Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. No, this amendment does not impose restrictions on printing ballots in languages other than English.

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for the highest compliment anyone has ever received on the floor of this Congress, and express the same of my friend, Mr. Pence. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire of the Chair how much time I have left?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I would be happy to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite), also a cosponsor of this amendment.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I would be happy to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the next governor of the State of Oklahoma, and a cosponsor of this amendment, Mr. Istook.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns) who has worked very hard on this issue. (Mr. STEARNS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett).

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the cosponsor of this amendment and a member of the Judiciary Committee, the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus).

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Gary G. Miller).

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I will take the opportunity to close with that minute and a half. I would speak, first of all, to Mr. Pence's statement that now is not the time. Now is actually the only time in a half a century where this Congress has the opportunity to have a voice on the reauthorization of this. It was reauthorized in 1982, until 2032 if the language prevails. It is in the bill. We have to do it now. Citizens are required to demonstrate proficiency, in both spoken and written word, of the English language. They don't have a claim. Naturalized citizens do not have a claim to foreign language ballots. American-born citizens do have, and they can make that claim locally, like they do in places like Wisconsin, where the electoral board of Wisconsin just determined that they would be printing ballots in the languages both of Hmong and Spanish. So they have demonstrated how local control actually works, Mr. Chairman. And then the waste is demonstrated in places like California where a small precinct, 650 people, 33 separate ballots for 650 people in languages English, Spanish, Chinese, at a cost of $100,000 for that county alone. Three hundred counties are covered by this. We don't need to be imposing this upon the American people. The heavy hand of the Federal Government can be lifted off. People will still be voting in the languages of their choice because they will be controlled by the locale, consistent with the 10th amendment, States' rights, federalism, fiscal responsibility, and the philosophy of the majority of this Congress, the Republican Party and the view of the individual opportunity to vote. We will protect those rights. But my amendment would lift the Federal mandate imposing foreign language ballots on localities by allowing the mandate to sunset. The mandate is due to sunset and expire in 2007. We let the wisdom of our forefathers take care of that.

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher).

Mr. KING of Iowa. The answer is ``no,'' this amendment does not change the Federal law that allows voters to bring their own interpreter.

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, especially I want to thank Chairman Sensenbrenner for the hard work that they have done to put together the framework for the reauthorization for the Voting Rights Act. And also I want to thank the sponsors of my amendment, Mr. Istook, Mrs. Miller from Michigan, Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite of Florida, Mr. Spencer Bachus from Alabama, for joining me in this and many others who have worked hard throughout the last 4, 5, and perhaps even 6 weeks to get us to this point where we can have a debate on this amendment and end up having a vote on how to improve the Voting Rights Act. I think it is important from a symbolic standpoint to be able to improve and vote on the Voting Rights Act. We are able to do that because also of the indulgence and the patience and the good years that come from all the leadership in this Congress, and I appreciate that a great deal. What my amendment does is it recognizes that the Voting Rights Act was established in 1965. 1975, not as an original part of the act itself but as I would say a decade-old afterthought, came this imposition of foreign language ballots in 1975, and that came in as a temporary measure. Now, today, it is not so temporary from 1975 until 2006, but it is set up to sunset August 6, 2007. So what my amendment does, Mr. Chairman, is it would lift the Federal mandate imposing foreign language ballots on localities by allowing the amendment to sunset, and the mandate is due to expire in 2007. It is that simple. And the reason is this, that it is consistent with federalism. The Federal Government doesn't need to be imposing foreign language ballots on any locality anywhere in this country. They can make those decisions locally. Anyone who is a citizen of the United States that is a naturalized citizen has had to demonstrate their proficiency in both the spoken and the written English language, so they have no claim to a foreign language ballot if they are a naturalized citizen. So, therefore, there isn't a need for foreign language ballots unless someone is here by birthright citizenship and hasn't had enough access to English to be able to understand a simple ballot. But in those circumstances we protect those people by allowing a right to assistance. They can bring an interpreter of their choice into the voting booth with them to do that interpretation. So all my amendment does, the King-Istook-and others amendment, it lifts the mandates and allows the local electoral districts to retain their local control and their right to print in the languages they choose; and there are plenty of examples across the country that do that. Some of the things that are objectionable about this would be, for example, the determination of how a district is imposed by the Federal Government on foreign language ballots, and one of those things is surname analysis, Mr. Chairman. So we have a computer program that sorts the last names of people. If it kicks out that a certain percentage of them have a Spanish last name or a Chinese last name, then there will be foreign language ballots that go to those districts, whether everyone there maybe came here with Cortez. That is how bad it has gotten. It has been abused. And we protect the rights for localities. So it is a reasonable and general amendment that lifts the Federal mandate for foreign language ballots and lets local governments to do what they choose Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I would inquire as to how much time I have left.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds. I wonder if I might have been stereotyped here. I didn't hear anything about immigration on this side. I didn't hear anything come out of Mr. Gingrey about immigration. We are talking about the Voting Rights Act, and I think that is what this debate will be about on this side, the Voting Rights Act. But I would point out that there is a reason why natural-born citizens utilize this more than anyone else, and that is because one of the criteria that is used to measure is the question on the census that says, Do you speak English: not at all, not well, well, or very well? And if you answer well, you still are put into the limited-language- proficient category. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Miller).

