Steve King

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, no good deed goes unpunished. I'm simply complimenting the Catholics without reference to Protestants. However, I do have some data I could bring out perhaps a little later in the debate.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Georgia and appreciate your yielding, Mr. Gingrey. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor tonight to join with my colleagues to raise our voices in unison in support of our Commander in Chief and the Commander of the Iraqi forces, General Petraeus, with whom I have had a significantly long working relationship for quite some time, and for all the troops that have fallen in line behind the Commander in Chief and behind General Petraeus all the way out across the board. I have personally made five trips to Iraq. I've been to Afghanistan. Each time that I go over there, I stop in at Landstuhl. I visit the wounded. I see the price that's being paid. I see the dedication in their eyes. And I believe it's a little stronger in the eyes of those at Landstuhl than it is in those who are standing at attention in Iraq or those that are on duty in Iraq. But all them, all of them, have put their lives on the line. They are all volunteers. And I think back to a time at a Thanksgiving dinner in Baghdad actually, and the command sergeant major gave me that look that was like I'd like to talk to you off on the side. And I walked over to the side, and he said, I know war is expensive, but we're all volunteers here. We are not just volunteers for this mission. We have volunteered for the military. We've all re-upped since the beginning of this war, and we all knew that we had a very high likelihood of being deployed here. We want to come here. And I volunteered for this because I want to take this fight from my children and my grandchildren. I want it done in my time. I know war is expensive, but you can't say ``no'' to us. You cannot pull us out now, not after this sacrifice, not this time. We have got to finish this fight that's before us. And that's a conversation I will never forget, and I will never forget the look in his eye as he delivered that to me. That's some of the best that we have, our command sergeant majors. And this one fried that into my memory. And I think he has expressed for the fighting men and women over there what they want us all to hear on the floor of Congress and what they want the American people to know. If they're willing to take the risk, if they're willing to provide the sacrifice, how are we to say ``no''?

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Georgia. And I just left a table of marines that are all on multiple tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, and a couple of them were decorated with Purple Hearts and serving in places like Fallujah. And you look them in the eye, and you see what they're asking us to do: Just back us. Just stand behind us. Don't undermine us. Stand behind us. I take us back to the Vietnam war. I picked up the book written by General Giap, who was credited with what they call their victory for the Vietnamese, for North Vietnam. In that book on page 8, as I recall the page, page 8, there's a little phrase in there where he says they got our first inkling that we could defeat the United States when we saw that they didn't press for a total victory in Korea. A negotiated settlement in Korea gave Vietnam the inspiration to fight the war against us not only on the ground in Vietnam, where they paid multiple prices in lives beyond ours, but to do it in the public airwaves across the country. The protests that went on in the streets here and across in Europe were all part of their war strategy. The liberal media undermining the effort was all part of their war strategy. That doesn't mean they called the shots for the media, but they were complicit in this. And as the will of the American people was broken down by biased information and sometimes misinformation, they understood this: The bottom line in the book Principles of War by von Clausewitz, a summary of his analysis is the object of war is to defeat the will of the enemy. So the voices that come out from this side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, are the voices of defeat, not the voices of victory. They are undermining the will of the American people. The press is playing into that. We should be standing with our troops. And I walked down the steps in the Cannon building, and I presume he was a veteran. He reached up and he said, ``Support our troops,'' and shook my hand. And I said, ``I will and I will continue to be there.'' But I missed a beat or I would have said ``and their mission'' because you can't support the troops without supporting their mission. You can't ask people to go off and put their lives on the line for something you don't believe in. I believe in this. The Iraqi people believe in this. And today they know something they didn't know a year ago or 4 years ago, two big points that they understand, that's part of their national understanding: One is the Americans and the coalition forces are not there to occupy. We don't want to be there to occupy. We want them to have their freedom. The second thing is we're not there for the oil, or we would have taken it by now. We want the Iraqi people to live and breathe free. Yesterday I had a lunch with an individual who was instrumental in bringing Benazir Bhutto to Iowa as she gave a keynote address shortly after September 11. I sat down with her on a couch afterwards one on one, and I asked her, How do we get to the point of victory? How do we defeat al Qaeda and our enemy? And her answer was, You've got to give them freedom. You've got to give them a chance at democracy. If you do that, they'll change their focus from hatred towards taking care of their families, their communities, their neighborhoods, their jobs, and their mosques. And I look back on that conversation. Sadly, we have lost her, her voice for freedom, but there is a piece of wisdom in that that the American people need to understand. Iraqi people are now breathing free. They weren't free before. The Afghani people are breathing free. They weren't free there ever. Today there are 50 million people that are free because of the sacrifice of U.S. and coalition troops and because of the inspiration that we provide for the world, and that is a very big thing to hand on to the next generations. And as we watch the Bush administration move towards that last month in office, and we have many months to go yet, but when it gets to that point, I'm going to say this: I believe history will treat President Bush a lot more kindly than the media has treated him in this time when they write objectively what it means to have the strong leadership in the Commander in Chief, to have an all-volunteer military that's doing a better job than we could have ever asked anybody to do, and they say let us finish our task. The Iraqis say let us finish our task. They're paying their price. We need to hold up our end of this bargain, and we need to support General Petraeus. And I yield back to the gentleman from Georgia, and I thank him.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Will the gentlelady yield?

Mr. KING of Iowa. As I look at your chart, it occurs to me that that's Federal spending. And I'm going to speculate here, though, that if we would add to that the State and the political subdivision spending on to that, because that also is a share of the GDP, we have a significantly higher percentage. And I would think that that percentage today may well go to 37 percent. I've seen some studies by some very well-respected and highly credentialed economists that make the argument that there's a right size to government, and that right size to government, when you add all the taxation across the spectrum, from Federal to State to local, that right size of government taxing a percentage of GDP, they believe, falls somewhere between 17 and 23 percent. So I'd just argue that we've passed that already, and we've got to go down in those numbers. I'd like to see those bar charts go down.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady from Tennessee for organizing this Special Order and for the privilege to address you, Mr. Speaker. This budget issue that rolls out in front of us, I'd like to take us back to anchor it a little bit on what's really going on. And we haven't gone very far into all the news and the indicators we have on this economy, but this budget is the largest tax increase in the history of America; it amounts to $683 billion in tax increases over the next 5 years. That's almost triple the largest tax increase in history that took place in 1993. We remember that year, 1993, that was a $240.6 billion tax increase, about a third of what this one amounts to in `93. We will look back and remember what happened in 1994, Republicans took over the majority in the House of Representatives partly because of overspending. But as we followed this economy a little over a year ago, I remember the swearing-in ceremony here on the floor of Congress when Speaker Pelosi took the gavel for the first time. I watched what went on when all new committee chairs for the first time in 12 years picked up the gavel and began to manage their committees. And I watched as the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee went on the talk circuit all around the country, media stop after media stop after media stop, and he was constantly asked, are you, Chairman Rangel, going to make the Bush tax cuts permanent? Are you going to preserve any part of the Bush tax cuts? And he demurred on a straight answer time after time. But by a process of elimination it became clear to the American investor that those Bush tax cuts were not going to be made permanent, that every one of them was going to be designed to end, expire and fail at some point. Now, these tax cuts, the big ones, the ones that matter, was on May 28, 2007. That was when we had the real tax cuts that inspired this economy. And we have been on a growth pattern ever since that time and today we're still on that growth pattern in spite of what they say about our economy if you just track the DOW. But when the public understood and the investment community understood that the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee was going to continue down this path of spending, that he didn't see a tax cut he liked and he didn't see a tax increase that he didn't like, they stopped investing in industrial investment. The reduction in industrial investment that took place January, February, March, April and onwards of 2007 was the lead indicator for this economic inactivity that we're seeing today. That was item number one, the understanding that there would be tax increases, this understanding that we know, according to Adam Smith and Wealth of Nations from 1776 when he said ``the cost of any goods is the cost of the labor that it takes to produce it and the capital required to support the labor.'' And the cost of capital went up because of the tax increases that were around the corner, the tax increases that were implicit in this budget. When the cost of capital went up, capital is always reactive and smart, and capital investments declined. That led us into the subprime, and we know about the subprime, but that's only really about $150 billion in real losses. There might be a greater reaction on that in this Congress, but about $150 billion. That's equivalent to a dollar a gallon on gasoline. By the way, there's no energy policy either. But what this matters to us in this country is, we want to slow this growth in spending. We want to balance this budget. We want to bring a budget that gets us down to a responsible budget. And we want to get into the entitlements, fix Medicaid, fix Medicare, fix Social Security. And if we go down this path and we see the tax increases that were part of this, we put in it in one term that's relevant, what's relevant to us, how does this affect the family of four, mom, dad and two kids that are making $50,000 a year? The result of this budget and the tax increases that are part of it to a family of four making $50,000 a year, it will cost them annually $2,100 in additional taxes. And additionally, we're paying more for gas. We have no plan for a balanced budget coming out of the majority side. This economy has been driven down into the drink because of lack of confidence, lack of an energy policy, because of the tax increases that reduce the capital investment, especially in industrial investment, and because of the subprime. Things that you do in a bad economy are not increase taxes, not increase government spending. You don't take a larger share out of your gross domestic product and roll that into government, that's the nonproductive sector of the economy. That's one I'm not feeling charitable; I call that the parasitic sector of the economy. We need to have more dollars in the productive sector and the private sector of the economy; that means less taxes, less government, more personal responsibility, more fiscal discipline on the part of this Congress and this House where we start the spending here. So, I applaud the gentlelady for leading this Special Order. I look forward to many more. I look forward to the day when I can say, I stood on the floor of this Congress and voted for a balanced budget that made it through the Senate to the President's desk, and fiscal responsibility, and letting people keep the money that they earn. Thank you for yielding. I appreciate it. I yield back to the gentlelady from Tennessee.