Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming the balance of my time and yielding it back to the Speaker, I thank you for your indulgence.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time. I'd just give an illustration of how that works. And I've had to make that decision a number of times in my business life because there are some areas that are quasi- sovereign. And I won't describe them any beyond that. They're quasi- sovereign, which means that there's really not relief to go and make a collection in their jurisdiction. So I've had to go in there and bid work, and I would calculate the materials, expenses, a little margin for profit and the insurance and those things, build that all together, and then I'd have to put a factor in and there's no place for me to go to get relief here except to the very people I'm doing business with. And some of you will know the quasi-sovereign regions I'm talking about. So I had to, and all my competitors had to also factor in a risk factor for what happens if the deal gets changed afterwards. I've done that on Excel spread sheets with numerous bid items and put a multiplier on each one of them that just simply was the number that evaluated the risk factor on whether they would change the deal after the fact because, in that quasi-sovereign region I couldn't count on the sanctity of the contract. It's real clear to me there's a risk factor that will be factored in to any future mortgages that we have under this cramdown legislation. There will be higher down payments required because that will minimize the risk to the lenders, and there will be higher interest required that will minimize, and that means everybody pays it. Everybody digs in for the down payment, especially for their first home. And also, the higher interest rate that everyone will have to pay. And meanwhile, we're going to reward people that openly committed fraud or misrepresentation or false pretenses because this Congress refused to accept that language, even though the Judiciary Committee passed that language out 21-3, changed the deal after the fact. I thought we had a contract in the Judiciary Committee. That contract has been torn asunder. The sanctity of that contract is gone. I guess I shouldn't be surprised if the members of the party and the committee would come to this floor and vote for a cramdown legislation that would tear the contract of the mortgage asunder just as well.

Mr. KING of Iowa. And reclaiming my time, that is the other side of the equation. The positive side of the equation is, let people earn all they want to earn, keep all that they want to keep, obviously pay their taxes when they make their purchases. If we do that, we've raised the productivity on average of America. But the policies that are coming from this Congress are diminishing incrementally and sometimes in huge increments the aspirations and the inspirations of the American worker, producer and entrepreneurs. It will lower the average annual productivity of Americans. You'll see the GDP at least proportionally diminish. That means that the hope for our children and grandchildren is less, not more. And we have to be willing to take some risk. We have to be willing to let some people fail. I've had to stare failure in the eye. I lived for 3\1/2\ years with a knot in my stomach that wouldn't go away because I didn't know whether I was going to be able to hold my business together or not during the farm crisis in the early 1980s. My bank closed April 26, Friday afternoon, 3:00, 1985. I'll never forget it. Red tag on the door. Highway Patrol guarding the door. It changed everybody's life that was in there, and it changed mine. I know what failure looks like. I've watched some of my neighbors, their spirit be eroded because they had to fight the finances. But the other side of that was, they had the opportunity of the, I don't want to say it's euphoric, but the good, strong, uplifting feeling of having built something that they can take pride in and having achieved and set an example for their children and their children's children, this example of a work ethic and integrity and giving your word and keeping your word and the value of contract, which I've made my living in the contracting business. And almost all of it on low-bid. And I've worked for many of my neighbors throughout the years, going clear back into the early 1970s. Most of those were verbal contracts, most of those we didn't bother to shake hands. That's not quite our culture to do that. As a matter of fact, if you shake hands with somebody they say oh, I'll come do that work for 5,000 bucks. When will you be there? Next Friday. Okay. That's fine. If you shake hands, he'd be thinking, you must not trust me then; you're going to make me shake hands on it. Our word's our bond. The handshake is almost like a written contract. And I've only had one of those written contracts between my neighbors in all of those years. But I know the value of a contract. And you've got to keep your word and not break your word.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I absolutely agree with the gentlelady from Minnesota (Mrs. Bachmann). And I would add that there's this line down through the middle of the aisle. When you turn to the left and you shift these policies towards the socialist side of the ledger, it always diminishes freedom. And when you shift them over on the conservative side of the ledger, it enhances their freedom over to where you get to the point where it goes on to the other side. Let me just say this, if you have no taxes and no regulation and laissez faire, then you have maximum opportunity for free enterprise. That's fine to do that if you have people who are a totally moral and ethical people. Now, that's the perfect model. But we have to have laws so we have to have restraint, and we have to have some taxation to enforce the law, and we have to have some taxation to fund our military and fund our security. And as Abe Lincoln said, the Federal Government's job should be to carry the mail, quasi private I will say, carry the mail, defend our shores, do for the people that which they cannot do for themselves, and leave us otherwise alone. That's freedom. But the other said is servitude in the end, capitulating our freedom for the sense of security that doesn't give the Wall Street much security to speak of. I think it's pretty clear as you've watched this downward spiral go on now, for all of these days since the election, and almost twice as much percentage drop of the market as you've ever seen in modern history. The question of freedom vs. the question of dependency, with a socialist approach. And our urge needs to be this, our charge is this, our responsibility is this: We should be setting policies that maximize the average annual productivity of our citizens. If we do that, if 300 million people turn out a little bit more, produce a little bit more, give a little bit more, decide they have the inspiration to earn, save and invest and build, if 300 million people do that even a little bit, if they do it 1 hour a day or 1 hour a week or 1 day a week, it adds to the entire GDP. And when that happens then it adds to the industrial base. It adds to the capital base. It adds to our innovation, and it automatically improves the quality of life, on average, of everybody in this country.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady. I point out I had a conversation with an individual that represents a company domiciled in your State of Minnesota who, because of the language that was in the stimulus bill that no one knew was in there, it cost their company $25.3 million with the stroke of President Obama's pen just for the provisions on health care that were slipped into the stimulus bill. A $25.25.3 million check they have to write just to get themselves even with where they were the day before that bill came raining down from on high here with no amendments allowed. That is some of the things that are happening under the guise of stimulus. Now, if you need to stimulate the economy, one would think one could be restrained from slipping in this entire wish-list that has been an accumulation of a generation of liberal wishes, without a model of success, I might add, and with nothing to point to in history except failure after failure after failure. The discouragement of human endeavor is what comes out of the socialist approach. And yet the group that spoke before your group came to the floor and was advocated the Progressive Caucus, they put up two blue posters up over here, the Progressive Caucus. So I found myself in my office. I ought to take a look and see what the Progressive Caucus really is. Well, I know how to find them. You go to dsausa.org. That's the Democratic Socialists of America, dsausa.org. They are the socialists. And they used to maintain the Web site for the Progressive Caucus until there got to be a little bit too much publicity, then they severed that relationship and the Progressive Caucus now manages their own out of the House here. But the connection goes back a long time. And you can go to that Web site, Democratic Socialists of America, and read, and the first thing they tell you is, we are not Communists. There's a difference between us. Communists believe that the state should own everything, including your dog. They didn't put that in there. But we, as Democratic Socialists, believe that, no, there should be some private property, and small businesses need to be able to run so they can be flexible enough to take care of the immediate needs of people like, I suppose, selling Polish dogs out here on the streets of Washington, DC. But big business--this is on the Web site. Big business should be run for the benefit of the people affected by it, which means they should be run by the customers. So if you have, let me say, a franchise chain of bars, they would be run by the drinkers. And if you have a company that makes bread, then it would be run by the people that eat the bread, not by the people that need to make a profit. It totally changes the reasons that we are in business. And it goes back to the idea that there can be central planning, central command, and somebody can manage an economy, instead of the invisible hand that makes it happen magically if you just let the market make the selections for you. That's their view. And on that Web site it says that they want to nationalize the oil industry in America, nationalize the refinery industry in America.