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the former secretary of state of Michigan, and I now yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell).

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. Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to have the opportunity to address you this evening and take up a number of issues that I believe are important to the American people. As I come in here and listen to the tail end of the dialogue that takes place here on the floor, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt), my friend whom I serve with on the Committee on the Judiciary, for acknowledging that some of us will stand up and speak to the lack of enforcement on the part of this administration. In fact, in our private conversation, I reiterated something that I put into the Record the night before last in that if you are an employer in the United States and you are knowingly and willfully hiring illegals, you were 19 times more likely to be sanctioned under Bill Clinton's administration than you are under the current administration. That is the level that this enforcement has drifted to. That is the issue that they speak to. However, I would say on the other side of this argument, we have seen an acceleration of enforcement on the border. It is too little too late to satisfy me and many of my colleagues here in Congress. But the point missing from this dialogue is when amendments are offered on the floor; if they are serious about passing those amendments, it takes homework to get that done. You have to reach across to the other side of the aisle and identify some people to work with on the other side of the aisle and get those sponsors and cosponsors for those amendments so when it comes to the floor it is ready for passage. A late-arriving amendment that is not designed to pass, but makes a statement has very little opportunity to actually make it into law, and some of those amendments are viewed that way by myself and many others. So I am looking forward to a bipartisan effort on this enforcement. It is one of the reasons that I have talked so long and relentlessly on many things that we need to do. But I came tonight to talk about another issue, and that is an important issue that is in front of us tomorrow. Tomorrow the House of Representatives will be taking up the legislation that is proposed to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. Now, the Voting Rights Act was first written into law in 1965. It was an essential piece of legislation in 1965. We were in the middle of the civil rights demonstrations that were taking place. Those of us who lived through that time, and I can say during that period of time it was a very impressionable point in my life. If my math is correct, I was a sophomore in high school. The television was full of mostly peaceful marches and peaceful demonstrations. It was an issue that those of us who lived in the Midwest were pretty much protected from that and didn't see the necessity for those kinds of demonstrations right away, but the demonstrations on television, and it was important that television did carry that message at the time, that educated the American people. I look back on that time, that time in history, when we saw mostly peaceful marches. We saw fire hoses and dogs, yes, and there was violence and there were people that died in the process. But for the size nation that we are, for as large a problem that we had, and the problem we had was the institutionalization of racial segregation primarily in the South. And there were millions of Americans who were citizens in good standing that were shut out of the polls and shut out of many of the other avenues of what we consider normal life today. It is hard for the generations that are sophomores in high school today to understand what it was like in those years back in the middle 1960s and in many of the years before them. The circumstances of the segregation in the South and the discrimination that was there, the poll taxes, the literacy tests, many of the Jim Crow laws that were put in place to keep African Americans from going to the polls and being able to vote and help select our national leaders and their Members of Congress and their State leaders, and participate fully in the life of freedom that had been earned by the blood of hundreds of thousands a century earlier; and it took a century to get the Voting Rights Act in place after the end of the Civil War. That is how big this issue was back in 1965. This sore festered for a century. In a century, this Nation couldn't find a way to come to grips with the issue of discrimination in the South. For me, it is hard for me to have that reference point except for what I saw on television and read in the newspaper, and what my teachers and classmates and family had to say. Some of that, I have to admit, is a little vague in my memory. But I can say there was an incident that framed it for me. That was some years ago my wife and I needed to go down to New Orleans for a conference down there. We decided that we would drive down on the east side of the Mississippi River and come back on the west side of the Mississippi River. I like to see what is in this country. So when we do those trips, we weave back and forth and take side trips. As we went down, we stopped also at Vicksburg to see the battlegrounds of the great Civil War battles that took place in Vicksburg, Mississippi. That was an experience, to stand on that hallowed ground and understand the battle that took place there and the price that was paid to move forward more on liberating and freeing the people that were enslaved the hundreds of years before that. But the thing that impressed me the most was the stop that we made in Port Gibson, Mississippi. Port Gibson, Mississippi, was a location where a priest that had grown up in our hometown, Father Tony Pudenz. Father Pudenz had been the pastor in St. Joseph's Church, I believe it is St. Joseph's, in Port Gibson, Mississippi. That was his favorite parish. That was the place he wanted to retire. In fact, he was on the edge of retirement at that moment. But as we went through Port Gibson, I knew he had lived there. He had grown up in our hometown, and he was about 75 years old. So we drove through the town and I looked for the church and rectory. When I found the rectory, we pulled in and I knocked on the door. Father Tony Pudenz came to the door, actually astonished that someone from Iowa would drop in on him unannounced with a surprise, to the rectory at St. Joseph's Parish in Port Gibson, Mississippi. Well, that visit turned out to be one that framed this for me because he took us over to the church which was just a few steps across the yard. He said, I want to show you my church. He pointed out that the church was built in 1848, and it was built originally with $10,000 that was contributed to the parish by the family of Jim Bowie. Jim Bowie was killed at the Alamo more than a decade earlier, but the family had significant presence in Mississippi and somehow they had enough money to make that kind of contribution to that parish in 1848. In fact, a lot of woodwork in that church, as I understand the way it was told to me by Father Tony Pudenz, was carved by the Bowie family. As I looked at that woodwork, I