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the chairman and I appreciate his remarks. And there is probably some basis for him to make that argument. Just to close this argument, I will argue first that I offered a series of amendments which Mr. Smith addressed, and I exempted those foundations with less than $1 million in annual revenues. Then I went up the line to $10 million and then $50 million. I was trying to find that place by which it would get to somebody's conscience on the Judiciary Committee or in this Congress that we should say, you have enough money to manage this yourself. We never found that plateau. I actually wrote one that would have been a googolplex, kind of an unlimited number, but I'm confident it would have been rejected as well. So, I would just submit that the one organization that I've singled out here, Metropolitan Museum of Art, would have revenue in the 5 minutes we've discussed this to be able to pay for the premium processing of a single artist and accumulate in that hour about enough for 14 artists. So, I think we should have drawn the line at taking care of our small foundations, and for that reason I am opposing this bring. And I appreciate the sentiment that brings it to the floor.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank Mr. Smith, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, and the chairman for his graciousness. I appreciate the privilege to address this issue under these circumstances. And I make no pledge about taking advantage of the situation, but I will stay with the attitude and the comity that the chairman demonstrates always, and that is that I come to the floor here to rise in opposition to this bill. First I want to explain that premium processing is in the event that the normal application for the visa isn't processed in time, then the performing arts organization, which is a 501(c) nonprofit organization, can then apply. If they want to pay $1,000 premium to turn that around quickly, they can do that today. So, I'm looking at this thing from the perspective of this is a fee- based system that we have. We fund USCIS through fee-based, and we had hearings in the committee and we brought that forward and it's clear. So, it becomes a zero sum game. If you decide that you're going to provide a premium processing service for one organization, that means the burden of the cost of that gets distributed across all the other applicants. So, I'm stuck with this image of, let me just say the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I'm very convinced, and have not been there, that people arrive there in limousines wearing tuxedos and formal gowns, and at the same time, I know that they have a foundation that is quite significant. For example, assets of $2,424,000,000 in the foundation, an annual revenue stream of $326 million. Now, out of $326 million in annual revenue or $2.4 billion in the foundation, it seems to me that those kind of very wealthy, not-for-profit wealthy organizations could come up with the extra thousand dollars, particularly because people are arriving in tuxedos and getting out of limousines at the expense of the poor person who is in blue jeans and sneakers. And that's my argument here. I yield to the chairman.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I would submit that the wealthy foundations have the revenue to be able to provide for the premium processing in the event that they didn't plan far enough ahead to get their application in on time. I would think those with the highest wealth should be the ones that have the most ability to plan ahead or to pay if they fail to plan ahead.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the ranking member for yielding. Mr. Speaker, you know, we are here not really talking about the issue of rights. I haven't found anyone yet who has had their rights trampled on, their rights to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, as the chairman announced from the beginning. As I look at what is going on here in policy, there is a situation going on right now in New York, in that area, where you have contractors that answered the call and the crisis of 9/11, and they are under lawsuits by the thousands, and I think we are in pretty much unanimous agreement that we should indemnify them for answering the call to protect America. I don't understand the difference between why we would not want to indemnify an information company that answered the call to protect America. To me, those are the closest two comparisons that we can get. If we protect contractors when they went to that smoking hole in that war zone, why won't we protect telecommunication companies when they stepped up on good faith and believed that they were legally operating under the law? Where is that first citizen that has had their privacy violated? I haven't found one yet. None have been brought forward. I sat in hours of classified briefings. No one even uttered the name of a person who had their rights violated. The chairman talked about restoring the proper balance. Well, here is the thing that sits behind this restoring the proper balance. This is from page 8 of the AT&T letter. ``The legal paradox has implications not just for the carrier defendants, but for the Nation's security in general. It suggests to private companies that even good-faith cooperation is apparently authorized, and lawful intelligence activity can expose them to serious legal and business risk. This creates incentives to resist cooperation.'' That sets up a scenario where we are saying to companies, cooperate with us, but you might have to face, and will face, billions and billions of dollars of lawsuits, two score more of lawsuits, two dozen or more aggregated under a single court, Ninth Circuit, San Francisco, and they are watching their share values go down and watching their opportunities diminish around the world. And then we put them in the face of the paradox, what do you do if there is another attack on America? These scales of justice are now out of balance because the trial lawyers have put this thing out of balance, and the political pressure and the risk to the American people of the security of being attacked again are what is weighing on the other side. When the fear of attack gets greater and when the political benefit becomes that point, then we will offset the trial lawyers and we will get a bill.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I was detained in the elevator while attempting to reach the House floor to cast my vote on rollcall 142 earlier this evening. Had I been able to reach the floor before the vote was closed, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, Iowa State University is one of the most respected land-grant universities in the Nation. Created by the Iowa General Assembly in 1858, the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm was designated the first land-grant college when Iowa became the first state to accept the terms of the Federal Morrill Act in 1864. The act allowed Iowa to sell Federal land to finance a new college open to all, regardless of wealth, race or sex; offering a practical education in engineering, agriculture, and military science as well as classical studies; and sharing research knowledge with all Iowans. Iowa State University officially opened in 1869 and was the first coeducational land-grant school. Today, we are proudly celebrating the 150th anniversary of Iowa State University. Iowa State University has been a leader in science in technology throughout its long history. The world's first electronic digital computer was developed at Iowa State by math and physics professor John V. Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry, in the late 1930s. Their invention, the ABC computer, has been called the most important technological innovation of the 20th century. The university is a leader in virtual reality research and its most advanced virtual reality theater, the C6, is the Nation's first six- sided theater that totally immerses the user in images and sound. Iowa State is one of the top three U.S. universities in the development of patentable biotechnology. Last February, the Iowa Board of Regents approved a $32 million budget and conceptual design for a new biorenewables research laboratory at Iowa State University. The laboratory is the first piece of a new biorenewables complex planned for the university. Biorenewables research is the future of ISU and the State of Iowa. I congratulate Iowa State University on 150 years, and wish them many more. Go Cyclones.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of this 15-day extension to the FISA law, but I ask the question, why are we here? And the reason we are here is because of a court decision that I think appropriately defined the letter of the language in the 1978 FISA law. But because the technology changes, that court decision was made. And that opened up this can of worms, this Pandora's box of who's concerned about whose civil liberties versus how we provide this balance in our intelligence. And I would point out that this is a two-front war that we're fighting: One is in the Middle East, successfully I will add, and the other one is the surveillance that protects us domestically here at home and provides for our military to have the tools to work with overseas. That is the highest constitutional responsibility that we have. We have congressional oversight. We can look into this and see what's going on with the FISA law anyway, but the effort to protect our retroactive liability of those companies that cooperate with our intelligence community is essential. We will lose our ability to do surveillance if we lose the ability of the companies to cooperate with us. And this is not a trial lawyer's issue; it's a national security issue.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan for yielding, and I appreciate the privilege to address this House. This is a cynical attempt here to bring up a veto override attempt on an issue that's been decided, an issue that's been decided and a bill that's been signed by the President, is now enacted into law, to get us past the silly season of Presidential politics and on beyond November of 2008 so we can then have a legitimate discussion about what, if any, better options might be available to the American people. This is a big deal. This is already a victory for the taxpayers, and it's a victory for the kids that we're trying to take care of. I say it this way. I said I would come back and report to the American people on how much money was saved because some of us held the line, and that dollar figure is $35.6 billion. That's billion with a B. How much money is that? The ranking member of Energy and Commerce might want to know. We could build 178 ethanol plants at 100 million gallons each and quadruple our ethanol production with that kind of capital investment money. You could put a new car in every driveway in my State for that kind of money, but no kid was even threatened to lose their health insurance premium, and we took care of the kids. We're taking care of the taxpayers. $35.6 billion is what's on the line here. And who's paying the bill? Not us, not those of us in my generation, not those of us who are serving here in the United States Congress. Maybe our kids, more certainly our grandchildren will have to pay this price if we don't step up and draw a bright line. $35.6 billion, $6.5 billion going to illegals getting access to Medicaid because of the language that's in this legislation that erodes the standards that are required. This is a responsible thing to uphold the President's veto and turn down this veto override attempt.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Arizona for organizing this Special Order tonight on this day that culminates a long period of time here in Washington across America where we have gathered together to march and to speak and to appeal and to pray for the end of this holocaust of abortion in America. I have enjoyed those experiences that I have been able to share with my pro-life colleagues. As I went to the mass last night in the basilica and looked out across that sea of faces, more than 10,000 strong on the ground floor of that magnificent cathedral up on the hill in northeast Washington, realizing that there are 10,000 people in the main floor and another 5,000 in the basement, 15 to 16,000, many young people, who have done the pilgrimage from all across America, gotten on a bus and ridden for hours, maybe 18 or 20 or more hours to get here. They will go to the service, and they came to the march, the march for life today on The Mall in the cold and in the drizzle. They got back on the bus, some of them without even getting a chance to get warm, and headed back to their homes again. Those are people with conviction. Those are people that understand the two simple and basic questions that are before us here. The first question is, and so when I ask many high school students in public auditoriums, do you believe in the sanctity of life? Is human life sacred in all of its forms? Is the person sitting next to you, is their life sacred? Is your life sacred? And I get the answer, the universal answer is yes, yes from all of them. I have never had a dissenter. Then I asked them, there is only one other question you need to ask to determine your position on life, and that is, this sacred life, your life, the person sitting next to you, at what instant did that life begin? We know that there is only one instant, and that is the instant of conception. But once a person understands and comes to a faithful conviction that human life is sacred, and it begins at the instant of conception, we also will never lose the debate, will never lose our conviction. I would invite anyone in this Congress to come to this floor and debate me on those two points. I would like to have someone stand up and tell me their life began at some other instant than conception, but it will not happen, because they know that the minute, the instant that anybody over here takes a position other than this sacred life begins at the instant of conception, they have instantly lost the debate. That's the point that I think all Americans should understand. If they do, this Nation will one day put an end to Roe v. Wade. I am a Catholic, an active Catholic, and I understand the church's teachings on this. I