Mr. KING of Iowa. There is no question, I agree, it's immoral. It undermines the underpinnings of this free market society that we are. It breaks the contract between property and assets and borrowers and lenders. When that contract is broken, when the faith is broken--and I have sat in the bank many times with my hat in my hand trying to start a business. When I started a business in 1975 and I had a negative net worth of $5,000, I went into a capital intensive business. So I did a good job of marketing, at least that's one of the things I was able to sell, the business idea. But many times I was short of enough cash to make things work. And I would going into the bank, and I would have to justify it every time. I would have to have the assets underneath that in order to convince the lender that I was going to be able to pay the loan. And I had to have the prospective accounts receivable and they had to be represented right and accurately. I had to have a balance sheet continually, at least annually, often monthly profit-and-loss statements--all of this to justify a business operating loan that I could keep my employees work and be able to pay the bills on time. All of that level of integrity that's built into that relationship between the borrower and the lender, the time-honored relationship between collateral and credit and character and capital, is being ripped asunder by this bankruptcy bill, by this cramdown bill. And, so, now what will happen is, lenders, those who decide they are going to still be in the business of mortgage lending, they have got to go back and reevaluate this equation, this business equation which says the degree of risk has to be proportional to the potential for profit. That's the equation. You put the equal sign in the middle, degree of risk, potential for profit.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the honor to address you on the floor of the House of Representatives. As I came in here awaiting my appointed hour, I was fascinated to listen to the Members who have spent the last hour talking about what is happening to our country, what's happening to our economics. And I wanted to take this thing another step. Listening to the gentlelady from Minnesota always has me entranced as to how deeply the thought goes on the economics on that viewpoint particularly. But I will take it another level from the level of a million and a half mortgage down to $1 million in the pocket that has been described here. Let me say that a borrower can also misrepresent their income. They could fraudulently misrepresent an appraisal on that property. They can misrepresent their job status. They could commit actual fraud. They could misrepresent or, under false pretenses, obtain this loan. And the bankruptcy judge, who would now, under the provisions of this language that passed the House today, this bankruptcy judge couldn't even consider the actual fraud or the misrepresentation or the false pretenses because we offered that language in the Judiciary Committee. In fact, I offered it as an amendment, and it passed the Judiciary Committee by a vote of 21-3. It was not quite the unanimous judgment of the Judiciary Committee that we ought to prohibit any of these cramdown provisions to anyone who has misrepresented themselves in order to get this mortgage. But, after the fact, after the amendment passed the Judiciary Committee 21-3, without any notice to any of the Members that I am aware of, the language was changed in the bill that came to the floor, which we found, out of due diligence of our staff, reading down line by line, to make sure there wasn't something going on behind the scenes, well, there was. They changed the language. And the language in the bill, which they have refused to even allow a vote to correct, get back to what the Judiciary Committee approved, that language in the bill now says that the borrower will have available this relief under the bankruptcy law unless they have been convicted of fraud, not out and out open fraudulent action or misrepresentation or obtaining a loan under false pretenses, that's not good enough for the bankruptcy judge to even consider that in his evaluation on whether he is going to dial the 1.5 million mortgage down to half a million and let him walk away with a million dollars in profit out of the deal. But even if they walk away with misrepresentation, they can't consider that because this Congress has said only can he consider it if the borrower is convicted of fraud. I yield to the representative from Minnesota.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, I thank the gentlelady from Minnesota, and I would point out that the point you made about these bundles of mortgage-backed securities that are tranched and sliced and diced and packaged and repackaged and sold up and down the chain and coalesced into certain values of securities, have created toxic, truly toxic assets. The value of these assets cannot be considered any longer. They cannot be evaluated. This degree of risk can't be evaluated as being proportional to the potential for profit. And we watched these markets tank nearly every day, nearly every day during the Obama administration. In fact, I had some interesting numbers that I ran today and I think they will be informative to everybody in this country, and I don't think anybody has asked this question until today. So I went back, and I am watching the Dow just tailspin. So I went back and took a look at has any president in history ever had such a, let's me say, negative start economically at the beginning of their administration? So I went back to November 4, the election of 2008, took a look at where the Dow was on that day as our lead indicator of our economic growth or shrinkage, as it might be, and evaluated the first four months of President Obama's from the moment that the markets recognized that he would be the President being elected until today, 4 months from that period of time, November, December, January, February, roughly speaking, and compared that to the previous presidents as long as we had electronic records. And it turns out to be this, as one might expect, FDR, up until this time, got the worst welcome from the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In fact, he got the two worst we will comes on record. In 1932, in the first 4 months, the Dow drooped 16.63 percent. On Franklin Delano Roosevelt, that was their level of lack of confidence in his election in 1932. In his election in 1940, it dropped 9.3 percent. Those two drops are the two largest in history of welcoming a presidential election by the market reacting. And, by the way, the most positive reaction was, both of us born in Iowa, I will tell you, was Herbert Hoover, and we could go into that, perhaps. But in any case, President Obama's start is the worst economic start in the history that I can trace back electronically that goes back at least to Herbert Hoover's administration. Franklin Delano Roosevelt saw the markets dropped 16.3 percent in the first months after he was elected in 1932. But, today, the first months after President Obama was elected, we have seen our Dow Jones Industrial Average drop 31.49 percent in that period of time. It's almost twice as much of a drop and, under this administration, as any administration in our electronic history. I think it's breathtaking, the message that the markets have shown. And this, by the way, isn't just a President Bush economy. If you will recall, President Obama supported the $700 billion bailout plan. He came to Washington to work on it too and decided he would support the proposal. This Congress approved, I can go over our resistance, $700 billion, first half, $350 billion went essentially right away to pick up these toxic assets that then we thought were toxic today, are far more toxic than they were. The other $350 billion had to be released by Congress. That was done so under the Obama administration. This is his economy. He is fond of saying that he had inherited a trillion dollar debt. Well, this debt is increasing more and more each coming week. In fact, tonight on one of the networks, they announced that President Obama's wish list, if you add it up, comes to $20 trillion, $20 trillion. Now, I have not put all the line items in that, but that is a breathtaking number, $20 trillion. And how can we have a level of confidence in this when you are seeing this kind of a response? Every day we have negative financial news. I am seeing nothing that comes back that shores up confidence in this marketplace. The markets are going to react to an opportunity to make profit, and the government is stepping in and nationalizing and interceding themselves in the marketplace, the confidence in the marketplace is going down, not up. You see the asset value of our lending institutions, our mortgage bankers, going down day-by-day. These institutions were going to be shored up, and they haven't been shored up. We haven't let the markets work. There is one thing we know for sure that if we keep our free markets together, if we don't get everything nationalized and all socialized, we will recover from this. But the question becomes, how long does it take?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I will say the other alternative is to have a huge growth in our economy, a booming economy, a booming economy that would grow us out of this so we don't have to put so much money into the market that inflation devalues our dollar. Now, I would ask, how is that going to happen in the face this massive growth in government and in government spending? Where is the entrepreneurial spirit, when it has been killed and squelched by taxation, by overregulation, by messages that come out that are against energy. Nearly every sector of our economy is under assault from people that don't believe in free enterprise. I would go further and say there is a huge philosophical divide that goes about right down the middle of the aisle right here. This is free market people over here. They believe in personal responsibility and strong families and the Constitution and the rule of law. The pillars of American exceptionalism are often defined in the dialogue over here. They are often derided by the dialogue that comes from this side of the aisle. Now it is an all out assault on our institutions. I had a time a couple of weeks ago where I sat down with some dissidents in Russia. They said to me that Putin had destroyed nearly all the democratic institutions in Russia. They said we don't any longer have a fair election, we don't have an independent press, we don't have an independent judiciary, we don't have an independent legislative body in the Duma. In fact, I had to stand in line for an hour just to get in the door. But those are four of the institutions that they mentioned, and they said our freedoms are really gone. There is no place else for Putin to go to take away any more of our freedom, because he now owns the institutions and has taken over of the institutions of freedom. They called it democracy. Here we have institutions all under assault. Each one I mentioned is under assault. We don't have an independent legislative process anymore, not when a bill can come out the Speaker's office directly to the floor without committee action, without amendments being allowed in subcommittee, no subcommittee action, no committee action, and the floor action is a bill that comes down from on high at 11 o'clock at night that hits the floor the next day with no amendments allowed and an hour's worth of debate, and then it is crammed out of here and on over to the Senate before the public can wake up and even understand what has happened. I don't blame them for not knowing. A lot of people in here don't know what is going on either, but there is no opportunity to intervene or even make the case. The independent legislature now turns into Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and the President. They could meet in a phone booth, the three of them, and make the decisions on where this country is going to go, to the dogs, if we let them. And that is what has happened to our independent legislature here. It is not accountable. The process has been subverted. That is just one thing. We have the institution of the media. They have the mainstream media. If you look at where they donate their money and how they register their vote, that institution has been taken over. The educational institution has been taken over. The list goes on and on. The rule of law doesn't mean so much any more, not when I arrived down on the border some time back and we happened to catch a drug smuggler that had about 450 pounds, excuse me, it was I think the number came to 218 or 220 pounds of marijuana under a false bed in his truck. It was 18 bales. It was under 250 pounds, because we weren't prosecuting people that had less than 250 pounds of marijuana when they came across our border to smuggle it into the United States. They since changed that and raised it up to 500 pounds because we didn't have enough resources to prosecute. The rule of law set aside? Another institution that is not respected universally, without question? And now the Director of Homeland Security, when there is a raid that is done for illegal employees that are working in an engine shop in Seattle, decides, well, I didn't know they were going to go in there and pick up those people illegally working, so I am going to investigate the investigators that are underneath her control. The rule of law suspended because there is a political equation involved in enforcing it? Institution after institution are under attack in this country too, and I think they understand that in the place I have been. The gentlelady from Minnesota.