thought about how that tied back to the history of the United States and to the history of Texas, and how it anchored back to a time before the Civil War. As we stood in that church, and the glass in that church is all blue tint so it is like standing inside of an iceberg. It is like the sun would shine through if you were standing with ice windows rather than these blue-tint windows, and it gives almost a surreal sense with the woodwork done by the Bowie family and that sense of standing inside an iceberg or standing inside an igloo, perhaps, that was done with fairly clear ice. As we stood there, he pointed up to the balcony. And the balcony, very similar to the balcony that the press sits in here in the United States Congress, and he said this church was built by these families and the floor of the church was for the white families and the balcony was for the black families. And I looked at that. To stand there in that place and understand that in a house of God they would construct a house of God to be segregated for one color of people to go up to the balcony and for another color of people to be seated downstairs, and for their minds, never the twain shall meet; even though they go to church together, they would be separate. And I will say certainly equal in the eyes of God, but not equal in the eyes of fellow Christians going to church in Port Gibson, Mississippi, probably some time well prior to 1848, but the church was built beginning in the year 1848. As we stood there in the aisle on the floor of that church, he said that last week, the previous week, they had buried the editor for the newspaper in Port Gibson. This editor of the newspaper was the individual who, in 1967, had, with the segregation still in the church, went in and sat down with his family, several children, sat down in a floor pew, and sat there with his family. And a moment before mass began, he got up, took his family and hand in hand they went to the back of the church and went up the steps in the back of the church and sat down in the balcony with the African Americans that were there to go to mass. No longer was that church segregated because the editor of that paper had the courage and principle to take his family up to the balcony to sit with the black families and worship with them together. When that happened, part of the people, some of the families, got up and walked out of the Catholic Church and walked across the street to the Episcopalian Church where those families and their descendants worship to this very day. At that time, that little parish of St. Joseph was, I think he said, about 75 families, maybe it was 90 families, and a mix of three- quarters white, one-quarter black, but they go to mass together seated together as part of God's family like they really are. That is what it was like in 1967. That is what it was like in 1965 when the Voting Rights Act was passed. It is no longer like that in the South today. That is something, an experience for me that frames a lot of this issue, and an understanding of what went on. It was important to pass the Voting Rights Act in 1965. It was important to enfranchise every one of the adults that are all viewed to be the same as God's children. And we are God's children, all of us. We need to guarantee those voting rights to everyone. The Voting Rights Act was a quantum leap to do that. The discrimination statistics that were there, the statistics that were gathered up beginning in 1964, and the measurement of those statistics in 1968, and then in 1972 showed that there were lower percentages of blacks voting than whites voting. And there were lower percentages of blacks that were registered to vote than there were whites registered to vote, and something needed to be changed. And so those criteria and other criteria were established and the Department of Justice was charged with the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act to guarantee a path to the polls for every legitimate voter in America, and no longer would there be Jim Crow laws, and no longer would there be people who didn't have an opportunity to voice their opinion in the polls and choose their local and national leaders. The Voting Rights Act has been an extraordinarily successful act. It was designed to be temporary. No one believed in 1965 that we couldn't cure this problem and at some point we could make enough changes that we could move away from the need for those requirements. They were strict. They are tough. The voting districts that are still under that today are locked in in statistics that are measured from 1964, 1968 and 1972. We are not using 2004 data to evaluate whether Georgia still should be a covered district. We are using 1964, 1968 and 1972 data; not 2004, not 2000, not 1996 data. So those districts that have been declared to be racist, bigoted districts that demonstrated that by the statistics that are there, the measurement criteria, are stuck in time. If we pass this legislation tomorrow with the Voting Rights Act, and we use those 1964, 1968 and 1972 statistics to measure States like Georgia, Texas and the locales within 16 States across this country, they are locked in. They are locked in and can't move a voting booth from the Catholic Church to the Episcopalian Church across the street, or from the post office to the school. They can't move a voting booth 10 feet without prior authorization by the Department of Justice. That will be the case fixed in time from 1965 until 2032. By 2032, that is almost four generations. Four generations could come and go, and we are using the same measurement of people in 2032, if we pass this legislation as presented to this Congress. Thomas Jefferson declared a generation to be 19 years. That is not too bad a measure. We know generations turn over a little faster or slower than that. But truthfully, 19 years, multiply it out, it is almost four generations between 1965 and 2032. But it will be true, there won't be anyone voting in 2032 who remembers what it was like in 1965 when they passed the Voting Rights Act. That would be a simple fact. And if you want something to be institutionalized in perpetuity in legislation in America, then you reauthorize that for a quarter of a century or a half a century. By the time that comes up, no one remembers what the debate was. No one is vested in any other alternative. They just think, huh, that is the way it was then, that is the way it always has been, why would we want to change something after all these years? It seems to have worked pretty well and they got so used to it they can't conceive of not having it in place. So I submit that we need to take a look at shortening up the reauthorization so that we can do a better look at the effects of any changes in this reauthorization for the Voting Rights Act. And I submit that districts that are covered, districts today need to have an opportunity to work their way out of that that is not as stringent as the very, very tight district requirements that are in it today so that they can work their way out. And to measure someone by 1964 standards in 2032 is just utterly wrong. Back in 1964, to think that the great- grandchildren of the people that made that decision will be voting in 2032, and they are responsible? How can we hold them responsible for