wonder, sometimes about some of the active Catholics in this Congress that do not necessarily reflect the church's teachings. I would love to see, and I would call out an invitation next year for the special mass at the basilica, for the Speaker to join us there in our public prayer for those 50 million lives of those little babies, those little babies that will never have the opportunity to laugh, to love, never be hugged at night, never be kissed at night, not a single night, 50 million babies, 50 million little empty pairs of shoes, 50 million empty baby cribs, 50 million toys never played with, 50 million children, innocent as could be, denied the right to life. I reflect upon the appointments to the Supreme Court that the President made in this past term, two magnificent appointments to the Supreme Court, and that would be Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. We got a Supreme Court decision that upheld our ban on partial birth abortion finally, finally a measure that came from this Congress that was not denied by the Court. When I looked across the sea of faces that filled The Mall as far as the eye could see today by the tens of thousands, and perhaps by the hundreds of thousands, and reflected that they all came here to this city today because the Court injected themselves into a policy decision, not a constitutional decision. Roe vs. Wade and Doe v. Bolten, both need to be ripped out and both need to be overturned. The two magnificent appointments to the Supreme Court that understand this Constitution to mean what it says and mean what it was understood when it was ratified by our Founders, those appointments are wonderful appointments that move us down the line. This Constitution will protect life; it will protect marriage. But we must have a Supreme Court that protects the Constitution, that does not amend it with their liberalism and their activism. Mr. Speaker, the next two appointments to the Supreme Court will be more important than the last two. The next two appointments to the Supreme Court will determine whether we preserve and protect life and whether we preserve and protect marriage. Those two are transformational issues before this Congress. We must stand up for life. We said goodbye to the elegant statesman and the great lion for life, Henry Hyde, Chairman Henry Hyde. Many of us count him as a friend. I counted him as one of the honors of my life to be able to call him as a friend and someone whom I admired. The words on the program at Henry Hyde's funeral were a quote from him that say this: ``When the time comes, as it surely will, when we face that awesome moment, the final judgment, I've often thought, as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it is a terrible moment of loneliness. You have no advocates. You are there alone standing before God, and a terror will rip through your soul like nothing you can imagine. But I really think that those in the pro-life movement will not be alone. I think there will be a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world, and they will plead for everyone who has been in this movement. They will say to God, 'Spare him because he loved us,' and God will look at you and say not 'Did you succeed?' but 'Did you try?''' God bless his life and his effort, and may he save the lives of the unborn.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, the amendment that I offer to this bill that is before us today is an amendment that strikes the requirements for Davis-Bacon wage scale and prohibits any of the funds from going to Davis-Bacon wage scale. And for the information of the body, Davis-Bacon wage scale is a Federal wage scale that was imposed over 75 years ago in this country; and I could go back into the history of it, but the essence of Davis-Bacon wage scale is this: it imposes union scale on all projects and any projects that are $2,000 or more, which essentially are all projects. I am a Member of this Congress that has worked and lived under Davis- Bacon wage scale, and I have done that for well over 30 years. I have done the homework, I have done the paperwork, I have put together the spreadsheets, and I dealt with all the employee dynamics that were involved there. And I make the point, Mr. Chairman, that labor is a commodity like corn or beans or gold or oil or gasoline, and the value of it needs to be determined by the marketplace, not by the government. And for the Federal Government to intervene in a relationship between two people, and a contractual relationship in particular, at the cost of the taxpayer that always favors going to a union scale and is not a prevailing wage but it is in effect a union scale, this authorization as written, if my amendment is not adopted, will cost the taxpayers an additional $26 million. And the inflation to construction projects runs between 8 percent and 35 percent. I use the number 20 percent. It is a low average. But I am pledged here to protect the taxpayers, and I believe we need to protect the relationship between the employer and the employee. And if unions want to negotiate, I am all for their ability to do that, but I don't think it should be imposed by statute, a statute that cannot keep up with a change in the wage scale, a statute that is not effective, and one that, according to a Department of Labor Inspector General study, nearly 100 percent of the data cannot be relied upon. It is time to end this practice. It is archaic, and it is time to strike this provision out of here and eliminate Davis-Bacon wage scale. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire of the amount of time remaining for each party.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, first of all I say to the gentleman from California, that is offensive to me to say that my 28 years of meeting payroll, my 1,400-some consecutive weeks of making payroll, of providing health insurance and retirement benefits and year-around work for employees and a career path for them is, to take his words, poor wages and poor working conditions. My employees didn't think so, and neither did the people that applied for a job that I didn't have room to hire. That is not the way it works out there in the world. And who in this Congress has some experience that can step forward and say otherwise? I lived it. I lived it all of my working life. I know what happens when you pay the excavator operator $28 an hour and the shovel operator $12 an hour. You can't get the guy on the excavator to get down and pick up the shovel to move a clod. You can't get him to pick up a grease gun. It destroys the relationship on the workplace, and it rearranges everybody's assignments. And so the guy running the finish motor grader is rolling clods out there because he doesn't want to get off the machine and pick up the grease gun, and your machines wear out. And the boss has got to come to work at 3 o'clock in the morning to do the maintenance. That's what happens when government gets in the way. And it costs money. The inflation goes up; 8 percent, 35 percent. I pick 20 percent. There is $26.4 million in this bill that is unnecessary. We have a shortage of labor. We are bringing in millions of people to unskilled jobs here in the United States because we say this economy cannot survive without that. And now we can't go without a union scale. That is union scale, Mr. Scott. And you can't show me any statistical evidence otherwise. It is the union operations that file the reports because those that are not union get organized and they get picketed. These people are smart. They are not foolish about this. And this is a Jim Crow law. We went through this before. This was New York City. It was a Federal building back in 1930 or 1931, and a contractor in New York City decided that he wanted to keep out the low bid that came from Alabama. The low bid came from Alabama because the labor could come from Alabama. Those didn't happen to be white people. Those were African Americans that came up and undercut the union wages in New York and that brought about this ``Republican'' bill. So I call it a Jim Crow bill. And I call it a racist bill, and it is one that has been now shoehorned into this economy, into this bill, into this legislation, in order to protect union wage scale. I have pledged to come here to preserve and protect the free enterprise side of this, the competition that is necessary for the efficiency that is here. And I will also protect the right of individuals to organize and negotiate for a good wage and good benefits. That's also a right we should have in this country. But this is not about prevailing wage. This is about union pay scale, and it was a bill that was rooted in Jim Crow laws that has now been transferred into union scale. I urge the adoption of my amendment. Save $26.4 million and protect the relationship between employers and employees and let me provide a 12-month, year-round job with benefits and retirement funds so that people can plan their future, not hire them for 3 hours and let them go for the next rest of the week.

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

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States Congress, as always, and I appreciate this privilege. There are a series of subjects that come to mind that I think it is important for you to consider and for the Members and for those onlookers that are here to consider as well. One of those issues has been front and center in my mind and in my legislative career as we watch these presidential debates that go on on both sides of the aisle, from the Democrat and the Republican side, and as we watch the caucus and primary season flow across the country, and as America waits with bated breath to see how this emerges, as far as who will be the nominees on either side for the Democrats and the Republicans. A series of issues that come to mind that stand out to me that I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, to consider as you and as others take a look at where they might come down on their particular choice of nominees and the things that are important here in the United States of America, and I would submit this approach, and that is that there are a whole series of issues that are important to us and we talk about them and we debate them constantly. But we often overlook the necessity to prioritize those issues. I will say there are roughly about 10 big issues out there that get discussed on the parts of Republicans and Democrats as we turn the focus of America towards who will be the next leader of the free world, the next commander-in-chief of the strongest nation in the world, the unchallenged superpower in the world. Those issues include items such as Social Security reform and health care reform and tax reform, fiscal responsibility. The social programs, education for example, would be another one. How strong should our military be? How do we fight our enemies globally. How to do we get to the point where we can declare one day in this global war on terror against Islamic jihadists? And how do we secure our borders and how do we reestablish the, I will call it the sanctity of this Nation, the sovereignty of America? How do we reestablish that? How do we reestablish the rule of law in this country when we have watched the rule of law and the enforcement of our laws decline over the last 20 years, a little bit more than 20 years, I will say since the 1986 amnesty bill that Ronald Reagan signed and defined as amnesty? What about the appointments that will be made to the Supreme Court but by the next president of the United States? As most of the pundits have analyzed, it looks like it will be perhaps two appointments to the Supreme Court that will come up in the next term. Those two appointments that are anticipated will change the balance in the court and perhaps have more impact on the destiny of America, and I will say will be the legacy of the next President. There will be big questions such as will Rowe versus Wade be overturned? Will the States be then in a position where they can determine their policy on protecting innocent, unborn human life? The issue of marriage is coming forward here in this Nation. It is under assault across this country. It happens to be a bellwether issue within the State of Iowa. Judge Robert Hansen overturned Iowa's Defense of Marriage Act. In that decision, he just unilaterally erased the will of the Iowa people and replaced it with his own. That case is going before the Supreme Court. That will be determined. If the decision of Judge Hansen is upheld, Iowa then becomes the Mecca for same-sex marriage, because there is not a residency requirement, which means then that weekend packages from Las Vegas or San Francisco traveling to Iowa for same sex couples to get married, and then they will go back to their home States to file suit. These are big issues, Mr. Speaker, the issue of innocent human life, the issue of marriage, the institution, which goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden, and it is transcended and that sacrament of marriage has been preserved since before original sin and it survived the great flood, but it is under assault now from judicial activists. Those, life and marriage, will likely be determined by the next two appointments to the Supreme Court. And will we have a President that understands that the Constitution means what it says and it means what it was understood to mean, the text of the Constitution means what it was understood to mean when it was ratified by our forebearers, and that each amendment means what it was understood to mean when it was ratified? It is not a living, breathing document, not a changing document, but a document that is a guarantee to the people here in the United States. The next President will make those decisions. Of all the issues that I have laid out here, including our border security and our national security, which many times are wrapped up into one, and the refurbishment of the rule of law, which I believe is the central