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, the tax structure that we have and the language that was delivered here about everyone gets a tax cut unless you're in the top 2 or 5 percent, or above $250,000, but the insidious tax that goes in, the carbon tax that permeates every aspect of our economy and punishes the poorest among us, in a way it's like the cigarette tax. You add 61 cents a pack to cigarettes. The folks that smoke the most are the ones at the lower end of the income bracket. They are the ones who can least afford it. But we impose a tax on them and we call that a ``sin tax.'' Then you get a promise that comes out from the White House that says ``I am going to create or save 3\1/2\ million jobs.'' Now, the first time I heard that, okay, but somebody's going to call him on that, and really nobody has yet. The President is going to create or save 3\1/2\ million jobs. Now, think about what that means. If you were down there in maybe grade school and they were teaching you how to rationalize someplace between two plus two and two times two, you would come across the rationale of ``create or save'' leaves a little escape clause in there. Which jobs would be created and which ones would be saved? If they're not defined and we have a workforce of about 142 million here in America, as long as there are 3\1/2\ million jobs left, the President can claim he saved them. So it fits the definition. That is how broad this is. And we are to be mobilized by this and moved, to leap into this giant leap of faith of trillions of dollars in borrowed money, the intergenerational theft that John McCain and Michele Bachmann will talk about and we talk about as well, it is intergenerational theft on a promise that 3.5 million jobs are going to being be created or saved. Here is another one. Cut the deficit in half. I remember where I heard that. That was actually President Bush that advocated he was going to cut the deficit in half in 5 years. I remember that was the timing. Our current President would cut the deficit in half by the beginning of his second term. But we are going to create this large deficit, and then well have something more easily sliced in half. Maybe he inherited a $1 trillion deficit, but we have a $1.75 trillion deficit advocated today. It is pretty easy to cut it. Let's just say you weigh, I don't want to use your weight, say you weigh 200 pounds and say I am going to reduce my weight by 10 pounds. Then you could gain 20 and lose 10 and you have lost 10 pounds. That is kind of how this thing works, by cutting the deficit in half. We grow the spending and then slice the spending down and advocate or at least allege that the deficit has been cut in half. I yield to the gentlelady from Minnesota.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to thank the gentlelady from North Carolina for yielding. I rise in opposition to this rule. And I rise, of course, in opposition to the underlying bill as well. But speaking to the rule, my argument's about process. There's a tremendous amount of fraud that's taking place in the mortgages in this country, and people that have relief under this should have clean hands. And in recognizing that, I introduced an amendment in the Judiciary Committee that would exclude those who have misrepresented or, under false pretenses or actual fraud, achieved an extension of their mortgage and then brought this to the bankruptcy court. We've got to have people with clean hands, not those that are taking advantage of this situation. The door has already been opened. This opens the door more. My amendment, Mr. Speaker, passed the Judiciary Committee by a vote of 21-3. It was a prudent decision on the part of the members of the committee. It's the judgment of the Judiciary Committee. The problem with it was that it was stripped out after the committee approved it and sent it to Rules as part of a change in a manager's amendment. I took my amendment back to Rules to try to get back the process. The process ought to respect the will of the Judiciary Committee. The Rules refused to even allow me to offer my amendment here on the floor to try to get another recorded vote even when I'd been successful in Judiciary Committee. And now there's another manager's amendment before this committee that amends the amendment that was amended by the previous manager's amendment after it passed the Judiciary Committee. The will of the Judiciary Committee means nothing in this bill. It's the will of the manager's amendment that will be voted on here on the floor of this Congress. I argue for the process. I argue we have to have a clean process. I also think that we have to maintain the covenant of the contract between the mortgager and the mortgagee. This amendment doesn't do that. This amendment tears that contract asunder and says to lenders that their capital's at risk and their interest rate is at risk. Why would anyone loan anybody money unless they could calculate in the risk that some judge would change the rules after the fact, just like the rules of the Judiciary Committee on a successful 21-3 vote have been changed after the fact? Mr. Speaker, I oppose the rule.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Virginia for yielding. Mr. Chairman, this amendment before us allows for actual fraud, misrepresentation or obtaining a loan or refinancing by false pretenses. It's specific. We passed an amendment in the Judiciary Committee that prohibited such things, but the language has been changed after the fact. The language has been changed now so that it reads that the court does not find that the debtor has been convicted of obtaining--by actual fraud--the extension, renewal or refinancing of credit that gives rise to a modification claim. In other words, whatever kind of fraud and misrepresentation or false pretenses might be used, it's not going to be considered by a cramdown court unless there is an actual conviction. That's a breathtaking position to take in print here in the United States Congress. I think this cramdown, when you break the contract, you allow a judge--a judge perhaps yet to be appointed, a judge with a different idea on what a contract is--to break that contract, sever it apart, and readjust the principal and the interest to meet what the judge believes is convenient to the borrower and give them two bites at the apple and let them pick whatever is the best deal for them? I can tell you what happens, Mr. Chairman, and that is this: The degree of risk must be proportional to the potential for profit. That's the business equation. Lenders will not loan money unless they have a prospective profit on the other side of this. So that means that they're going to ask for more down money, and they're going to ask for more interest, and there will be fewer people owning homes, not more. There may be some temporary relief over this window over the next couple of years, and maybe this economy comes back around. But the long run is this: We'll have fewer homeowners, not more. The price for that will end up being more public housing, not less, to replace the homeowners that aren't able to own their own home. This is the public housing promotion bill in the end. That's where it takes us. It was misplaced thinking to pass the Community Reinvestment Act, it's misplaced thinking not to hold Fannie and Freddie, and it's misplaced thinking to push this cramdown.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman, and I would yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I'd be very happy to yield the balance I have.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the honor to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, and it is always an honor to address you, Mr. Speaker. I have spent some of the last hour listening to my colleagues, whom I appreciate voicing their opinions as well. I would like to take up some of their issues at the beginning, and then I will roll it into the subject matter of this next hour that I have. But first of all, when a statement was made by the gentleman from Tennessee that Rush Limbaugh wants Obama to fail, he didn't say that, Mr. Speaker. He can't be quoted anywhere as he wants Obama to fail or President Obama to fail. It wasn't his intent at all. You have to listen to what he actually said. He said he wants his policies to fail. That was a message that's clear. It's been reiterated over and over again across the media and this country, Mr. Speaker. So I have to come here and raise the issue in the beginning that that was a statement that was made, Mr. Speaker. Rush Limbaugh said that he wants President Obama's policies to fail so that we can go forward and preserve and protect and enhance our freedom and our liberties and our free market economy and perhaps, and I hope it's not so, perhaps our national defense as well. I will stand with him on that. I have opposed these policies of overspending. I opposed the stimulus plan, and I opposed the bailout plan that came in the previous administration. It was clear from where I stood that you simply cannot take money from the producers of this country and pour it into a void without a plan or a strategy and how it's going to emerge. Still, the U.S. Treasury couldn't tell us the results that would come from a $700 billion bailout plan. The President of the United States can't tell us the results that will come from hundreds of billions of dollars, and, actually, more than $1 trillion when you add the interest stimulus plan. And so without a definable goal here, except the idea that spending is stimulus--and I disagree with that philosophy, spending is not stimulus. But, believing that, then the people on this side of the aisle have said, well, this is a comprehensive proposal, it's well thought out. We are going to have a more responsible budget than George Bush had, and in the end we are going to have this economy that is going to grow to the point where we will be able to do this magnificent thing called ``cut the deficit in half'' by the beginning of President Obama's second term. I heard that over here, too, although he really said by the end of his first term, which I think is more likely if they keep going down this path. So the words ``cut the deficit in half'' echo to me. That was a goal that was laid out by President Bush. So it seems to me that President Obama, Mr. Speaker, is following at least one of the patterns of President Bush. And I will tell you I was not particularly moved by the idea that we could cut the deficit in half in 4 years or 5 years or whatever that might be. I didn't come into this political life with half of a goal. I'd want at least a whole goal. So if we can cut it in half in 3\1/2\ years or 5 years or whatever the case may be, why couldn't we just eliminate it? Or maybe we could just double that period of time. If we could cut it in half in 4 years, maybe we can cut it in half again in another 4 years, and then we'll be down to only 25 percent of this huge deficit that we have now. But, Mr. Speaker, this deficit is breathtaking. We are looking at the current administration's budget of a deficit of $1.75 trillion. And we heard him speak to us of having to construct one leg of a multi-legged stool to get us out of this economic crisis that we are in. Well, the one leg, you have to add the bailout money from last fall and the $1.1 or 2 trillion from the stimulus plan from just a little over a week ago, package that together, and without many of these things that got poured into by administrative action, you're at a $2 trillion leg for one stool of what, according to the President, is a multi-legged stool. So if a leg costs $2 trillion and it's multi-legged, I know it's not a milk stool. That would be a one leg. It's not a two-legged stool. I've never seen one of those. It's not a three-legged stool or he would have said so. So I have to presume that this stool that's going to be the rebuilding architecture of this formerly free market economy is going to be at least four legs at $2 trillion a leg, which nearly doubles our national debt. I remember