decisions that were part of the culture in 1965? So we have come a long way, America, and we will never eradicate racism in this country totally. There will always be some elements of it because there will always be the levels of prejudice, and they might not always be something that can be defined as racism. It might just be prejudice that comes from other reasons because there will always be competing forces in this society. But the evidence of it has diminished significantly and dramatically. And I would like to give the people in Georgia and Texas and these other States an opportunity to move out of that list. And I would like to, if it is good enough for Georgia and Texas, it ought to be good enough for the rest of us. That would be the standard that I would go by and then shorten this reauthorization time. There is another aspect of this that is an essential piece, and that is the Federal mandate for foreign language ballots, and that is a piece that we will be debating here on the floor tomorrow. The Federal Government, the Congress, in I will say an unexpected move in 1975, put into place temporary measures to require a Federal mandate for foreign language ballots. Now, I don't remember that there were people in America clamoring for the foreign language ballots in 1975. It may have been the case, but it was designed to be a temporary measure. They thought the need for it would diminish as assimilation increased. What we have seen since 1975 is partly because we are the enablers there has been less assimilation instead of more assimilation. The direction for more languages in America has increased towards more and more languages in America instead of less, and we still have in place this mandate for foreign language ballots. The reason that I am opposed to requiring them at the Federal level is because if you are a naturalized citizen here in United States, by law you will have had to demonstrate your proficiency in both the spoken and written word of the English language. That is the standard that is required before you can be a naturalized citizen. And so if you are a naturalized citizen in America, you have no claim to a foreign language ballot because the certification of your citizenship says you are certified to vote in English. That is one of the important responsibilities of citizenship. And if the standard wasn't high enough that you can read a ballot, we need to raise the standard, not lower the standard and hand you a ballot in a language where there may be errors in because we don't have enough interpreters to interpret into other foreign languages. I simply want to lift the mandate. I want to allow localities to make the decision on whether they need to provide foreign language ballots, not the Federal Government. I don't want to be printing millions of ballots that aren't used. I don't want to get any more letters like this letter that I have here in front of where the gentleman who wrote it said, in all five elections where I have served as a judge, no foreign language ballots were requested in my precinct. Yet in the last election in that precinct they printed 33 different kinds of ballots, not because there were 33 different languages but because there were 11 different parties and three different languages that were required. This is a subject that is easy to understand. It is relatively simple. But it's important and it's essential because if we send the message out of this Congress that we are going to chase you down and hand you a foreign language ballot, whether you want it or not, then we are also sending a message that we really aren't serious about assimilation. And if we are going to be bringing into America 10 million or 60 million or 90 million new Americans in the next generation, 19 years generation, if we are going to do that, we have got to be invested in assimilation. No nation in the world has ever assimilated the numbers of people or the percentage of the population that we have here in this country. But there is a limit to what we can do. And if we send the message that says we are not serious about assimilation, we are going to be enablers for people to live in ethnic enclaves. And if we do that we are ensuring that they will not be able to access the American dream. That is the wrong message to send. We have to lift the mandate. And if it is necessary to have foreign language ballots at the localities, then they can make that decision locally. They are paying for it anyway. And so, Madam Speaker, that is the basis and the core of my argument. But there is a gentleman here from New Jersey who is articulate on this subject matter, someone whom I look forward to hearing from, and I would be very happy to yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett).

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for his contribution to this discussion and this debate here this evening. And, also, I thank him for his dogged determination on a number of sound causes that he and I have worked together on. And sometimes I just simply admire the work that Mr. Garrett does. And I am not always over there to lend a hand, but I want him to know that, if needed, I am willing to on any subject that I can think of that Mr. Garrett has brought forward. And I appreciate the leadership and support that has been there on this cause. It has not been an easy task. I had not thought about it as dogged determination; I had simply thought about it as a cause and a principle that needed to be established. Simple common sense if you are going to have a Nation that promotes assimilation and one of the standards of that promotion of assimilation is a Federal law that defines the standards by which people that come to this country are naturalized, conditions they must meet before they can get a hold of that brass ring called citizenship. And, Mr. Speaker, citizenship needs to be precious. It needs to have great value. If we are going to be a strong nation, we have got to look at this flag and feel that lump come into our chest when it comes down in the parade. We have got to have a sense of common history, a sense of unity, a sense of common cause. And if we market citizenship off cheaply and if we diminish those standards, then we are going to find that our values also are scattered and diluted and diminished. But when we pull ourselves together with this and we promote the idea of assimilation, and that is that the language requirements for demonstration of English proficiency are in the Federal Code 4, it is to set that standard high enough that anyone who then is naturalized as an American citizen has a significant amount of English proficiency that will let them go out into the rest of the world and access this American Dream. And we know that the lowest numbers that I can find are that those who speak English in the United States earn at least 17 percent more than those who do not speak English in the United States. Those who speak English well earn more than twice as much as someone who does not. So these issues are important. Some of the standards that we used to require in our Federal mandate, the standards that we use that establish the determination that there will be foreign language ballots imposed into these districts, whether anyone actually asks for one or not, the issue