pillar of American exceptionalism, all of that is up for grabs in the presidential race that is being played out across America State By State. The world watches. The world watches because it affects them, because we will be electing the next leader in the free world. Of all of these issues that I have laid out, Mr. Speaker, I would ask you to put those issues down into two different columns. I would label those two columns. On the one side I would label it the column called quality of life issues. The quality of life issues are those issues that probably don't turn the destiny of America. They will change our quality of life and raise our standard of living perhaps and give us a little better security, but if we get them wrong, we can go back and try them again. One of those issues that I would put in the quality of life side of thing would be the health care issue. That is about all they talk about over on the other side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, except for change, change, change, change, and that may be what is in your pocket, Mr. Speaker. But when you don't say what you would change to, you are just going to change from what we are to something else under the presumption that doing something different, even if it is wrong, is better than what we are doing now, isn't good enough for the American people. The American people are going to want to know what you would change from and what you would change to, what you would make different and why and what is the rationale. That will be a requirement moving into the general election. It may not be a requirement in the primary election, that change. But the issues in the two categories, the one category which is quality of life issues, and I put health care in there. We can do some things with health care, and I think we should. And if we get some of those wrong, we can back up and we can try again and try to get it right. In fact, we have been doing that for some time, and I expect we will do that for some time. Health care belongs in the quality of life side, not in the destiny side, because it probably doesn't change the destiny of America, but it something that has to do with our quality of life. It is important. It is important like Social Security reform is also important, Mr. Speaker. And we are here now with a bankrupt Social Security program. It has been a couple of years since I have checked the numbers, but the Social Security trust fund, the last time I checked it was $1.74 trillion. That is how much money this Congress owes the trust fund. The trust fund is in little bonds in Parkersburg, West Virginia, in filing cabinets. I have a copy of one. It says $3.54 billion on this little piece of paper. It is an IOU from the government written to the government. But we haven't prepared to pay the Social Security liability that accrues starting as we go into the red, the deficit spending in 2016 or 2017, and then by 2042, all of the surplus is spent and now we are digging ourselves an even deeper hole. But it happens to us in 2016 and 2017, because already the Social Security trust fund couldn't be trusted. That money has all been spent, and we have simply written ourselves an IOU and we have decided to take the paper out of this pocket, write ourselves an IOU of $1.74 trillion and take it and put it over in this pocket, because there is nothing in this trust fund. It is important that we address the reform of Social Security, but if we don't do it this year or next year or 4 years from now, it gets harder and harder, but it probably doesn't change the destiny of America. So I put that over also in the quality of life side along with health care. Then we come to tax reform. I am listening as my colleagues debate this around in committee and on the floor, Mr. Speaker, about what we will do about this impending recession. Well, the first question is, are we in a recession? And I can't quite hear somebody say yes, we are. Most of the time we don't know we are in one until we look back and realize that we were, Mr. Speaker. So I am not going to submit that we are in a recession today. I would submit though that we are constantly on our way into one. We are either on our way to a boom or on our way to a bust or some minimized version of either. So, yes, we are likely, since we have had this long, long period of unprecedented growth here in America, chances are we are going to have to make some corrections. And this economy is not an economy, and no free market economy has ever been, the kind where you just simply said we are going to grow this economy out, let's just say 3.5 percent a year, and we will lay the ruler on the graph, lift it up to a 3.5 percent growth and strike ourselves a line out there and say we are going to be on target every single day. It doesn't work that way, Mr. Speaker. The way it works is that you have little periods of growth and little periods of decline, and as the graph ratchets its way up, if you look at it in more of an illuminated perspective, it looks more like a sawtooth, where it goes up and down and up and down. But all the while while that is happening, our gross domestic product is increasing, people are earning more money, our capital base is growing, and this economy that now sits here, as it has in the past year, the dollar went out past historical limits a whole series of numbers of times, it has grown exponentially from where it was 20 years ago. We have that much more assets to work with, an economy that is growing. But if this category of our economic growth and our tax reform, if we get it wrong, we can back up and try again. We have been backing up and trying it again for over 200 years here in America. So I will submit that tax reform also belongs over here in the category of quality of life issues, issues that are important to us, issues that have to do with whether we will be in a boom or whether we will be in a decline, and how much prosperity might be there and how we provide a tax program that takes the burden off of sectors of the economy so that they can earn, save and invest and expect a return off their investment. But I don't think the tax reform issue is a destiny issue. I think it is a quality of life issue. While I am on that subject, Mr. Speaker, I want to address this issue that is before this Congress about whether there is going to be some kind of a check, a payout to everybody to stimulate the economy. Will we send somebody a rebate on their taxes and give everybody $200 of walking around money so they can go out in the streets and buy some Gucci bags and go to the massage parlor, like what happened with some checks that went to the southern part of the United States not that long ago? Is that a way to get us out of that economy? When I think about that, I back up to 1992, Mr. Speaker, when Bill Clinton was elected President. He came into this city, was inaugurated in January of 1993, and immediately he said to this Congress, I need a $30 billion economic incentive plan, because the recession that had been kind of illustrated and probably was part of the imagination of the political campaign, I will argue it didn't really exist, but in order to get rid of it, he had to have this creation of this recession, President Clinton needed an economic incentive plan. So he asked this Congress to appropriate $30 billion to go into make- work projects, make-work projects that we might see today as AmeriCorps. In fact, I think it actually came out of that inspiration. But the idea was to borrow $30 billion and put it into the hands of Americans and have that money be spent out into the streets of America, and then now this recession that he thought we were in would be solved because money would be spent into the economy and stimulate the economy. Well, the $30 billion economic incentive package that was requested by President Clinton in the first month of his first term in office in 1993, was debated in this Congress from $30 billion down to $17 billion, and finally they concluded that $17 billion wasn't enough to make any kind of a difference and they just kind of dropped it. Well, now we are up to about, one request I have heard was $300 billion to put into the hands of people, borrowed money so it could be spent to stimulate the economy. Other arguments are that we should cut corporate income tax and capital gains and a few other things, and I do support those changes. But what needs to happen, Mr. Speaker, is the Bush tax cuts need it to be made permanent. The two tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 saved us from I believe a severe recession and perhaps a depression because there was enough vision in the eyes and in the mind of President Bush that we were under assault from a lot of ways. One was al Qaeda. The financial center had been attacked, and the things that had been designed to drive us down needed to be stimulated back the other way. So we did those tax cuts in 2001. We did them in 2003. And this economy has boomed. Sometime last April, this government collected more money in a single day than had ever been collected before, stimulated by tax cuts. And today we are hanging in the balance. The whole series of tax cuts winds down in 2010 and disappear and expire because they were set up to sunset, and politically that was the way that they were sold. And, of course, if those tax cuts sunset, they become tax increases; and those tax increases will be tax increases on capital gains, there will be a personal and corporate income tax. There will be tax increases on the estate tax, the death tax. And all of those things are in the way they prevent people from planning, they take away their confidence in this economy. And when you take away confidence in an economy, the result is people don't invest, they don't expand, they don't create jobs. And if you are not creating jobs and if you are not able to increase wages and benefits, then the money that is in people's pockets diminishes and they spend less money and this economy collapses eventually. Extending the Bush tax cuts and making them permanent would be the single most effective thing we could do to cause this economy to turn around the other way and head back up again for another long period of economic growth. The single most important thing this Congress has a chance to do, and I believe that as history looks back on this time they will say, you had your chance, this was it. And I submit, Mr. Speaker, we should take that chance. But back to this subject at hand of these quality of life issues. Tax reform is quality of life, because the dynamics in the economy are tied to it. Health care is quality of life, because the very care that we get that gives us this robust health that we have enjoyed comes from the policies we put in place there and the incentives we put in place, and a lot of it is getting the regulations out of the way. And reforming Social Security is another quality of life issue. Those issues over on that side, quality of life, let's weigh them for the importance that they are. But the decision that we are making in this Presidential race isn't a decision necessarily about what the quality of life will be for the Americans that live in the next 4 years, the first 4 years of the next term, or the next 8 years for that matter. This decision is far more important than our quality of life that will take place between 2009 and perhaps as late as 2017. No, Mr. Speaker, the decision the American people need to make is a destiny decision. We need to be making a decision in this country about who will be the best leader in the free world that moves us forward, that lays the foundation down on the tracks so that the next generations will have that foundation to build on so that they can achieve the American Dream and they can aspire to leaving the world a better place than it was when they came, as we have had that responsibility handed to us from our fathers and our forefathers. But I want to make an argument here, Mr. Speaker, about how important this is, in a sense of this country that we are that is America. First of all, the Founders came here to the United States of America and they had a vision. That vision first was that our rights come from God. They don't come from humanity. They are not endowed upon us by a king or a foreign prince and potentate. They are not endowed upon us by a dictator. Our rights come directly from God. And they come directly to the people. And then the people hand that responsibility over to government to govern them, but always under the will of the people and always with the rights that are guaranteed to the people. And if this foundation of this great Nation, those values that we hold dear are diminished, if they are eroded, if we don't build upon that foundation, the next generation doesn't have a good foundation to build upon. The culture that is created from the Constitution and from our religious values and our values of family and faith and freedom and free market economy and property rights, if this culture that is the culture of the United States of America that has within it the vitality of millions of immigrants that came here legally, that have injected their vitality into this overall American culture with an appreciation for the host country that is here and an obligation that they happily provide, which is to give back to this country, the country that so gladly welcomed them. This vitality that is this Nation, this vitality of this culture is what raises up the leaders of today. And the culture of a generation ago was the culture that raised up the leaders of a generation ago, and so on, and so it goes as you look back through the history of America all the way back to before the Revolutionary War. So each generation is built upon the previous generation, and the leaders of each generation are produced and raised up by the culture, by the values of the current time. And today, the values of the United States of America in their aggregate raise up the leaders that come in here to serve in