the President's media personnel speaking on the morning of the President's address here in the joint session, Mr. Speaker, and he said our national debt is 10 percent of GDP, that we have to do something about that. It's too high. Well, his current budget, the one that's just been defended by my colleagues from the other side of the aisle, takes that share to more than 12 percent of our GDP. In fact, it's 12.3 percent of our GDP. That's the current President Obama budget. So this 10 percent of GDP that is national debt today becomes a 12.3 percent of national debt if this budget is enacted into law, and a lament that comes from his spokesman is we've got too high a percentage of our GDP in our national debt. Well, Mr. Speaker, I think there's another number that we should be concerned about. I'm concerned about that. I'm concerned about the daily interest rate, that if all of this is enacted into law, the American people will be paying $1 billion a year just in interest alone, $1 billion a year. Now, I hearken back to 1992 when President Clinton was elected. He was elected under the belief of the American people that we were in a recession, and he convinced the American people we were in a recession, and you might go back and look at the definitions and parse that so that it was, I'll say, marginally true. But President Clinton came to this Congress, Mr. Speaker, and he asked for a $30 billion, that's 30 billion with a ``b,'' economic incentive plan, and that was supposed to put money out into the hands of people so they would spend it because the belief was that spending is stimulus. It was going to create, though, jobs like the AmeriCorps is today and put this $30 billion into this, and it was going to bring us out of this recession that was defined during the presidential campaign of 1992. President Clinton brought that argument to this Congress, $30 billion. And this Congress, being a Democratic Congress, debated the $30 billion, chopped it down from $30 billion, finally got it down to $17 billion, and then decided, well, we're not going to do it after all. So they threw the idea of the stimulus plan over the side in 1993, after having taken a $30 billion idea and reduced it to a $17 billion idea, and they pitched it overboard because it wasn't a good enough idea. Well, today we have budgets that are proposed by the President of the United States that brings us to the point where we'll be paying $1 billion a day, not $17 billion in an economic stimulus plan like 1993 but $1 billion a day. So, for example, when the fiscal year kicks in--let me say the calendar year. That's a little easier thing to think about, Mr. Speaker. But when the calendar year kicks in, if you want to keep track from the day you're watching your bowl games on how long it takes for the Federal Government to spend as much money on interest as it would take to have paid for the entire Bill Clinton stimulus plan, well, from January 1, 2, 3, 4, on up to the 17th of January, boom, you'd be done. That would be economic stimulus freedom day, the 18th of January, if you're paying this at the rate of this stimulus plan we have today. Now, compare that 17 days at $1 billion a day to pay for the entire Bill Clinton stimulus plan to just the interest that we'll have here in the Federal Government if we let this all go forward that's being proposed out of the White House today. That's $365 billion just in interest. That's not a stimulus plan, I'll suggest, Mr. Speaker. I will suggest that's anything but a stimulus plan. It works against us. It drains capital from the private sector. It drains capital from the productive sector of this economy. So Rush Limbaugh didn't say he wants President Obama to fail. He said he wants his policies to fail because he's about freedom. And I'm about freedom. And we ought to be about quoting people correctly. Maybe if the gentleman from Tennessee actually listened to the words that Rush Limbaugh said, maybe he wouldn't have been so outraged. Maybe he would have just said, well, we have a legitimate philosophical disagreement, que sera. It would be okay. But that's not what's happening. They are seeking to criticize a high-profile individual in America in order to demonize him so that that individual can be put up as a poster for the things that they want to claim is wrong with their predecessors. Well, here's the problem, Mr. Speaker. This has been a Democratic Congress for more than 2 years. The 110th Congress was all in the control of Speaker Pelosi. She received the gavel up here in January of 2007. There's no Federal spending in America that doesn't start in this Congress by Constitution. So any of the spending that's been initiated since that day has been initiated right here on this floor in the end in the House of Representatives. And our budgets and our deficits become the budgets and the deficits of the Democrats that are in charge. That's Speaker Pelosi. That's Leader Hoyer. That's the committee Chairs and the people who have been handed the gavel by the Speaker. And the American people need to understand that this isn't something that's driven by the minority today. The minority that we have here today has always driven for balanced budgets, fiscal responsibility, strong national defense, strong personal responsibility, strong families, defended the rule of law, protected the borders. So we are today with a President that's going to cut the deficit in half by the beginning of his second term, but he's got to create this huge deficit in order to cut it in half. So if you go out and start biting off chunks of the GDP and grow from a 10 percent deficit of GDP to a 12.3 percent deficit of GDP, if you have a President's budget that's being proposed that takes a greater and greater share of the GDP of America, it isn't just the deficit that counts here. The share of the gross domestic product that was being consumed by the Federal Government at the beginning of the Depression in the early 1930s was 3.4 percent, Mr. Speaker. By the time the New Deal had been implemented by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and we got into the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which essentially ended his New Deal, the Federal Government was by then taking over 12 percent of our GDP. It went from 3.4 percent of GDP at the beginning of the 1930s, and under FDR it went to over 12 percent of GDP before you factor in the extra spending that had to take place in the Second World War. Now, FDR had a significant utility to this country in leading us through the Second World War. I do not take that away from him. I applaud him for that stolid leadership that he provided. But he didn't solve the economic problem. And anybody that can come to this floor and engage in this debate and point out for me some data that shows that the New Deal, which was profligate spending, unprecedented growth in the Federal Government role, consuming from 3.4 percent of GDP up to 12 percent of GDP, and not having anything to show for it, there's not a legitimate debate on the other side. The New Deal did not get us out of the Great Depression. To be charitable, it may have, and I emphasize ``may have,'' diminished the depths to which we might have otherwise fallen. I'm not convinced of that, but I will just concede that that could be the case. The data may show that if you didn't pour enough government spending in, maybe, maybe things would have completely collapsed and we would have had to build up from almost nothing or nothing as opposed to building up from almost nothing plus one. So maybe the New Deal programs diminished the depths to which we might have otherwise fallen. It certainly provided some soup kitchens and some WPA programs and CCC camps, and the Federal Government stepped in and hired a lot of people, competed directly with the private sector, by the way. That's what happened with the New Deal. And the recovery process that was needed to take place when capital was willing to take the risk again, when entrepreneurs were willing to take the risk again, that recovery took place through the Second World War. This is where I don't see it quite the same way either as the President does, Mr. Speaker. I don't take the position that the Second World War got us out of the Great Depression. I take the position that the Second World War started our recovery from the Great Depression. It brought about a massive growth in production in America in our industry, and it positioned us that by the end of the Second World War, we were the world's industrial power because we had ramped up our industrial production here to meet the demands of the world in the Second World War. And at end of the war, we were essentially the only industrialized country that had maintained our industrial base without its being destroyed by war. So we had a comparative advantage, as Adams Smith would say, against the rest of the world. And our economy grew, and America built more things and sold more things both domestically and abroad. And by 1954 the stock market had recovered to where it was on the day that it crashed in October of 1929. It wasn't the New Deal that got us out of the Great Depression. The Second World War gave us a very good start, as tragic as that world event was, but the recovery required another 9 years just to get back to where we were when the stock market crashed in October of 1929. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been dead for 9 years before the stock market got back to where it was. So it's not his achievement necessarily. I think that it actually slowed our recovery. And now we have, Mr. Speaker, a President who believes that the New Deal was a good deal, that FDR essentially lost his nerve and was too concerned about spending too much money. So he's concerned that FDR essentially backed down, and if he had just kept spending more and more money, then he would have been able to have this Keynesian effect, a real stimulus effect that would have brought us out of the Great Depression before the Japanese attacked us on December 7 of 1941. Well, the world will never know. That isn't what happened. But the world also knows that there is no historical model for bringing about an economic recovery by taxing your citizens to death and transferring that wealth to other people and paying people not to work and by asking people to go forward and spend money that you hand to them. That's a temporary stimulus, if at all. And we tried that early last spring, a $150 billion temporary stimulus plan. And you can look for the blip in that. What happened to the consumer spending? What happened to jobs? It didn't even show. In fact, about 70 percent of those $150 billion that were injected into the economy in rebates were saved or used to pay off debt. They didn't stimulate the economy. So some of it was tax relief and to that extent it was good, but on balance it wasn't a stimulating plan. This is a huge plan based upon the same philosophy. Spending is stimulus is what President Obama has said, Mr. Speaker. I looked back and I read through some of the documents written by John Maynard Keynes. This is pure Keynesian economics. It was Keynes that said I can solve the world's unemployment problem. We will just do this. We will go out to an abandoned coal mine and I will take U.S. currency and we will bury it in these holes around this abandoned coal mine. Then we fill the coal mine up with garbage, and then we'll turn the entrepreneurs in the country loose to go around and dig it up and be able to pick up this cash and take it out and spend it. He said he can solve all of the unemployment problem in the country if you just give him enough cash and they could drill these little holes around in abandoned coal mines and then fill the coal mine up with garbage and then let the people dig through it. That would give them a job, of course, digging up the cash, and then they would take the cash out and spend it, and that would solve the economy. Mr. Speaker, we are not going to solve an economic crisis until we produce. We have to provide incentives, which means getting government