that was brought up by Mr. Garrett that the standards of 5 percent or 10,000 people, whichever comes first, is the standard that would then require limited English proficiency groups, would require those ballots to go into a district. And, now, how do you measure who speaks English in a limited-English- proficient manner? And the manner that was brought up by Mr. Garrett, the surname analysis, can you imagine having a computer program, and in that program you run through it the last names of all of the voters that are registered in that voting district, and you have software set up that picks up things like the little apostrophe over the ``O'' in maybe an Hispanic name or the configuration of the vowels and the consonants when it comes in a certain way that indicates that it is a surname of a certain nationality. So this surname analysis will do a measure of likely Hispanic last names, or I should say Spanish last names, or maybe likely Asian or Chinese last names. I do not know if it picks out the Irish or not, but I can go through the phone book and do that. So it kicks out these names. And if it kicks out 10,000 names that have a Spanish last name or 10,000 names that are Chinese last names, or 5 percent or more of that voting district that are Spanish, Chinese, Lithuanian, whatever the subject might be, then by Federal law there will be ballots printed in those languages at that locale, paid for by the local election board or the county taxes or whoever is the one in each particular State that determines that, a Federal mandate, an unfunded mandate. And I especially think it is ironic about Spanish surnames, because some of these people that have a Spanish surnames are descended from immigrants that came here in the 1500s. They have been here since about before the Mayflower, before Jamestown. They came up to the Southwest. They were Americans long before anybody else that I know of, and yet we would presume by their last name alone the prejudicial preconception that we have to send them Spanish language ballots. It is a lousy measure. It has never been a good measure. It is actually, I believe, a prejudiced measure, to be so prejudiced that because of your name, they can determine whether you can speak English. That should be anathema to all of in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, and I hope that we fix that tomorrow. But another measure that is equally as ridiculous is the census, another way that we determine whether people can speak English well enough to qualify for all-English ballots or whether we have to give them a ballot in another language and impose that upon them whether they want it or not. So the United States Census puts out this questionnaire, and presumably there is someone sitting down interpreting the questionnaire. I do not think it just gets mailed out in other languages. But they ask the question, How well do you speak English? A, not at all; B, not well, do not speak English well; C, speak English well; or, D, speak English very well. Now, if you say that you don't speak English at all or not well or even if you say that you speak English well, all three of those categories, A, B, and C, are all measured as limited-English- proficiency speaking. Even if you say you speak English well, you have to say that you speak English very well in order to not be qualified as having limited English proficiency that would trigger the foreign language ballots. So I think there have to be English professors, high school literature teachers, probably politicians as well, who make their living with this language, who will read that and think ``I have never reached the standard that I thought I ought to; so I do not want to be so proud that I put down I speak it very well. I think I will just put down I speak it well. And, inadvertently, they will be putting themselves in a category that will be calling for a foreign language ballot. And with the Chinese language, how many dialects are there, 300 and some dialects? At least it used to be. But which version of Chinese is it? Is it Mandarin? Is it Cantonese? Is it any other version there? There is really no way we can administer this effectively with an equal protection perspective as long as it is a Federal mandate. And it is a Federal mandate. It is a federally unfunded mandate that imposes foreign language ballots on voting districts whether anyone wants them or not and whether anyone calls for them or not. In fact, I do not know that there are records kept on these ballots and how many are actually used. If there were, I would like to have seen those records. But to give you an example, Mr. Speaker, this letter came, and it is dated June 24, so it is fairly fresh. And I just happened to be going through my mail a couple of days ago; and I get a packet of it, and I read through it, and try to be tuned in to what the American citizens have to say about the work that we are doing here. And this gentleman has freed me up to speak about this openly and publicly and into the Record. But I think for the sake of avoiding the kind of things that might come, I will just read it to you and represent it without identifying him individually. But this is an individual who is a judge in a voting district out in California. He has a Ph.D., and he is an educator, a professor. He has a good handle on the English language. But it says in his letter: ``Dear Congressman King, let me express my support for your efforts to let the multilingual ballot provision of the Voting Rights Act fade into the sunset. For several years I have served as an election judge in a polling place in my hometown,'' which is in California. ``My precinct over the years has around 650 registered voters. In the June, 2006, primary, we had 11 parties on the ballot.'' That would be political parties. ``We had available 33 separate ballots because members of each of the 11 parties had ballots available to them in three languages--English, Spanish, and Chinese. In the primary, general, and special elections over the past years in which I have served, no voter has ever requested a ballot in a language other than English.'' I will repeat that. ``No voter has ever requested a ballot in a language other than English. ``Putting aside the question of the appropriateness of ballots in languages other than English, I would simply point out the large cost to the county in complying with the Voting Rights Act. The waste of public money is significant. As a Republican, I would be truly disappointed if a Republican majority in the House and the Senate cannot repeal at least the multiple language provisions in the Voting Rights Act. ``Very truly yours . . . '' A copy sent to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee as well. So we made contact with this gentleman. And in there again he reiterated that in all five elections where he has served as a judge, no foreign language ballots were ever requested in his precinct even though they had 33 different versions in this last primary election. Thirty-three, not one other than English was called for. And it cost his county, and I believe this to be a low-population county, $100,000 approximately per election to print foreign language ballot materials and to administer and to translate. So $100,000 does not sound like a lot to a Member