout these 40 days, and they have been labeled now to be similar to the KKK by the prospective head of the Office of Legal Counsel who would be whispering these terms into the President's ear and writing legal opinions and bringing influence on the enforcement effort of the Federal Government, bringing that up against people who are exercising their first amendment rights of freedom of assembly and religion to protect innocent life.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, the gentlelady has articulated this, I think, very well. We'll add these expressions up together: pregnant mothers are the equivalent of being hit by drunk drivers; that abortion will never be rare; the equivalent of the KKK are people who are demonstrating and protesting that we should protect and support innocent human life. I'll put another one up here and add another quote to that. This is another quote from Dawn Johnson. She says, ``The experience of an abortion is no longer traumatic. The response of most women to the experience is relief.'' I don't have any experience with that, but that is not the message that I get from the people I talk to who come to this city. The strongest leaders in the pro-life movement and always among them will be women who have had abortions and who have suffered the trauma, the psychological trauma of abortion. They don't feel relief. They feel compelled to pray and march and demonstrate until Roe v. Wade is overturned, and we can protect innocent life in this country as God intended.