out of the way and reducing taxes so that people will produce. If they produce something that has value, they will take it out and market it and sell it and our economy will grow. And that is how you stimulate the economy, by increasing production, not by increasing spending. And it needs to be competitive production that gives people a comparative advantage against the rest of the world. Innovations in the area of technology, for example, entrepreneurs that start businesses, people that are trading, buy, sell, trade, make gain, produce market, be smart about it, but do not punish the productive sector of the economy, or you will wait a long, long time for a recovery. We know that they waited a long time for the recovery of the Great Depression, from 1929 to 1939 to '49 to '54. All of that time, a complete and entire more than a generation before they saw the recovery that was brought about by two things, the Second World War and by the industrial productive might that we developed and the effect of that on the world's economy. So, if you create, as a President of the United States, Mr. Speaker, a huge deficit, and then you say, oh, by the beginning of my second term in office I am going to cut my deficit in half, how would that be? It would be like the family budget, if I would go out and spend, let's say $2,000 more per month than I make, I would have a $2,000 a month deficit. And that would then be a $24,000 a year deficit. But I could make my pledge to my financial advisor that I am going to cut that deficit in half and just cut it down to $1,000 a month. And if I needed to really bite the bullet and say, well, I am going to have to do more than this, I could maybe increase my spending to $3,000 a month or $4,000 a month, and then next year it would be easy enough, I would just cut it back to $2,000 a month and say I cut my deficit in half. I am still spending the same amount I was, and I still have the same kind of deficit I had. That is the kind of smoke and mirrors language that is coming out of the White House today, and the American people, Mr. Speaker, are sitting there accepting it. They are accepting the idea that if you spend a couple trillion dollars, if the White House spends a couple trillion dollars appropriated here, out of the beginning of the spending into the House of Representatives, and that $2 trillion in the stimulus plan is going to, get this language, save or create 3.5 million jobs. All right. Have we lost our senses? Don't we see through that clearly? I mean, this isn't any kind of blurry, opaque lens we are looking through. This is crystal clear in focus. Save or create 3.5 million jobs. Not new jobs, not defined jobs, not in any particular sector. Not create jobs. Save or create. So, I guess I could go back to a pretty low educational level and ask maybe one of our children, figure this out. If you are going to save or create 3.5 million jobs, and if you have got a workforce of about 142 million here in the United States, let's just say that it is really clear that President Obama is going to accomplish that objective. I can guarantee that President Obama will accomplish the objective of saving or creating 3.5 million jobs, because, first of all, they aren't new jobs, and second of all, if you don't create a single one and you still have 3.5 million jobs left in America, you have met your promise. These are carefully parsed words and pieces of language. This isn't something he is speaking off the cuff and bouncing around in between other meetings. It isn't like he was ambushed by the press. This is the speech writers carefully putting this language together. It has been repeated over and over again. As far as I know, the press hasn't said, Mr. President, isn't it true that if there are 3.5 million jobs left in America, you will have kept your promise? That is what the promise is, Mr. Speaker. There are also many other promises. One of them is we are going to have a carbon tax. So we are going to tax energy. Well, everything that we have in America takes energy to produce or deliver. A cup of coffee takes energy to heat it. It takes electricity to fire up the coffee pot. It takes energy to transport it. Everything we have takes transportation. It takes trucks, it takes rail, it takes trains. All of that burns energy. Almost all of it takes energy, hydrocarbon energy that comes from petroleum. So if we are going to tax the carbon that is petroleum, if we are going to tax that we are taxing everybody in America. They are going to tax your light bill and your gas bill. That is your heat bill. Your gasoline bill as well. And this tax isn't going to be something that is put on your invoice. It is going to be something insidious. It is going to be something that creeps and sneaks into your bills so you don't see it. It will be immeasurable. I can just guarantee you if this happens, there won't be any study done in this Congress or anywhere else that is official at least by government that will tell you what it costs you to pay this carbon tax. But it is so far measured at $646 billion, the carbon tax. We are going to pay a tax on carbon. Why? Because we have some scientists who have decided that they want to tell us all that we are suffering from global warming. Climate change now is the word. And I will just say, pay attention to language. We have gone from global warming, well, actually we have gone from ice age. I remember ice age in the seventies. There was one scientist that was a lead scientist on predicting that we had a coming ice age, and he has now shifted over to the other side. Now he says no, the Earth is in global warming and we should backpedal from that as it was as we can. But we have gone from ice age to global warming, and now global warming is kind of hard to hold because the Earth has been cooling for the last 10 years, so we have to change the language to climate change. Now, if you have to fix the climate change problem, you will be able to do that forever. In fact, we always complain about the climate changing on us on a regular basis, wherever we come from. In Iowa, the climate is changing all the time. Just wait 5 minutes, it will change, we say. I talked to a fellow in Mississippi this morning. He says the same thing. Climate change is going on all over America in little microcosmic ways. But you can address that and say we are going to fix it with government. We are going to fix it with a carbon tax. We are going to tax your energy. If you tax our energy, you are taxing every single component of America's economy. You can't turn on your computer without taking energy. You can't light up your Blackberry. You can't make a cell phone call. You can't turn on your lights. You can't get in a taxicab or on the Metro or drive your car. I suppose you can't ride your bicycle or go out to the farm and pitch a couple bales. But they have already figured out it takes energy to do that, and they are measuring against ethanol. A farm worker takes 4,000 calories a day to go out there and do the work. Now, I think he is overeating just a little bit. But they have measured it. Calories are energy. Human consumption of food is energy. Everything takes energy. Energy is based on carbon, and they want to tax carbon to the tune of $646 billion. Then, to make sure it really goes to the right place, the White House wants to tax oil and gas directly, $31.5 billion dollars. And, by the way, if you thought you made a pretty good living and maybe jumped through all these government hoops and were able to establish an estate, then we have it set up so we were seeking to get completely rid of the death tax. But President Obama is convinced that they are going to come back with the death tax and eliminate the loopholes, so now you can't even hope to die for free. That is all going on. And on top of that, we are in two wars, Mr. Speaker. Two wars. There is still a conflict going on in Iraq, and I am transitioning into that, and there is clearly a conflict in Afghanistan which President Obama has ordered a surge. Now, it seems a little odd to me that the President of the United States would not admit that the surge worked in Iraq, but he would order one in Afghanistan, even though they are two different countries, I agree, and it is a tough battle going on in Afghanistan, and I am going to stand with him on the orders he has given. There are many more components to it, and I trust the White House is going to build out the State Department side of this, the economic side of this, and the strategic neighbors, and hopefully put together a more cooperative approach to this so that we can have a broad and complete solution in Afghanistan. I will stand with him on that, as tough as it is. I will not walk away from our military. Not our military. I stand with them and I stand with their mission. Their mission has been in Iraq, and everybody serving there in the last few years not only volunteered for their branch of the service, but they volunteered knowing that they would be likely called up to go to Iraq. Many of them volunteered for that mission. That is our military; selfless, noble, self-sacrifice, bravery like the world has never seen. The best trained, the most disciplined, the best equipped, the best armed military the world has ever seen. Yet on the floor of this Congress, Mr. Speaker, in the 110th Congress, the previous Congress, there were more than 40 votes brought to the floor that were designed to unfund, underfund, or undermine our troops while they are at war under orders to face the enemy. And they face them in a way that was a 360 degree battlefield. You never knew when they were going to be hit, there was no one that was in a safe zone, some safer than others. Yet in all of this, President Bush took a look and decided he did not want to capitulate to the other side. And even though the advice that he was getting from many of his top military officers was essentially we are not in a position to win this war, Mr. President, and the implication was that he should just simply order a withdrawal, let me put it this way, a cynic would say declare victory and leave, but you can never declare victory and leave and call it a victory in a war. In a way it is like a street fight. The person that is standing there when it is over is the one that wins. And if you don't occupy the territory you fought over, you don't get to say we won that war, we just got tired of it and left and when home. The world knows that, history knows that, President Bush knows that. That is why he had the vision and the leadership to give the order for a surge. It was a well-researched strategy that had many components to it, not just the military tactical, but many the other components to it as well. And as that strategy was put together, and I made a number of trips over there and met with our top officers while this was being put together, I was sold on the strategy before it had a name, I was sold on the strategy before it was actually shaped. But we see now what has happened. President Bush ordered the surge and we swelled the troops up to over 150,000 there. He made the order. And, of course, our troops nobly complied and they carried out their mission in a fashion that still amazes more than half of this Congress, most the country and even more of the world. But, today the Pelosi Congress has established 18, 18 benchmarks that needed to be achieved in Iraq before they would be willing to support the efforts and the spending that is going on there. I took this in the middle of those 40-plus votes that were designed to unfund, underfund or undermine our troops, I took those benchmarks that were essentially imposed upon the Iraq effort to be setting the bar so high that it could never be achieved because so many were invested in defeat in this Congress. Yet of the 18 benchmarks, 17 of the 18 benchmarks have been wholly or substantially achieved in Iraq. And I don't have that list in front of me, but I can tell you the one that is not yet been achieved, and that is the benchmark that requires the Iraqi Security Forces to be completely independent from U.S. military