of Congress when we deal with billions and, in fact, trillions of dollars, but it adds up over this country. We have thousands of counties in America. And of those that are compelled to print these foreign language ballots, the dollars contribute. And it isn't just the cost of it. It isn't just the burden of the administration. But it is the risk of the mistakes that come when we translate into foreign languages. We have to have a standard. We have to have an official ballot. And when you start translating into foreign languages, you lose the sense and the meaning. And there are languages out there that their voice inflection determines the meaning and its context determines the meaning, so it becomes a judgment call on how it is interpreted. And, again, we do not interfere with the right of the localities to print foreign language ballots if they so choose. What we do is just remove the unfunded Federal mandate that requires foreign language ballots and we let the localities make the determination on how they are going to provide ballots that can be read and utilized by the people that are there in the fashion that they see fit. There is nothing that prevents them from doing that. In fact, there is nothing that prevents them from doing that today, Mr. Speaker. In fact, I have here a copy of yesterday's USA Today. It lays out circumstances in the State of Wisconsin. The headline in this story is, ``Lawmaker critical of Wisconsin translations.'' We are going to disagree about these things across the country. It is part of our system, but the story reads like this. ``The Wisconsin State election board began translating voter registration forms and absentee ballot applications into Spanish and Hmong this year, a move that one State lawmaker says could swing an election. `` `This is for people who function on a day-to-day basis in languages other than English but want to acclimate to Wisconsin and to participate in the democratic process,' Elections Board spokesman Kyle Richmond says. ``Translating the voting materials was not required under the Voting Rights Act because Hmong- and Spanish-speaking residents make up fewer than 5 percent of the State's eligible voters.'' Mr. Speaker, we do not address that issue. We leave that intact. If States want to determine they are going to print foreign language ballots, they will print them. We also protect and preserve the Federal statute that exists that allows an individual to bring a translator into the voting booth with them. So, if ballots can be printed in foreign languages because of the local government, if we protect the tenth amendment, the States rights issue, and let them determine their election process, and if we lift the foreign language ballot, the Federal mandate, the unfunded mandate for foreign language ballots, then we have got the principles of the tenth amendment there, the States rights issue. We have got that and we support that. We support the Federalism issue that government is better off if it is devolved to the States and remains in the States rather than bring the power here to Washington, D.C. It is time to get it back to the States where they belong. I would submit another issue that seems to be a bit of a curiosity to me, Mr. Speaker, and that is the issue of what will be the case when we get to that point where there are voting districts where no one in that district speaks English. Is it presumed by law that one would have to then qualify under this Federal mandate to get an English language ballot, even if no one wanted one in that district? Well, it seems a little hard to conceive of this today, but it is far easier to conceive of this today than it was easy to conceive of this in 1965 when this was not part of the law, but in 1975, when it was put into the law and they believed that it would be temporary then, those who voted for this provision, this unfunded Federal mandate for foreign language ballots are the people who, if they are watching us today, if they are on this planet or looking down on us from above, would be astonished that we would still have this in place. They would be astonished that we have this difficult of a debate going on about whether we can simply let the sunset take place, let these provision requirements expire and allow States rights to take place and allow localities to make these decisions. This is just an interesting subject that we will take up tomorrow, Mr. Speaker. We will debate this significantly and intensively, and I am hopeful that the wisdom of this Chamber will be reflected in a positive vote on the floor here in the United States House of Representatives. I am quite appreciative of all the effort that has gone into this. This has been a spontaneous effort, not an orchestrated effort but a spontaneous effort, and sometimes when you stand up and take a stand it reflects through the hearts and the philosophies of those of us who are charged with representing the wishes of the people in all of America. I know that when this bill, the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act until 2032 came to the Judiciary Committee and I offered a couple of amendments then to try to improve it, the climate in the committee at that time was not very conducive to amendments being adopted. Yet, I made the argument, offered the amendments, and there were nine that voted with me on the amendment that would have eliminated this Federal mandate for foreign language ballots. That was a significant amount on the amendment. But on final passage, then I found myself as the sole voice that voted ``no'' on the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in the Judiciary Committee, 33-1 was the vote, and I have often said when I found myself the lone vote, dissenting from everyone else, I use a defense, it is a little ditty that I simply memorized, and it talks about the people's judgment, people's judgment being a democratic vote, a majority vote that rules here in this House, as it should, and it goes like this: Nor is the people's judgment always true, but most can err as grossly as the few. In this case, I do not want to point out the people that disagreed with me on this issue as necessarily erring, but I want to point out the necessity to stand on principle and how a single vote can make a big difference, and with that 33-1 vote, had I not put that vote up, it would have been unanimous coming out of the Judiciary Committee. Had it been unanimous, it would have been very difficult for anyone to make an argument we should reconsider the cover districts arguments from Georgia, Texas and other covered districts that have been led so well by Lynn Westmoreland and Charlie Norwood. That team has been strong and powerful, and they have been dogged in their determination, and they have been relentless, and they believe powerfully in their cause. I support the spirit of their efforts, but that would have, I believe, have fallen on deaf ears if it had been a unanimous vote out of the Judiciary Committee, but one ``no'' vote gave them a small beachhead to go to work on and their beachhead gave a beachhead for the rest of us to head our positions together here and our need to allow the sunset of the foreign language ballot mandate to take place. I reflect back upon the moment when I gave a Memorial Day speech