this United States Congress. The culture of every 435 districts produces the leader that represents each of the 435 districts; and the cultures in the States produces the Senators, two for each of the 50 States that go to serve in the United States Senate. And the values of the congressional districts and the values of the States are the values that, at least presumably, are embodied within the people who are elected to come and serve in this United States Congress, Mr. Speaker. The culture raises up the leaders, and the leaders reflect the values of their time and their place. And then the decisions that are made by the leaders, and I will take this to the decisions made by the President of the United States, lay the foundation and alter the culture and shift the values and set the principles that shift the culture for the next generation. And if we shift this culture now, the next generation will react to it, will reflect the new values of the new culture that has been changed by the decisions made by the leaders today. That is why it is so important that we turn our focus to the destiny issues and begin to ask the question, who will best lead this country? Who will best lay the foundation for the decisions that will be made that will affect the formation and the shaping of the values of America which are our culture? Who will make those decisions? And as I look forward into this, I will argue that those are the destiny decisions, Mr. Speaker, those issues that change the destiny of America. And when the destiny of America is changed, it shifts the culture, and the foundation of the culture will be the foundation that our entire culture grows from, that young people learn about. Now, this menu of life that I had when I was a young boy in the early 1950s in Iowa, Mr. Speaker, was not quite such a varied menu of life as our young people growing up in America have today. I had a very, very bright black and white list on what was right and what was wrong, and what I could do and what I couldn't do. And it covered a whole gamut of things between telling the truth and working industriously and helping my fellow man and having a strong, faithful Christian background, and having a duty to my father and my mother and later on my wife and my children, and knowing that I needed to teach them in these same values so that they would go out and go to work every day and they would carry the values of our faith and our family and our freedom. A lot more freedom has been injected into this society, a lot of it through the 1960s, and not just sexual freedom but freedom that has to do with illegal drugs and freedom for a lifestyle that is far more permissive than the lifestyle that was permitted in the environment that I grew up in, Mr. Speaker. Those are cultural changes. Our music reflects it, our literature reflects it, our movies reflect it, and our television reflect the shifts and the differences in our culture, and they reflect the differences in our values. For example, could one imagine that there would be sitcoms and serial programs on TV that have to do with same-sex marriage or same-sex relationships even 10 years ago, let alone 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. And I would say maybe 10 years ago, not much earlier than that could one have conceived of such a thing. That is how far this society has been moved quickly, much of it by the courts, much of it by the liberal media in the movie industry and the television entertainment industry. But the permissiveness is different than the society that I grew up in, and our values have changed. Now, I am not one of the people who sits over on that side of the aisle and believe that change itself is a goal. I am one who thinks that we should be rooted in our values; we should identify the central pillar and all of the other pieces of the foundation of American exceptionalism, and we should refurbish those pillars of American exceptionalism and we should diminish those things that undermine those pillars of exceptionalism. But the permissiveness that has grown has changed our culture. And because of that, it is reflected here on the floor of Congress, and in such a way that I can go to St. Peter's Square and go to communion with more than one Member of Congress, and then next week come back here and on the floor hear one of those Members of Congress who walked to communion with the new Pope Benedict XVI, a very pro-life faith that we have, and have that Member that went to communion come to the floor and argue that there should be a constitutional right to partial-birth abortion. What a twist and a shape in our civilization and our society. What that says about the foundation of our culture, that is something that has got to be shifted back, Mr. Speaker. It has got to be shifted back, and it needs to be changed at the Supreme Court level and all the Federal courts all the way down. When we have law schools in America that teach the Constitution from case law and not from the text of the Constitution; if they presume that the students that come there read the Constitution and understand it, I don't know where they think they got the education. But when they teach that the case law controls and the text of the Constitution does not control, that is something that has got to have a dramatic shift if we are to have any guarantee. And when I realized that, and I know that we have three or four members, maybe even more, of the Supreme Court that think that the Constitution is this living, breathing document that is there for them to manipulate at their will, and when I think of the prospect of one or two or more justices in the Supreme Court potentially being nominated by a liberal President and confirmed by a United States Senate that believe that the Constitution can mean what a judge wants it to mean, especially if it is an activist decision because of a judge that might conclude a result rather than the text, I think that is wrong, Mr. Speaker, and I think it puts our constitutional guarantees at risk. We have an issue before the Supreme Court that was just heard the other day on the second amendment, and there was an amicus brief that was offered apparently before the Court and by the White House that the second amendment is an individual constitutional right, but it could be regulated by political subdivisions, by cities or counties or States. And I could argue that if you are going to guarantee my second amendment rights but tell political subdivisions that they don't have to respect that constitutional right, that it is no right at all. And we need judges that understand that. We need appointments to the Supreme Court that understand that this Constitution means what it says, and we need Federal judges appointed all the way down the line with that philosophy. I dream of the day that, for example, when Justice Roberts went before the United States Senate and he spoke about his beliefs in the Constitution and his understanding of case law, he went through that confirmation. And when he handled that in an exceptional fashion, it was extraordinarily impressive and absolutely worthy of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. I thought I detected a tone that was more constitutional in Justice Alito's confirmation hearings, when I recall him speaking more openly about the Constitution meaning what it says, and having less deference to case law and more deference to the text of this Constitution. And I dream of the day that, in order to get confirmed to the Supreme Court or perhaps confirmed at any Federal court level, Mr. Speaker, that an appointee would have to profess belief and conviction in the text of the Constitution rather than the deference to case law that may have been manipulated by liberal judges that have come before them. Those appointments to the Supreme Court, if we are successful in confirming those judges that believe the Constitution means what it says and that it is not a living, breathing document, if we get appointments and confirmation of those kind of judges, at some point the law schools will have to start teaching the Constitution for what it says, not for what some piece of case law might say about that Constitution. And I think we should be able to drill back to the Constitution and always anchor it in the text of the Constitution. If we get appointments to the Supreme Court that do so, we can transform the guarantees that we have, and we can change the dynamics within all the law schools in America, and we can change the understanding here in the House of Representatives, and we can change the understanding of the Constitution in the United States Senate, and we can go back to those fundamental guarantees. Because after all, Mr. Speaker, if the Constitution doesn't mean what it says it means, if it is there, something that only a judge can determine is in the emanations and the penumbras of the Constitution itself, if that is all it is, then what guarantees do we have at all? Is the Constitution then some archaic document? Or is it a tool to be deployed by activist judges only for them to decide when they will amend the Constitution? Or is it a guarantee to the people of the United States as it was designed to be? I would submit that if the Constitution were offered to the American people to be ratified with a little caveat there that, well, the judges will be able to rewrite or define it whenever they see fit, it would have never been ratified by the several States and would not be the document that has held together this free country that we are. Destiny issues, Mr. Speaker. The appointments to the Supreme Court, the next one or two or perhaps more appointments to the Supreme Court, will redirect the destiny of America. We either go into the abyss of judicial activism, the judicial activism that found a right to privacy that didn't exist, a right to abortion that didn't exist, and a Roe v. Wade decision that was poorly reasoned and an unjust mandate on the American people that has taken us down this path where next week will mark the 35th year of Roe v. Wade. We have already marked the 50 millionth innocent little unborn baby that has been aborted and not given a chance at life. The solutions to our problems are in the generations that will come after us, and 50 million have been denied this opportunity to breathe this free air in America, creating a sin against this Nation and a hole in our heart and a vacuum that is filled by tens of millions of illegal immigrants that have come across our border. And we can't talk about that openly, Mr. Speaker, because it becomes a reactionary thing. But we should put the whole formula together. The quality of life issues pale in comparison to the destiny issues, and the destiny of America is wrapped up in Roe v. Wade. Next week when we mark that 35th year, 50 million babies aborted before they had an opportunity to breathe free air and contribute to this society and have been denied the right to life. Marriage is being attacked from all sides, mostly within the courts because they understand that they cannot win these cases to the legislatures across America, and they can't take their case to the United States Congress. But it changes the destiny of a country if you destroy marriage. Some will say why am I worried about two people of the same sex getting married and moving next door to me; it doesn't affect my life. It may not affect my life if that were my neighborhood either. And I don't know that I would take a personal objection to that. But I would ask, Mr. Speaker, that people step back and take a broader look and think about how the culture gets shifted and changed, and think about the menu of life that little kids would have in a society where we would see a court impose same-sex marriage on America. If you can make the argument in court that two men ought to be able to get married and access all the benefits that are saved right now, preserved, protected and promoted for a man and woman joined together in holy matrimony because the State has an interest in promoting marriage because that is a crucible through which we pour all of our values. But if we open that up to a man and a man or a woman and a woman, what standard do we draw the line upon next? What standard do we say it can't be two men and a woman or two women and a man, or three women, or a brother and a sister and a mother? Where do we draw the line? I recall some testimony before a hearing in the Judiciary Committee a couple of years ago, the now chairman of the Finance Committee said, Well, it would be two consenting adults. Two consenting adults doesn't satisfy a standard here in America. Two consenting adults could be twin brothers, a brother and a sister, a mother and a daughter, a mother and a son, a father and a daughter. Those things would all be rejected and objected to by society's norms today. But is this about breaking down society's norms? Is it about breaking down our values? Is that really the agenda over here on this side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker? I will submit it is. The agenda is change, change, change. Change sells at every one of those Presidential rallies across the country because that is the mission of that side of the aisle. Change for what purpose? I will submit that if I had a magic wand and an infinitely long list, and I could say that Speaker Pelosi and the people whom she works with and those philosophically aligned with her, you can make me a list of all the things on your wish list, and I will assume here in fantasy land that I have a magic wand and I can grant every wish. So here we are in the middle of January, and you can spend all year long putting that wish list together, Madam Speaker. When it comes midnight, all of the things that you want to change, the full breadth of the imagination of your wish list and all of your ideological colleagues, put that list together and submit the list, and when the ball drops in Times Square to turn us into the new year 2009, at the stroke of