support. So, that would be that the 613,000 Iraqi Security Forces that are in uniform today that have been trained and equipped by our military, standing up a military from a beginning takes years, but of those 613,000, by that 18th benchmark they would all have to be able to operate independent of U.S. communications, U.S. logistical support, U.S. training, U.S. intelligence, the list goes on of all the things that we are providing them and helping them with today. I think that is a generation away before they reach that level. I think the 18th benchmark was completely unreachable, although they have made substantial progress. But I won't say it has been substantially completed or wholly completed at this point. So 17 of 18 benchmarks, and the remaining one is an independent Iraqi Security Force. Seventeen of 18 benchmarks have been achieved, Mr. Speaker. I am introducing, I have today introduced a resolution that addresses this. The resolution is a resolution that acknowledges and recognizes the achievements there. Seventeen of 18 benchmarks have been achieved. That is one point. Another is American casualties in Iraq. Since the 30th of June, 2008, we have lost more of our military to accidents than we have the enemy; more to accidents than we have the enemy, Mr. Speaker. That is a measure too of a war that is going in the right direction. The civilian deaths in Iraq have gone down by 90 percent and the ethno-sectarian deaths in Iraq have dropped by 98 percent. There's a long period there where you had no sectarian deaths, where statistically so low that they were not reportable. And yet, I remember, some of my colleagues over here and some of our Senate friends saying the war in Iraq is lost. It can't be won. We've been defeated. It's a civil war. There are sectarian deaths. It's out of control, and we need to get out people out right away, just maintain enough of a rear guard so that they don't get shot in the back as they retreat from Iraq. That's essentially the message that came from a good number of people over on this side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, and a number of them in the Senate as well, and that was part of the debate on these 40-plus votes that were designed to unfund, underfund or undermine our troops. But what's happened is there has been substantial achievement in Iraq. We have achieved a definable victory in Iraq. And I've introduced a resolution today that lays out the history on how we got there, the authority that was invested in the President of the United States by this Congress to engage in military action if he saw fit, and the responsibilities that he accepted and that our military accepted, as well as the things that went wrong, and then the things that went right. But three elections almost, the last election was so successful there wasn't a single significant security event involved in the last election in Iraq in the last weekend of January, this year. And so they ratified a constitution. They've had three successful elections, they have an effective central government. And Maliki has become a powerful and influential leader that had the courage and the temerity to order his own troop actions to go down into Basra last year, and that turned out to be something that seemed to be tenuous but turned out to be successful, and it was a key component in establishing Baghdad and the central government as being in charge in the country of Iraq. So however we measure this, by any complete objective measure, there has been a definable victory achieved in Iraq. That's what this resolution does, Mr. Speaker. And it thanks and honors our military for their sacrifice of life and limb and blood and treasure and time away from their homes and having their destiny changed. No one served in that country without having the destiny of their life turned in one way other. Some of them lost their lives. Some of them lost their limbs. All of them were affected in a way that it changed them, in a small way some perhaps, and in a very large way, others. It caused the breakup of some families. There were divorces because of the long deployments. There was a price paid by wives and husbands and children. And yet, in this country, we bicker here trying to undermine an effort. And now, this Congress has a chance to say thank you for all of that sacrifice. This Congress has a chance to ratify this resolution and put it into the Record, in the Congressional Record for all time. And some of the language in this resolution, Mr. Speaker, follows like this: The United States House of Representatives extends its gratitude to all those within the military and civilian departments and agencies of the United States Government who were responsible for directing the implementation of the surge strategy, including General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. The U.S. House of Representatives recognizes the importance and significance of victory in the Iraqi theater of the larger global struggle against radical Islamic jihadists terrorists. And the United States House of Representatives commits itself to working with President Obama and his administration to continue the progress that has been made on the ground in Iraq since the surge strategy was implemented, recognizing that a definable victory has been achieved in Iraq, and that history will judge President Bush's successor by his ability to maintain his predecessor's victory. That's what's been achieved in Iraq today, Mr. Speaker. And I stand with President Obama in maintaining and in building upon the achievements that have been made in Iraq. This resolution is about honoring the accomplishments to this point. And it's about asking and actually challenging all of us to stand with those who have sacrificed so much so that price has meaning, so that the destiny of America, the destiny of every individual that served there was changed by their experience there. The destiny of America then needs to be changed also, as the benefit from the price that's been paid. The destiny of America can be defined by the course of liberty and the course of freedom. And we have watched freedom be expanded around the world. I've watched it in a number of ways. Sometimes we've just fought them to a draw, and sometimes we expanded freedom dramatically. Free market capitalism expanded freedom around this world probably more than any war that there ever was. But those things fit in conjunction with each other. The Second World War expanded freedom. If it hadn't been for that, we would have been either under the control of the imperial Japanese or the Nazis. And yet, we defended freedom. We expanded freedom. Still, February 11, 1945, at Yalta, Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin drew a line on a map, and the line on the map was the line west of which people would live in the free world and east of which they would live in the slavery of communism. When that line was drawn, February 11, 1945, that set the destiny for people for more than a generation to come, 2 generations to come. But by November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. This Cold War that we'd fought for all of those years, along that line that was drawn at Yalta by Stalin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, that line fell, that was the Iron Curtain. It came down literally with a crash, beginning November 9 when the Berlin Wall started to come down. And freedom echoed for a time, all the way across Eastern Europe, all the way across Asia, all the way to the Pacific Ocean. That was the result of this victory in the Cold War. And the Yeltsin era came in, in Russia, and the satellite states for the Soviet Union declared their independence, and most of them are essentially independent today. But freedom has diminished back across that vast land of Russia. It's not what it was during that era. Most of the institutions of freedom have been diminished or eliminated by the Putin era within Russia. But we advanced freedom, we advanced it in the Second World War dramatically. But the line was drawn, drawn between the east and the west, the line of the Iron Curtain. Then the Cold War was won and the Iron Curtain came crashing down, and hundreds of millions of people breathe free that would not have otherwise. We found ourselves, though, in a conflict in Vietnam, which was the last direct military conflict between freedom and communism. Now, the problem with losing your nerve and losing your will when it comes to foreign policy cannot be measured in, well, it's no longer convenient to support a war in Iraq. I'm unhappy and uncomfortable with the cost or the casualties that are there, so I'll make an objective decision to rationalize and pull out. That's something that was going on. That was some of the thought process that's going on by many of the people that are on staff today at the White House. But there is a destiny of the free world that America leads that has to be attended to. It's our duty and it's our charge, and so, I'll submit this, Mr. Speaker, that America was viewed as the superpower of the world. We viewed the Soviet Union as the other superpower. We called them that. But much of the rest of the world saw us as the only superpower in the world. And we had never lost a war. The world didn't expect us to lose a war. But when I picked up this book, this is a book, Vietnam's top military strategist tells how we won the war by General Vo Nguyen Giap. This is the general that commanded the North Vietnamese military during the Vietnam War. And General Giap, G-I-A-P, he writes in here some things that are illuminating. Now, this isn't a very good book, and I don't recommend, Mr. Speaker, that people go out and buy it. I can give you the essence of it here in just a little phrase. And again, the title of the book is How We Won the War. The commander of the North Vietnamese, and he says here that the U.S. had already begun its decline from the position as the only superpower. This book is copyrighted in 1976, so it was written right after the fall of South Vietnam. General Giap said the U.S. had already begun its decline from the position as the only superpower. He viewed us as the only superpower in the 1970s and in the 1960s. That's one way to look at it. But he said the U.S. failure to win in Korea was the turning point. So, Mr. Speaker, here's the lesson. We had a Korean War, and we negotiated a settlement rather than press for an all out victory. I'm not commenting on what was the right thing to do then from a military tactical standpoint. I am commenting on this: Settling for a negotiated settlement in Korea resulted in an inspiration for the North Vietnamese, that America didn't have the will to press for a victory in Vietnam, so they fought a war of attrition. They fought a war of attrition that went on for more than a decade. And the price for that was 58,000 American lives, hundreds of thousands of North Vietnamese lives. And this Congress voted to shut off all funding, not just to support American troops who had already been pulled out of South Vietnam. If you remember Vietnamization. The Vietnamese were taught and trained and equipped to defend themselves, and they had stepped up, and they were doing that. This Congress shut off all funding. And I went back and read the legislation. And it says, no money, none of these funds or any funds heretofore appropriated shall be spent in Vietnam, North Or South Vietnam actually, and in Cambodia or Laos, on the skies overhead or the seas beside these countries. In other words, whatever money was in the pipeline to go help the Vietnamese boys defend themselves, as I think that was the language that they used at the time, that money was shut off too. Money that I was already appropriated by a previous Congress and already sent by a Commander-in-Chief was shut off by this Congress, along with any other appropriations. When that happened it starved the defense of South Vietnam. No wonder they capitulated. They didn't have anything to fight with. And the legacy is left that the United States walked away from one of our friends and our