in Denison, Iowa, and as I finished my speech and as the ceremonies concluded, the mayor came up with his little baby in his arms, and I suppose he was 6-weeks-old at the time. So I took a look, good look at that healthy, little boy, and I said to the mayor what is his name. Well, his name is John Quincy. I said John Quincy. John Quincy said always vote for principle, though you may vote alone. You can take the sweetest satisfaction in knowing that your vote is never lost. He looked at me and he smiled and he held that little boy, and he said that is why I named him John Quincy. He will be a man of principle. That always matters to vote your principle, though you may vote alone, but your vote is never lost. There are stories after stories on how important it is how one vote can make a significant difference in America. This may be one of those times. I am hopeful it will be one of these times, Mr. Speaker, but I believe strongly that there is not a necessity out there for the Federal Government to mandate foreign language ballots. I believe strongly that we need to send a message that we are a Nation that welcomes legal immigrants with open arms, we encourage them to come into this fold. I go and speak at the naturalization services whenever I have the opportunity. They are some of the most moving experiences that I have. When I look people in the eye and I can see that mist, that moistness in their eyes, that sense that that event in their lifetime ranks right up there with the wedding day or the day that their first-born child might be born with important moments in their lives, and there are many of them that will say that is the most important moment in their lives. So I have had the opportunity at those naturalization services to remark about how important it is, from my perspective, and how I am moved by the stories that came through my family about my ancestors who came here, and I sign and autograph a Constitution for each one of the newly naturalized citizens I have had the privilege to speak to at a ceremony and pass them out and congratulate them and ask them to keep that Constitution close to them, close to their heart like mine is close to my heart, read it, study it, understand it, linking it to this history, becoming part of this shared experience that we have, reach out and reach towards this American dream, this American dream that really is to leave this world a better place than it was when we came, to lay the groundwork so our children can have a better opportunity than we have had. We think it gets harder every generation, but it is hard every generation, and our parents gave us more opportunity than they had. So it goes, back through the generations, and so it needs to go on through the succeeding generations in the same fashion. If America is going to be this glorious Nation that we have become, if we are going to take ourselves to the next level of our destiny, we always have to reach out and ask to challenge people to follow through in this American dream, to make America a better place. So we can do that by promoting this great unifying idea of a common language. It is the most powerful unifying force known throughout history for all humanity. It is true for all languages. It just happens to be that we are fortunate in this country that our language is the English language, the language of business for the world, the language of the maritime industry for the world, the language of air traffic controllers and all air traffic communications in the world and this language that has been the companion to freedom everywhere throughout the world. As I read the book written by Winston Churchill called, the History of the English-Speaking Peoples, and I followed through on that history, as each tracks the English-speaking peoples around the globe and a part of its conquest and trade and colonization, but the English people never doubted and never lacked for faith in their civilization, in their culture, in their destiny, in their duty, and they promoted those values around the globe. As they did so, wherever they went, they left the English language, and wherever the Americans have gone, we have left the English language. If you go places today, and follow the English language wherever the English language is, you will find freedom, also. Freedom's been a companion to the English language wherever it has gone around the globe. We should be very grateful we are descended from English common law that respects these values that we have. We have taken up that cause, and we have advanced it beyond this constitutional republic that we have that is rooted in this responsibility to be an informed citizen and active citizen and informed voter. Part of that responsibility is to get informed within this English language so you can understand this culture of America. It is very difficult to understand the decisions that have been made if you are not able to access the common newspapers that are there, not able to get on the Internet and not able perhaps to carry on in conversations around your entire regular travels that you have. It is very difficult. It is not impossible, but if we allow the localities to make the decisions on whether or not there are going to be foreign language ballots and what languages they might be in. You can bet that those localities will be looking at these like this county in California, this particular voting district in California with the 650 registered voters, and they would say, well, we printed the last five elections in 33 different ballots and three different languages and no one in all that time has asked for a foreign language ballot; you suppose maybe this time we ought to cut those numbers down and maybe eliminate it all together and just put English language ballots out there like we did in the past? I think the answer is, yes, let us stop that waste; let us stop being bigoted in saying everyone cannot understand a language because of their last name. Then perhaps there will be others like Wisconsin in this other USA Today article that is here, Mr. Speaker, where they decide at the locality, we want to spend the money, we want to take that responsibility, we want to reach out to the Hmong- and the Spanish- speaking people and give them a ballot in a language that they can understand and be comfortable with. Now, I would question why it would be that they could be American citizens in Wisconsin and not speak the English language well enough to vote. I would question that, but that is a debate for Wisconsin, not a debate for this Congress. So I submit, Mr. Speaker, that tomorrow we will make a decision. It will be a big decision. It will be a decision that will have long-term implications. Those long-term implications do not seem very big today as we talk about the simplicity of this argument. No one will be disenfranchised from being able to vote. I ask them to become informed voters, and that is a challenge out there to English speakers and to other speakers to become an informed voter. But what is down the line is the message that we are sending to the newly arriving Americans that 10 or 20 or 60 or 90 million Americans that we might have within the next generation, that message that here is our language, learn this language. We will not be able to say that if the first thing we do is hand them a foreign language ballot. How do we ask them to assimilate if we are going to be enablers? That is the question that is before us. That is the long-term implication of these questions that are before us, Mr. Speaker, and I am going to ask this body tomorrow to make a long-term, wise decision, save millions of taxpayer dollars, take the oppressive thumb off the back of localities, let them make the decisions themselves, let them reach out to people and take care of them in that fashion, save the money, provide better, more efficient services, do the right thing, preserve the tenth amendment, preserve the idea of Federalism and move this Nation to the next level of its destiny so that we can be a Nation that welcomes all, with equal opportunity for all and prejudice against none and prejudice towards none.