midnight, with the help of the magic wand, could grant every wish on the wish list, I would argue that should that happen, and the deal would need to be you get your wish, but now you have to be quiet for the rest of your life. You fill out your wish list, and now you are going to have to be satisfied and live with the results of your request, and maybe even the consequences of your request, but just the results. If that happened and the wish list were achieved at midnight, December 31, 2008, at the stroke of midnight on the new year of 2009, and the deal was no more complaints, you have to be happy you have finally gotten everything you wanted, now and forever, or even for a decade or a generation, that team that put the list together would stay up the rest of the night not celebrating but looking to see what it was that they forgot to change. What they wanted to tear down of society's values today or what they forgot to change for tomorrow. There is no anchor. There is no philosophical anchor. There is no philosophical core because the core changes. For me and for my colleagues, we have a philosophical core, Mr. Speaker. This core is rooted in our constitutional values and the values that are laid out by our Founding Fathers and the rights that come from God and the values that are taught through the family that is joined together in holy matrimony. And the ethics of faith and worship and freedom and hard work and the obligation to leave this world a better place than it was when we came, that achievement of the American Dream, that laying out a culture that raises up the leaders for the next generation that will lay a new foundation on top of the old one so that the next generation can build on that and achieve the American Dream, all of that is wrapped up in the value system of the people that I go to conference with, the constituents that come out day after day after day to talk to me, to talk to nearly a multitude of Presidential candidates that went across Iowa for the past year or more. These values matter. These destiny issues matter. The next two appointments to the Supreme Court matter, and those will be the appointments that will uphold all of our constitutional rights. They will uphold our second amendment rights, for example. And our rights to freedom of speech and religion and assembly. And they will understand the 10th amendment; the responsibility that the power is not designated for the Federal Government, are reserved for the States and the people, respectively. That devolution of power down to the States, that idea called federalism, the States' rights idea need to be preserved and promoted by the next President of the United States. We need to understand basic fundamental principles. But the destiny of America is going to be tied to our ability to be able to produce leaders that make decisions today that lay the foundation, that shapes the culture that tomorrow raises up tomorrow's leaders who will then lay the next layer on top of that foundation. And if we get it wrong, if we get a flaw, if we get a rotten piece in the foundation and we have to build upon that, we can't go back and take that section back and reform and reshape and repour it. The destiny issues we are stuck with. They are our decisions and we have to live with them, and that's why it is important. So as I have spoken about Roe v. Wade and life and marriage and appointments to the Supreme Court and emphasize how important that is and how essential that we have a President who makes those appointments, and when he closes the door of the Oval Office after all of the lobbyists have come and gone and after all of the political supporters and advisor and the chief of staff and all of the people that advise the President, when they are all done weighing in and the door closes on the Oval Office, I want a leader in that office that I know shares my core values, Mr. Speaker. I want a leader in that office that I don't have to wonder about whether he is swayed by someone's special interest or whether he is swayed by some temporary benefit or some trade or some deal or some bargain or something other than the best interests in the long-term good for the United States of America as grounded in our core values and understanding the very principles that this Nation was founded upon and the necessity to adhere to those core principles and move forward and build another layer of a sound foundation. That's what I want in a leader, Mr. Speaker. And those will be appointments to the Supreme Court that will shape the foundation of our culture and our destiny. But another component of this, an essential core component of this, as I mentioned earlier, of all of the pillars of American exceptionalism, the pillars of faith and family and freedom and the Declaration and the Constitution and the free-market economy and property rights and the devolution of power from the Federal Government down to the States and the States' rights as separated within the 10th amendment, all of those issues are pillars of American exceptionalism. And another pillar would be the vitality that comes with legal immigration. We have had the privilege in this country of having, for the most part of our history, a smart immigration policy that attracted people to come into the United States that had a dream. And many of them sold themselves into indentured servitude for perhaps 7 years just to get a boat ride from London to Baltimore, for example, and went to work and worked off their passage because they knew that they could become free and they could then go to work here and build a dream and raise a family. I look back at my ancestors and what they have done, and most, if not all of them, have participated in that dream. But from every donor culture in civilization, we got the vitality of that culture and civilization. The people who didn't have a dream, didn't find a way to get on a boat and come to the United States, they sat back where they were. They were content to live within that society and environment that didn't provide the opportunities that were here because they didn't want to take the risk or they didn't have the energy or just didn't share the dream. And I don't say that, Mr. Speaker, to diminish anyone who didn't come to the United States. I say that to identify that we skimmed the vitality off the top of every donor civilization that sent people here across the world. And they came here with an extra vigor and energy and dream, and we found a way to bring them together and assimilate them into a common culture, this greater overall American culture. And when they got tied together, they latched onto that opportunity and got in the harness and went to work. We found a vitality here that had never been created in any society or civilization anywhere in the world. That is often a missed component of American exceptionalism is the vitality that comes from the donor civilizations that sent legal immigrants here to the United States. That is a vitality that I want to preserve and promote and protect. Another one of the reasons that we have been able to be a successful Nation, because we are a Nation not of men but a Nation of laws, of all of the pillars of American exceptionalism that I have mentioned, the central pillar of American exceptionalism, Mr. Speaker, is the rule of law. If we do not protect and preserve the rule of law, you can only then go back to what kind of political influence you have: who do you have favor with, who can you get to do you a favor, who can you get to set aside a law, and who will be immune to the law. In this country, justice has always been equal for everyone regardless of their economic or their social status or their ethnicity or their national origin. If you are a member of the human race, you get the same version of justice in America and the same opportunity in America as anybody else. And it has not been about equality of results; it has been about equality of opportunity. Those protected civil rights that are identified in title VII of the Civil Rights Act are there, and they need to be protected so everyone has an equal opportunity. And the rule of law gives us that guarantee that we can work within that environment and that rule of law will protect our property rights and let us build, earn, saving and invest. But if we become a society and a civilization that has disregarded the rule of law and perhaps created contempt for the rule of law, I believe that central pillar of American exceptionalism would have been removed from our society or diminished or eroded to the point that it no longer has the credibility that it has, let me say that it had, 20 years ago. I believe that pillar called the rule of law needs to be refurbished and restrengthened because it is essential for America to continue to be an exceptional Nation. For us to continue to be a leader in the free world, the leader in the free world, we simply must preserve and protect and refurbish the rule of law. So as I look to the 1986 amnesty bill that was signed by Ronald Reagan, defined as amnesty, and if you lay the components of that bill down alongside the components of either one of the two Senate versions of the comprehensive immigration reform bill, the McCain-Kennedy bill, that's probably the one that most often defines it, the components of those bills, when you do a side-by-side comparison match up almost identically. The 1986 amnesty bill, the McCain-Kennedy comprehensive immigration reform bill match up side by side, piece by piece almost all the way down. President Reagan called it amnesty. I remember the debate in New Hampshire the other night where it was alleged that anybody that says that anyone who supports comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate, or that anyone who calls comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate amnesty is a liar. That came out in the debate. Mr. Speaker, that offends me, because I know what amnesty is and the American people know what amnesty is. And either of the two versions that were presented in the United States Senate last year was amnesty. And I don't know how anyone can argue otherwise, except to go back to the President's speech in about January 6 of 2004; that was the first aggressive effort to roll out comprehensive immigration reform. That speech attempted to redefine amnesty, and there's been an attempt on the part of the administration and the open borders crowd to redefine amnesty for the last 4 years. You just can't trump Noah Webster, Mr. Speaker. People in America know what amnesty is. And if you wanted comprehensive immigration reform, which I'll call comprehensive amnesty, then you should have just stepped up to it and said, yes, we're for amnesty, and we're going to define for you what amnesty is, too, and we're going to also argue that we have to grant amnesty, or otherwise we can't accomplish the goals that we'd like to see with immigration reform. If they would have made that argument, Mr. Speaker, and I don't make that argument, but if they had, their argument would have had a lot more credibility. But instead, the proponents of comprehensive immigration reform sought to redefine the term amnesty, and they got bogged down in trying to tell the American people that the word we understood to mean amnesty meant something different. They argued that, well, it's not amnesty if somebody has to pay a fine. It's not amnesty if you make people learn English. It's not amnesty if you require them to pay their back taxes or pay their bills or be an honest citizen and not get locked up and be convicted of a felony. Mr. Speaker, they argue that if you required all of those things, it wasn't amnesty. And so of all of those things that I've mentioned, those are required of people that would come here legally to become an American citizen, including pay the fee in order to be naturalized. By the time you add up the dollars that are required to come into the United States legally and achieve a lawful permanent resident status and the fees for a green card, and the fees to be naturalized as a citizen, you're pretty close to the dollar figure that they first proposed would be necessary in order, if you're here illegally, to buy your way into legality. It's lawful permanent residence, a green card, naturalization, citizenship of the United States for sale for paying a fee that they called a fine that they said that they are going to absolve the issue of amnesty. Now, the American people understand this, that when you commit a crime in America, there's a penalty for that that's listed in the penal code, whether it's a Federal law or whether it's a State law. And the penalty that's listed needs to be the one that's applied to the perpetrator upon conviction. You can't go rob a bank and be looking at life in prison for robbing a bank, and after you rob the bank, they come along and change the law and say, well, now the penalty is only going to be a year in prison rather than life in prison. If you did that for a whole class of people, that would be amnesty. If you said to the bank robbers, you're going to have to pay a fine now instead of being locked up in prison for 10 or 20 years or life, and you did that to a whole class of people, that's amnesty. The distinction for amnesty generally comes into, are you going to waive the penalty or reduce the penalty for a class of people for a crime they've already committed under a different penalty clause, a different penalty phase? If you do that, you're granting amnesty, Mr. Speaker. And what is amnesty? I've defined this many times. It's many times in the Congressional Record. It's gone through the House Judiciary Committee. To grant amnesty is to pardon immigration lawbreakers and reward them with the objective of their crime. Pardon and reward. Pretty simple concept. If people are here in the United States illegally, and the Senate gets their way, well, they actually voted it down over there, so some in the Senate who at least were aggressive enough to advance this got their