allies. Well, it started with Korea, a negotiated settlement, and we got to Vietnam. And then, Mr. Speaker, I find myself sitting in a hotel in Kuwait City, waiting to go into Iraq the next day. The date was June 11, 2004. And I didn't know at the time, I don't think, about General Giap's look at Korea as his inspiration. But I was watching Al Jazeera TV, and I couldn't understand what they were saying, but they had English closed- caption. And I heard this, I think, in Arabic, come out of the mouth of Muqtada al-Sadr, who said, if we keep attacking Americans, they will leave Iraq, the same way they left Vietnam, the same way they left Lebanon, the same way they left Mogadishu. And I wrote those notes down when I heard that. But it also was branded into my memory, Mr. Speaker. Our enemies in Iraq and our enemies around the world are inspired if they see lack of resolve. General Vo Nguyen Giap was inspired when he identified lack of resolve in a negotiated settlement in Korea. And our subsequent enemies in places like Lebanon and Mogadishu were inspirations as well to Muqtada al-Sadr and our current enemies that we have. These are all the terrorists worldwide. They talk about this. I mean, this is not something that is an original thought of Muqtada al- Sadr. This is something that's being voiced around the world to encourage and recruit our enemies. And I'll say, America didn't, they couldn't win in Korea. They couldn't win in Vietnam. They pulled out of Lebanon. They pulled out of Mogadishu, and they will pull out of Iraq, is what they were hoping. Well, Mr. Speaker, there is no military tactical reason to pull out of Iraq to avoid the conflict that's there, because much of our enemy has been mopped up by U.S. and Iraqi forces working in conjunction with coalition forces that are still there. We must maintain this victory that has been achieved. I have defined it tonight, Mr. Speaker, for you. We must maintain it because this is the point where we turn the destiny of America again at the price of the destiny of hundreds of thousands of military who have served in that country. Now we can turn the destiny of America toward the positive side again, and we can hand to the next generations the world's only superpower, who may have lost its will in Vietnam, who should not have pulled out of Lebanon in the stage that it was in, who should not have left Mogadishu, but who did stick it out in Iraq and who did ensure that the Iraqi people had their chance at freedom, that they had their chance at liberty, that they had their chance to be as they are quickly becoming: a moderate Muslim state that is our ally in the Middle East in an ideal strategic location for them to influence the Middle Eastern part of the world and in an ideal tactical location. The Iraqi people on our side are understanding this: We didn't ever go there for their oil. We didn't ever go there to occupy. We went there to end the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, and that happened. Whatever you argue about whether the full spectrum of all of the reasons were intact or not, the fact remains that the President had to make a decision based upon the information he had. He made that decision. Once it was made, we stood with our troops and with their mission. Their mission has been wholly or substantially completed and will be, but we've got to remember that this is a fragile definable victory that has been achieved, and we cannot squander it, and we need to honor the Commander in Chief who gave the order of the surge, and we need to honor the people who brought it about. That does include the Iraqi people. It includes the Sunni awakening. It includes the commitment by them in understanding that, again, we didn't go there for their oil, and we didn't go there to occupy. We went there to give them a chance at freedom. They have their chance, and they will continue, and they're actually reaching harder and stronger than maybe they have the capability of doing. When I sit in these briefings, I get this, and this wouldn't be a classified component. It's a concern that the Iraqis have maybe a little more confidence in their military capability than they actually have. Well, that's the right place for them to be, to be stretching and pushing this thing and to be asking for as much of their own military autonomy as we can give them. We've given them much. We've given them at least all of the security in at least 14 of the 18 provinces and maybe more, and I might have missed one or two. We handed over to them Anbar province, a place where 2\1/2\ years ago I couldn't go because it was too dangerous, a place where, in downtown Ramadi, there was not a building that was not shot up. It was a rubble. It was a city of rubble that had been fought over so many times--a city of death. I went shopping in downtown Ramadi and, additionally, in Fallujah where I've been several times. By the way, the mayor of Ramadi sounds like the mayor of Peoria. He says, ``Get Baghdad to send me a little more money down here. I need more sewer, water and lights. We're rebuilding this town. We've got to get everybody off the dime. Why is it stuck? We need to go to work.'' That's what they're doing and what they've done. In Fallujah, the mayor of Fallujah says, ``We are a city of peace, and we are going to repair every building in this city so there's no sign of war.'' If Fallujah is going to be known as the ``city of peace,'' well, Mr. Speaker, that's what has been accomplished over the last number of years and especially since the surge was ordered. This resolution that I introduced today is a resolution that calls upon this Congress to recognize that and to honor the price, the sacrifice, the accomplishments, and the achievements. It also asks the President: Hold this together. Nurture this along. Let's not make a political decision on the deployment of troops out of Iraq because it's a promise that you made 3\1/2\ years ago when you were a State Senator. Let's make sure that this is a tactical decision and also a political decision and an economic decision and a strategic decision. If you're going to make decisions like that, when you make an announcement that all of the combat troops are going to be out by the last day in August in 2010, as a Commander in Chief, you've fenced yourself in politically. What's the point? You can order those troops to be deployed out of this and can have all of our combat troops out by the last day in August of 2010 without having to tell the world. Just start that progression. We've already started it, and it makes some sense to do that. It may even make a lot of sense to do that. It just should never, ever be a political decision, and there is no need to announce it. Then also to announce that, by the last day of 2011, all of our military will be completely out of Iraq, that's actually what the Status of Forces Agreement says, but it also says that we can renegotiate this. So, Mr. Speaker, I'll submit that we've accomplished a lot in Iraq. We have accomplished so much that we've achieved a definable victory there. This Congress needs to celebrate the achievement of the definable victory in Iraq. We need to applaud everyone who has served there in uniform and especially those who have given life and limb and their families. It is a noble, noble act by a noble, noble people. It is best expressed, I think, at the Korean war memorial where it says, ``This Nation honors our men and women who answered the call to serve a country they never knew and a people they never met.'' It has happened over and over again from the United States of America. It has happened again in Iraq. It's happening in Afghanistan. We need to preserve those precious victories. We need to end this legacy of not having the will to complete the task that we've started. We need to end this propaganda that's coming out of the mouths of our enemies that says, well, we'll leave Iraq the same way we left Vietnam, Lebanon and Mogadishu. We can't have Osama bin Laden sitting in his cave up there in Pakistan, saying, ``Well, they will leave Afghanistan the same way they left Vietnam, Lebanon, Mogadishu, and Iraq.'' If that happens, we've got a much larger enemy that we have to face and a much more determined enemy that we have to face. They know they've lost in Iraq. They've said so. It says so in this resolution. We have quoted some al Qaeda leaders in this resolution that they have recognized they have lost tactically the war in Iraq. They don't have the ability to engage in any kind of an organized military way. They can cause some trouble, yes. There are a few of them left in pockets, particularly in Mosul, and they're being mopped up as we speak, but there has been a tremendous amount that has been accomplished. If the President can make the charge that he inherited a $1 trillion deficit and somehow then the responsibility for this economic crisis that we're in all falls back on his predecessor because he has inherited a $1 trillion deficit, never mind he has offered a $1.7 trillion budget--but if he can take that position over and over again that he inherited a $1 trillion deficit and this economy, by implication, is all going to be on the shoulders of George W. Bush, then at least, Mr. Speaker, he can accept the responsibility of Iraq and the state that it's in and can preserve the definable victory that has been achieved. That's what this resolution does. That's what it asks for. It's what, I think, the will of this Congress ought to be. I'm going to be asking the Speaker to allow this to come forward to the floor. Right before I close, Mr. Speaker, I would yield to the gentleman from Nebraska so much time as he may consume of which I don't think there's a lot.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. So this being an American value of religious freedom and religious liberty, we need to also export that freedom around the world. We have many soldiers that are buried in foreign lands to promote that freedom. They've paid their price. There's been a price paid in this country continually for religious freedom. We need to promote it around the world. For us to open up the doors of the United States of America to religious workers from countries who come here to advance their version of their side of society and not have those countries allow American missionaries to come into them, I think sets up a standard that we should not tolerate. So I will be introducing legislation that sets up a reciprocity program in this religious workers visa program. And I look forward to the opportunity in September or prior to September to raise this issue in a better format. Until that time, and believing that we will have an open forum in this Congress and a real legitimate debate on the subject of religious worker reciprocity, I intend to support this resolution today and work in good faith to improve it before it comes up for reauthorization on September 30, 2009.