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goode) and appreciate particularly the strong voice that you have been, solid and consistent and strong. I remember you were at one point saying, I want a wall and I want it 2,000 miles long and I want it from San Diego to Brownsville. I am looking forward to the day when that last mile gets built, and by then maybe we will have the kind of border security that we need. But Californians have a long experience with the border control issue, and one of the leaders on this issue is the gentleman from California (Mr. Gary Miller), and I am very happy to yield to him.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Gary G. Miller) for that presentation and that perspective. It is a little bit different one than I often bring to this debate, and very glad that it is here on the floor, Mr. Speaker, and am glad that it is something that the American people can pick up on as well. Before I yield to the gentleman from Georgia, I am going to do the 2- minute drill on the King Wall on the border. I come to this conclusion this way. As the gentleman, Mr. Miller, made the statement that people come here and work and send their money back. And that dollar figure now is $20 billion that gets sent out of the labor here in the United States. Many of it is the labor of the people that are working here illegally. $20 billion to Mexico. Another $20 billion to Central America and the Caribbean. $40 billion out of this economy being sent out by people who come here that undercut the wages of American people. $40 billion going south. $65 billion going south to pay for the $65 billion dollars worth of illegal drugs that come across our porous border. And they used to take that, and maybe still do, bring in some of those drugs on semis. There are places that the border is not even marked. So they can drive across the desert; they can drive their own road. In New Mexico, for example, the border, you would never know you crossed the border there, because when they finally set that border up, they set one of those big old big brass transits, probably not a lot different than Lewis and Clark had back in those days, and looked across at the horizon and put a concrete pylon up on top of the highest point of the horizon, lined up on that and then said, okay, now we will go to the next horizon, put up another one. That is all that is there. And so there are roads that are made that cross the border a lot of places; the channel of the Rio Grande River gets driven across a lot of places. A place that is infamous, now called Neeley's Crossing, where they bring drugs across there and defend that border and threaten Americans that want to seal that off. All this is going on, Mr. Speaker, and a lot of it is not just the force of people that want to come here for a little better life, not people who just want to pick lettuce or tomatoes or go work in a sheet rock crew or whatever it is, but $65 billion worth of illegal drugs. So whatever we might do to shut off the jobs magnet is not going to shut off those illegal drugs. That is another force. And that force is far more powerful than the desire for people to change their lifestyle. So when I go down there and sit on that border, what I do is I have come to this conclusion: we cannot shut that off unless we build a fence and a wall. I want to put the fence in, but I want to put a wall in. I designed one. And this just simply is the desert floor. Put a trench in that desert floor. We have the ability to put together a machine that would be a slip- form machine that would lay a footing, about like this, Mr. Speaker, if I give you a look at the end of that, so you would have that about 5 foot deep underneath the ground. That would keep the wall from tipping over. We would pour a notch in it that allows us to put precast panels in. It would look like this, only this would be flush with the desert floor. And then you would bring in precast concrete panels, 10 feet wide, 13\1/2\ feet tall. They would construct it to be a 12-foot finished wall, just like that, Mr. Speaker. Drop these panels in together, in this fashion, just take a crane and drop them in, Arnold Construction Company could build a mile a day of this pretty easily once you got your system going. And it is not all going to work, the whole 2,000 miles are not going to work that way, but a lot of it will work this way, Mr. Speaker. And so just to wrap up this construction, this would be an example then of how that wall would look. Now you can also, you deconstruct it the same way. You can take it back down. If somehow they got their economy working, and got their laws working in Mexico, we can pull this back out just as easy as we can put it in. We can open it up again and we can open it up and let livestock run through there or whatever we choose. I also say we need to do a few other things on top of that wall, and one of them being to put a little bit of wire on top here to provide a disincentive for people to climb over the top or put a ladder there. We could also electrify this wire with the kind of current that would not kill somebody, but it would be a discouragement for them to be fooling around with it. We do that with livestock all the time. So I submit we build a wall like this, we do it for as many miles as we can, as many miles as we need, but it is roughly going to be 2,000. And when you do that, then the Border Patrol that we are spending $8 billion to protect 2,000 miles of border, $4 million a mile, we can build this wall for about $1.3 million a mile. If we do that, then that frees up our forces to be effective. And this would force the traffic through the ports of entry rather than across that vast open space that we have between San Diego and Brownsville. This will be economically feasible. The $4 million a mile, we can make an investment of about $1.3 million for each mile, and that is only one time one year. Otherwise, we are paying Border Patrol $4 million a mile every single year. What do we get out of it? $65 billion worth of illegal drugs and 4 million people coming across the border. This will shut off almost all of that. This will direct almost all of it through our ports of entry. Those are the reasons, some of them, not all of them, Mr. Speaker, on why we need to build a wall. But in the brief time that we have, I want to make sure that I can yield to the gentleman from Georgia who has been such an eloquent voice on this issue.