way, then they would have pardoned the immigration lawbreakers en masse, by the tens of millions. While I'm on that subject, you know, we've been saying here in this Congress for at least 5 years, there are 12 million illegals in America. Twelve million. It's interesting to me that last year we stopped 1,188,000 illegal border crossers on the southern border; that's the Border Patrol doing their job. And most of them self- deported, volunteered to go back to their home country. Most of them went across the line to the south to their home country; about two- thirds of them did. So we've stopped 1,188,000. And according to testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, the Border Patrol says they stop a fourth to a third of those who try. So that means, and you do the math, about 4 million tried to go across the southern border. Most of them made it. Two out of every three, or three out of every four made it. You kind of do the math on that, 4 million border crossing attempts, and that works out to be about 11,000 a night trying to get across our southern border, most of them making it, the significant majority of them making it across the border, 11,000. Now, what does that mean? Four million in a year. 11,000 a night, Mr. Speaker. To put that in context, I just ask the question, how large was Santa Ana's army? And go back and read the historical reports. Most of them will fall between five and 6,000 was the size of Santa Ana's army. So every single night, coming across our southern border, on average, and I say night, not day, because most happens at night, the equivalent of twice the size of Santa Ana's army, 11,000 come pouring into the United States illegally, accumulating at a rate a lot faster than not just 12 million 5 years ago, but a number that I believe today significantly exceeds 20 million illegals in the United States of America, putting pressure on our social services, putting pressure on our health care, putting pressure on our schools, putting pressure on our infrastructure, our utilities, our roads, our streets, our sewers, our lights. We're building infrastructure to accommodate for people that if ICE got there first wouldn't be there to put pressure on our infrastructure. And under the guise of what? The idea that the argument made by the open borders crowd, by the comprehensive amnesty people, and that would include everybody on the Democrat ticket and some of the folks on the Republican ticket for President, Mr. Speaker, advocating that we need to legalize tens of millions of people here. And I guess you can eliminate law breaking if you just eliminate the laws. They argue that this economy can't prosper if we don't have massive amounts of cheap labor, and that if they all went home tomorrow this economy would collapse. Mr. Speaker, I'm here to put this into perspective for the American people. You have to think of this United States of America as one big company. 300 million people here. And of those 300 million people, we have a work force of about 142 million. And out of that work force, about 6.9 million of them are illegals working in our economy, 6.9 million of the 142 million. If you do the math, you're going to come down to around 4.7 percent of the work force is illegal. And of that 4.7 percent, since they're lower skilled people, on average, they're doing only 2.2 percent of the work. So, if you're managing a factory and say you're a good manager and you show up at 7:30 in the morning and your employees clock in at 8 o'clock and the production lines have to start and you run from 8 till 5 and you work 8 hours and you kick product out the door and you load it on trucks and it has to go every day in an 8-hour shift, you have to produce the gross domestic product of that company. Well, this Nation has to do the same thing equivalently. So, at 7:30 in the morning, if you, as a manager of a company, discovered that 2.2 percent of your work force, remember, that's the percentage of the work that's being done, not the percentage of the work force; but if 2.2 percent of your work force wasn't going to show up, it would take about 5 minutes to type out a memo that would go to all the departments in your company that would say, we're going to have to make up for a loss of 2.2 percent of our production today and every day until we can hire enough people to replace those 2.2 percent that didn't show up. And my memo would say this. Your coffee break in the morning isn't going to be 15 minutes today; it's going to be 9\1/2\ minutes. And your coffee break this afternoon isn't going to be 15 minutes, it's going to be 9\1/2\ minutes because we have to pick up 2.2 percent of the production if you're going to go home at 5 o'clock. Now, I made that management decision today because you might have plans, but we can decide to work till 11 minutes after 5 every day and you can get your full coffee break morning and afternoon. But 2.2 percent of the work, if all the work in America was done in an 8-hour day, amounts to 11 minutes out of an 8-hour day. That's the impact of the illegal labor in our work force here in America. And the rest of it's just distribution, Mr. Speaker. The rest of it's recruitment lines and it's training and it's education and it's letting the market work; letting companies that need labor go out there and do the recruitment, do the training. It's never been easy. And I've been an employer most all of my life. I met payroll for over 28 years, 1,400 some consecutive weeks. And I can remember recruiting in the high schools and around and making sure that I had a good program out there so that we could hire good people. I didn't always make the best decision. But we were able to put together a good, reliable work force because that was part of our operation. Today the argument is, well, no, we don't have people lined up for these jobs, and so, therefore, that proves we need to open the borders some more. Well, of course they're not lined up for the jobs. Of course they aren't; not if you're not going to pay them the wages that it takes so that people can take care of their families and pay their way in this society. Supply and demand. And we're watching the middle class in America collapse because of a flood of cheap labor coming in on the low side of the economic spectrum to provide cheap labor in the factories for the elitists in America who are increasingly moving into gated communities and sending their children to Ivy League schools and believing that their descendants will all be able to live in the upper crust and have cheap labor to take care of their yards and their mansions and the labor in their factories, while the blue collar person in America, the one who, of the 16 or 17 percent of Americans who are high school dropouts, the American citizens that decide that education isn't in their future, but would like to go work in the local factory, punch the time clock and go in there and do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, that dream that was achievable 20 years ago, that dream that would allow them, the blue collar people, lower educated people with a good work ethic to be able to punch the clock and do a day's work for a day's pay and buy a modest house and raise their family and go fishing and go to the ball game and do those things and be part of this society, that dream is almost gone, Mr. Speaker, because those jobs have been flooded and diminished by low skilled labor pouring into America. Labor is a commodity like corn and beans or gold or oil. And the value of it will be determined by supply and demand in the marketplace. And when you flood lower skilled jobs with low skilled people, you're going to see wages go down. They've, in fact, gone down in some of the categories. And unemployment in America has gone up within the categories of the lowest skill. There's direct evidence in this economy that the flood of cheap labor is holding wages down. Twenty years ago, people that worked in the packing plant in my neighborhood were making about the same amount as a teacher. Today, they're making about half as much as a teacher is making, and they can't make it any longer. And so society pays the burden of health insurance and that burden on the schools on our infrastructure, while the companies get a discount on their labor. We need to think this thing through, Mr. Speaker, and we need to hold the Presidential candidates, whether they're Democrats or Republicans accountable. We need to ask them, please define amnesty. Accept my definition; to pardon immigration lawbreakers and reward them with the objective of their crime. Pardon and reward. Accept that definition, take the oath not to promote amnesty, to veto any bill that might come before their desk that is amnesty. Let's have a little tighter labor supply in America. Let's re-establish the sovereignty of the United States of America by building the fence and end birthright citizenship, and apply our laws in the workplace to shut off the jobs magnet. Let's let attrition kick in and let people make a decision to go back to their home country. They got here on their own; they can go home on their own. We have got to build a country for America. We have to have an immigration policy that's designed to enhance the economic, the social and the cultural well-being of this country, and we need to export our values to other countries so they can build on the same dream. If we do that, not only would this Nation be a greater Nation but this planet and the people on it will be better off, and we will have achieved the American dream. We will have not just left this Nation a better place for the people that come behind us; we'll have left this world a better place for the people that come behind us. With that, Mr. Speaker, I thank you for your indulgence.

Mr. KING of Iowa

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

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking the Ranking Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the gentlewoman from Florida, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, for her support and help in getting this important measure to the House floor for a vote. Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to address the House today to discuss the importance and relevance of Christmas, the Christian holiday celebrating the birth of our savior Jesus Christ. As this resolution notes, there are approximately 225 million Christians in the United States, making Christianity the religion of over three-fourths of the American population. Beyond that, there are approximately 2 billion Christians throughout the world, making Christianity the largest religion in the world and the religion of about one-third of the world population. And yet, Mr. Speaker, in recent decades there have been some who have undertaken efforts to diminish the significance of this great religion, and these efforts are no more apparent than during this time of Christmas. It is not hard to look out over this great country of ours and find those who, for one reason or another, have engaged in a highly- politicized and highly-publicized crusade to rid the public square of any reference to the religious underpinnings of the Christmas holiday. These are individuals who have subscribed to a radical interpretation of our Constitution's free exercise and establishment clauses and have sought to impose their secular views and beliefs on the nation as a whole. In many respects, it is this ongoing effort to bring about the secularization of Christmas--and all of our everyday lives for that matter--that motivated me to bring this resolution before the House today. Regardless of how others may define it, Mr. Speaker, Christmas is a religious holiday. It is the day on which Christians--those who identify themselves as believers in the salvation from sin offered to them through the death and resurrection of their savior, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and who, out of gratitude for the gift of salvation, commit themselves to living their lives in accordance with the teachings of the Holy Bible--celebrate the birth of their savior. For Christians, the birth of Jesus is cause for great celebration. As the Son of God, Jesus was sent to earth, by our Heavenly Father, to become a human being, live a sinless life, be crucified on a cross for our sins, and rise from the dead three days later. The purpose of this, as you well know, Mr. Speaker, was to save sinners from eternal death--the price to be paid for their sin. And so, Mr. Speaker, the birth of Christ, as celebrated by Christians on Christmas is a truly important and significant day because it is celebrated as a recognition of God's redemption, mercy and Grace. The importance of Christmas, however, does not end with the tenets of Christianity. Because Christmas is one of the most important holidays on the Christian calendar, I believe that its annual passage should serve as an opportunity for all Americans, Christian or not, religious or not, to recognize the important role played by Christianity in the formation of our nation and in the founding of our civilization. It is no coincidence, Mr. Speaker, that courthouses throughout this country proudly display the Ten Commandments. It is no accident that, in this very chamber, it is the face of Moses, the human author of those divinely dictated commandments, that looks down upon you, keeping close watch on all that transpires in this chamber. Mr. Speaker the framework of our laws and the fabric of our society is heavily dependent upon the maxims of Christianity, and I believe that as we Christians begin our annual celebration of the birth of our savior, the one from whom Christianity derives its name, it is wholly appropriate for us, as a nation and as members of this House, to take the time to acknowledge the contributions that the Christian religion has made to our country and our way of life. Mr. Speaker, I think we all can agree that virtually any American, whether Christian, atheist, agnostic, or otherwise, when