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, we're here to address the extension of these two programs, including the religious worker visa program extension, which is set up to authorize now until September 30 of this year, until the end of this fiscal year. I had recommended that we bring this bill back before committee for the purposes of a markup so that we could reevaluate the policy. We have had hearings on this subject matter in the previous Congress, and we all know that the actions of the previous Congress don't color the existing Congress. The history of the religious worker visa program has had some problems with fraud. It was created in 1990, but from the beginning, it has been a magnet for people who want to perpetrate a scam on America's immigration system. According to the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs--and this is dated September of 2005, their Fraud Digest--``The religious worker visas are known as some of the most difficult to adjudicate.'' The Fraud Digest then goes on to discuss various cases in which people were prosecuted for fraudulent use of the program, the religious worker program. For instance, in 2004, a Venezuelan national was convicted in Virginia visa fraud. He had filed 179 fraudulent petitions for religious ministers. In addition to creating fraudulent certificates of ordination, diplomas and other supporting documentation, he also obtained valid 501(c)(3) tax exemptions from recognized religious organizations without their knowledge. The immigration subcommittee has long been aware of the fraud in this program. Mr. Speaker, I take you back to a 1997 GAO investigation which was requested by the subcommittee. The State Department conducted a field inquiry to get the views of consular offices as to the level and type of fraud. In 41 percent of the 83 responding posts, some type of fraud or abuse was acknowledged. The State Department also noted that, under the program's regulations, ``almost anyone involved with a church, aside from the explicitly excluded occupations of cleaning, maintenance and support staff . . . arguably could qualify as a religious worker.'' This clearly wasn't the intent of the program. It doesn't remain the intent of the program that will, I think, likely be reauthorized today. When the GAO released its final report in 1999, the agency noted that the types of fraud often encountered in the processing of religious worker visas ``involved petitioners making false statements about the length of time that the applicant was a member of the religious organization and the nature of the qualifying experience.'' The report went on to state that ``evidence uncovered by INS suggests that some of these organizations exist solely as a means to carry out immigration fraud.'' That was then. This is more current. Recently, I will say in July of 2006, Mr. Speaker, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service's Office of Fraud Detection and National Security conducted a fraud benefit assessment on the Religious Worker Visa Program. They selected 220 cases at random--of which we're very familiar with on the committee--they found an astonishing 33 percent fraud rate. That's one of every three were fraudulently based. In 32 of the fraudulent cases, the religious institution either didn't exist or only existed on paper. And 39 of the fraudulent petitions included fraudulent supporting documentation or material representations within a document. Other instances of fraud included cases where the petitioner could not be located or connected to any religious entity and where the petitioning religious entity was unaware that the petition had been filed and was unaware of the beneficiary. Also in the modern era, in 2003, Mohammed Khalil and three of his sons were arrested in connection with submitting false applications to bring over 200 individuals to the United States using the religious worker visa program. During court proceedings, prosecutors revealed that Khalil made statements to an undercover witness professing allegiance to Osama bin Laden. He also allegedly stated, ``Hopefully, another attack in the United States will come shortly.'' That gives you, I think, Mr. Speaker, the feel for how this program has been abused. However, I want to make clear, Mr. Speaker, to you and to the Record, and eventually to the American people, that I recognize--as will every Member of this Congress--that there are very sincere religious workers who come to the United States that fit within the category and within the intent of this Congress. And I think what we need to do today is honor them, thank them, recognize that this is a country that was built upon religious freedom. And where we can promote religious freedom, we need to do so within our own borders and around the globe. That's why I have raised the issue that we are receiving religious workers from countries that will not allow American religious workers to go into them unless they fit within their narrowly defined religious category.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 93, I was not present because of the birth of my grandson. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 89 I was not able to reach the House floor to cast my vote before the vote was closed. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 91, I was not present because of the birth of my grandson. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 92, I was not present because of the birth of my grandson. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I was not able to reach the House floor to cast my vote on Rollcall 415 on June 17, 2008, prior to the vote closing. Had I been able to reach the floor before the vote was closed, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina for yielding, and also for her diligent endeavor on the Rules Committee to try to hold together the integrity of this system and this process. On this cramdown legislation, the amendment that I offered in the Judiciary Committee was an amendment that would have, and I'd just take the language right out of it, it would have allowed the court to find that there had not been misrepresentation, false pretenses or actual fraud on the part of the lender if there's going to be a change in this contract ordered by a judge. Now, we don't want to reward people who are lawbreakers, or those who are disingenuous, or those who, by fraudulent or misrepresentative means to take advantage of a lender under these circumstances. This is new territory we're in. It's a narrow standard in a significant way. This was an amendment that not only I thought was a good proposal, Republicans thought it was a good proposal, but the Democrats also thought it was a good proposal. And this amendment is an amendment that I negotiated across the other side of the aisle in committee. It's an amendment that the chairman voted for. It's an amendment that passed, the bill passed on a recorded vote in committee, 21-3, Mr. Speaker. So when that happens in this process, the people who took government class all over America and read the Constitution believe that's the language that comes to the floor, that the language that's approved by the committee on a final markup is the language that comes to the floor. But what happened was, H.R. 200 was switched out for H.R. 1109, or whatever this bill is that we're working with. The language of this cramdown was to be transferred into that, but it was changed in that process. It was changed after we had a committee markup, a committee markup that apparently doesn't have any value when the will of the committee can be usurped by the staff of the committee. And I say the staff of the committee, because when I asked the chairman about this yesterday in the Judiciary Committee, he didn't seem to be aware that my language had been changed. And so we talked to their staff, and their staff said, well, there were Democrats that had some second thoughts. Wouldn't that include the chairman of the committee? And so they reconsidered and they rewrote the bill after the fact. And the final answer that came from the staff, the unelected staff, probably still employed, not if they were working for me, is ``it is what it is.'' In other words, tough. You can pass an amendment. You can negotiate an amendment. You can get a 21-3 vote. You can have the support of the chairman. But if they decide when the sun comes up the next morning that they want to change their mind, they will change the language in the bill without even having the courtesy of contacting the sponsor of the amendment, the ranking member of the committee or, apparently, the chairman of the committee. And so I brought an amendment request to the Rules Committee last night. And thankfully, Dr. Foxx offered that amendment to the Rules Committee. It was voted down on a party-line vote. So what we have now is a process that does not reflect representative government. It doesn't reflect the will of this Congress. It reflects the will of somebody's staff. And there's plenty of means to change the language if there happens to be some kind of flaw in it. And I'll argue there is not. But there's plenty of means. That means would be come to the Rules Committee, bring your own amendment. Or bring this out on the floor for an up-or-down vote, or lobby the Senate to amend it over there, or seek to get something amended in conference. None of those avenues were followed, Mr. Speaker. And I think it brings a sense of shame upon this Congress that the integrity of a Member, of the entire Republican side of the aisle and many of the Democrats has all been usurped by what appears to be a staff decision, because I can't find a single elected Member that will say yes, I took responsibility and I didn't think you ought to know when I changed your language. That's what's going on. I urge this body to vote down this rule. Take this thing back to the Rules Committee, bring us the language that was passed out of the Judiciary Committee, or at least let's have some dialogue on why it was changed in the dark of the night by staff without a single Member that will take accountability for what's happened here.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, this is a bad bill, and I would echo the statement of Congressman Louie Gohmert from Texas. We have community bankers. We have independent bankers. They're good bankers. These are people who understand their communities. They understand their customers. They understand their depositors. They make these discretionary decisions at a community level. I represent 286 towns in 32 counties in western Iowa. Some of those towns have shriveled up. Some other towns have actually shriveled up and have gone away, but when I look at what's left of the towns that are shrinking, often the last enterprise is the community bank, the independent bank, because they're investing back into the community. When I watch these communities grow back again--and some of them have grown back again since I've been elected to Congress--it's because there's an investment locally because decisions are made at the discretion of the depositors. They are those who support the board members who hire the loan officers who make these discretionary decisions. They want mortgages. They want to invest in the community. They're invested in the community. This cramdown bill hands it over to an unelected judge. We had an intense discussion in the Rules Committee last night about what kind of accountability there is for judges. I'd like to hear a list of the names of those judges who have been removed for incompetence, let alone for poor discretion. I'd rather give that discretion to the banker who is accountable to the depositors than to a judge who is not accountable unless Congress happens to find him. Speaking of accountability, I do rise in frustration that an amendment that I introduced in the Judiciary Committee that succeeded by a vote of 21-3 was taken out of this bill after the fact. Even though it had the support of the chairman and of all but three Democrats and every Republican, when something like that happens out of committee, I have to trust as an elected Member of Congress that there will be a level of respect so that when the committee votes, that's the will of the committee. I would argue that the job is for the Chair or for the Speaker or for whomever it might be to bring out the will of the group.

Mr. KING of Iowa. The way you find out the will of the group is you have a vote, and there is a full expectation, when an amendment passes in committee, it is part of the bill. That's why we have the markup. So I had an impromptu colloquy with the chairman, and he said, ``I accept responsibility. I'll find out what happened. I'll report back to you. I'll get back to you right away.'' I don't know the answer to that at this point. I can only draw the conclusion that, since no one knew this happened and since no member of the Judiciary Committee, no Member of Congress has said, ``I'm responsible,'' other than responsible for its happening, I trust it was a staff act that's not been held accountable. Until I get an answer, I'm going to operate under the assumption that no other agreement that's made between gentlemen is going to be valid until we can make this one valid.