confronted with the fact that he has in some way wronged his neighbor, will rightly respond in one universal way--knock on his door, confess to him, repent, and ask for forgiveness. The neighbor would then forgive them as Christ has taught us. True and simple as this may seem, it is important to ask why we as Americans naturally react in such a way. The answer of course is that in this ``conditioned behavior'' we see very clearly the positive effect that Christianity has had on the development of our country and culture. There are few places in the United States--if any--that you can visit where the laws ``do not steal'' and ``do not murder'' do not apply. Likewise, there are few households in this great country in which moral character is developed in young children without the invocation of the ninth and tenth amendments regarding lying and coveting that which belongs to others. Mr. Speaker, we as Americans live in a moral society and in a country that is governed by moral laws. While many of these laws obviously cannot be found in any explicit sense within the pages of the Holy Bible, when we survey the content of that book--the document that outlines how it is the Christians are to live their lives here on earth--we do find much in the way of foundational principles that has come to guide not just the development of our laws, but also the foundation of our nation. It was from the Bible and the example of Jesus that Pilgrims first established government on this continent, from which the Founders outlined the political thought that shaped our nation, and by which Congress first intended to educate our children. Furthermore, as the scholar David Barton and others have tirelessly pointed out, it was from the Bible that early American leaders derived concepts like private ownership, the free-enterprise system, an industrious work ethic, and workfare rather than welfare. As a result, the life and teachings of Jesus Christ have permeated every aspect of life in America. He has shaped our culture and transformed every great leader to rise from our population. As a testament to this, each of our American Presidents has acknowledged God's hand on this Christian nation that is the United States. If there never had been a Jesus Christ, there would never have been an America. In an address to the nation President Truman once said that, ``In love, which is the very essence of the message of the Prince of Peace, the world would find a solution for all its ills. I do not believe there is one problem in this country or in the world today which could not be settled if approached through the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. The poets' dream, the lesson of priest and patriarch and the prophets' vision of a new heaven and a new earth, all are summed up in the message delivered in the Judean hills beside the Sea of Galilee. Would that the world would accept that message in this time of its greatest need!'' He went on to say that, ``This is a solemn hour. In the stillness of the Eve of the Nativity when the hopes of mankind hang on the peace that was offered to the world nineteen centuries ago, it is but natural, while we survey our destiny, that we give thought also to our past--to some of the things which have gone into the making of our Nation.'' In 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said of Christmas, ``it is well for all humanity to remind itself that while this is in its name a Christian celebration, it is participated in reverently and happily by hundreds of millions of people who are members of other religions, or belong actively to no church at all. The reason is not far to seek. It is because the spirit of unselfish service personified by the life and the teachings of Christ makes appeal to the inner conscience and hope of every man and every woman in every part of the earth.'' President Eisenhower called the nation to reflect during his remarks at the lighting of the Nation's Christmas Tree on December, 15th 1967 when he said, ``In a few days we shall all celebrate the birth of His Holiness on earth. We shall recreate in our minds, once more, the ancient coming of that Spirit who remains alive for millions in our time. We shall acknowledge the Kingdom of a Child in a world of men.'' He went on to say, ``That Child--we should remember--grew into manhood Himself, preached and moved men in many walks of life, and died in agony. But His death--so the Christian faith tells us--was not the end. For Him, and for millions of men and women ever since, it marked a time of triumph--when the spirit of life triumphed over death. So--if this Christmas season in a time of war is to have real meaning to us, it must celebrate more than the birth of a Baby.'' During his Radio Address to the Nation on Christmas Eve, 1983 President Reagan pointed out that ``It's been said that all the kings who ever reigned, that all the parliaments that ever sat have not done as much to advance the cause of peace on Earth and good will to men as the man from Galilee, Jesus of Nazareth.'' As the words of these great men--these revered and honored presidents of the United States of America have clearly demonstrated, it is not a stretch to say that the precepts and principles of Jesus have so completely permeated the culture of this nation that even an American atheist would be hard pressed to separate his worldview from the impact of the first Christmas. Though we are not all Christians, Mr. Speaker, we are all Americans. By virtue of that simple fact, I will again reiterate my belief that it is not only appropriate but, more importantly, is necessary during this special time of year to remember not only the birth of Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, but also to recognize the important impact that the Christian faith has had on the foundation and development of our society, our nation, and our civilization.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, initially in the time that you have recognized me for, I would like today to announce to the House that had I been present for the vote on H.R. 6, the energy bill which passed this floor 314-100, I would have voted ``yes'' on that bill. Madam Speaker, today the House passed H.R. 6 by a vote of 314-100. This legislation contained a large increase in the Renewable Fuel Standard that will greatly benefit to the western Iowa ethanol producers that I represent. While previous versions of H.R. 6 also contained an increased RFS, they also contained a large tax increase placed on the backs the oil and gas industry. I opposed the previous versions of H.R. 6 for this reason. I oppose tax increases, and I especially oppose tax increases when they will hurt consumers like the Iowa farmers I represent. Madam Speaker, I am on record as stating that we need more Btu's of energy in America that are produced in America. We need more ethanol, biodiesel, wind, solar, clean coal, oil, gas, nuclear, and geothermal. America has the ability to produce the Btu's, Congress just needs to remove the restraints so that industry can produce these Btu's. We need to allow the American energy industry to expand the size of the energy pie. Every once in a while in each Member's congressional career, there come times when things happen that are beyond our control. At the time the vote occurred, I was detained by a prior engagement. Madam Speaker, I believe in the future of bio-fuels. I think this bill did some good things for them. However, this bill also contained some provisions that I do not agree with. H.R. 6 contained Davis-Bacon provisions. This labor law is the product of Jim Crow laws and needs to be abolished. I may be the only Member of Congress, I know of no others, who has earned Davis-Bacon wages and paid Davis-Bacon wages, and I have lived underneath that for over 30 years, 28 years writing paychecks, over 14 consecutive months meeting payroll. I know what this does. I can tell you the history of it also goes back to an Iowan, an Iowan President, Herbert Hoover. This is the last remaining Jim Crow law on the books that I know of. It was designed to keep blacks out of the construction trade in New York. Davis-Bacon is prevailing wage by definition, union scale in practice. There is no other way to analyze this. Union scale is what gets produced when the Department of Labor produces the proposed prevailing wage. As an earth moving contractor, I know first hand how Davis-Bacon prevented my Small Business from competing in the market place. Small businesses are discouraged from bidding on Davis-Bacon public projects because of the complex and archaic rules. The inflated wage requirements and significant redtape burdens of Davis-Bacon shut small employers out of the Federal construction market. The Davis-Bacon wage mandate also inflates the price tag for public, construction projects--costing you your hard earned taxpayer dollars. There was over a billion dollars invested in renewable energy in my district last year. There will be over a billion dollars invested this year. All this was done without Davis-Bacon. If Congress is going to impose Davis-Bacon wage scales on rail improvement and carbon sequestration it will burn up at least 20 percent of the capital that can be used. Regardless of my feelings about Davis-Bacon, I would have voted ``yes'' for this bill. I would ask that the record reflect this. Paula Steiner Madam Speaker, for the balance of the time that you recognized me, I am motivated to come to the floor and say some words about my retiring legislative director, Paula Steiner. In the time that I came here to Congress, elected in 2002 and sworn in on this floor in January of 2003, Paula has done the job inside our legislative shop for those 5 years persistently, relentlessly and reliably and with significant insight. I regret that she has to move on for family reasons and those obligations, and when I see the family that has surrounded her, I am really gratified because it is far more important that the family see the best of their mother than that I get the most use out of their mother. But what I do want to say is that as I travel up and down the district in western Iowa, the western third of Iowa, the 32 counties that are the Fifth Congressional District that stretch from Minnesota to Missouri, and I meet the local officials and the people that are involved in and that are engaged in policy, as this news of Paula turning her focus on her family is, as it trickles through the district, they come up to me one by one and say, I am really going to miss Paula. The Siouxland Chamber's emissary on Friday said, we are really going to miss Paula. The Voice of Glenwood in Mills County said, we are really going to miss Paula. That is what I came here to say, Madam Speaker: we are going to miss Paula. And this Hill is populated with good, hardworking, loyal people that keep our congressional offices functioning and rolling on a day- by-day basis. And sometimes when you go along outside the Cannon Building or the Rayburn Building or the Longworth Building, you will see late at night the lights are on. Sometimes it is because the maintenance people walked in, emptied the trash and left them on. Sometimes it is because dedicated people that keep our jobs going, keep our operations and our trains running on time are up there burning that candle at both ends so we can step down here and represent our district and represent our people. The people in the Fifth District of Iowa are better represented than they would have been if I hadn't had the privilege of having Paula Steiner working for me, and I know that her family is going to be very well taken care of if they receive half of the kind of work and labor of love that Paula has demonstrated, and I want to add to that the measure of loyalty. And into this Congressional Record I choose not to go down through a series of the anecdotes except to say that it is clear that loyalty is an essential component to a congressional office. It is absolutely there with Paula. My district says goodbye, thank you very much. I say, Paula, you are part of the extended family. Keep stopping in like you always will. Thank you very much and God bless you.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I oppose the provisions in this conference report, unilaterally added by the Senate, that provide immigration benefits to certain Iraqi refugees. As Ranking Member of the House ``Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law,'' these provisions should have been discussed in their proper place, the House Judiciary Committee. However, I along with Ranking Member Smith, were basically excluded from negotiations. There is no bipartisan support for these provisions in the House Judiciary Committee. This bill grants special immigrant visas each year for the next 5 years to 5,000 Iraqi nationals and their families. The State Department has estimated that for every Iraqi national granted a visa, they will bring over at least four family members. Therefore, the number of special immigrant visas granted under this bill will reach 25,000 per year, or 125,000 total after 5 years. Mr. Speaker, 125,000 Iraqis that support the United States would be a tremendous asset to Iraq and the United States in the Middle East. These Iraqis should remain in their home country to rebuild it and encourage the spread of liberty. If we remove every Iraqi that is supportive of the U.S. from Iraq, terrorists will have the upper hand. Iraq and the United States need these patriotic Iraqis to remain in Iraq and rebuild. While I sympathize with the Iraqi nationals who have been victims of this War on Terror, conditions within the country are improving. I encourage the Iraqis to stay and fight for their homeland and freedom alongside American troops. That's how we win this War on Terror. For these reasons I oppose the provisions in the Conference Report to H.R. 1585 that provide U.S. immigration benefits to certain Iraqi refugees, and I urge my colleagues to do the same. Vote ``no'' on the Rule.