Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the profound honor to address you in this Chamber. It is a privilege that has been experienced by only a small number of Americans throughout the years. I come to the floor this afternoon and evening to address the issues that are important to us today. I intend to bring up the issues that have to do with our border control, border security and enforcement of our Nation's laws, and to talk about the facts behind them, the reasons that the American people clearly see this issue as a necessity for enforcement, and the reasons why establishing a guest worker/ temporary worker plan in the middle of an unknown set of circumstances with regard to enforcement simply has too many hypotheticals involved in it to be able to build a good logical plan. And to make that case, I would state that there are times in one's life when we are called upon to make large decisions, decisions that have tremendous impact, decisions that reflect and echo across through the generations. It might be the generations of our family, it might be the generations of our neighborhood. In this case, we are talking about the generations of Americans for a long time to come. There are two opposing competing forces in this immigration field today. One of them is this powerful force that is the heart and soul of the center of America, that we need to enforce the laws that we have. We need to control our borders. We can't be a Nation if we don't have a border, and we can't call ourselves a Nation if we don't enforce our border. That is something that is a basic fundamental that the American people know. They may not sit down and articulate it every day. They may not actually intellectualize it. They may not go back and read all of these immigration laws that we have. They may not look back and see the responsibility we have constitutionally to establish immigration laws here in this Congress. They may not do all that. They might just have a subliminal sense that is what we should do because it is common sense; it makes sense. To some it is in their gut instead of their brain, but they can trust their gut because their instincts are right on this. They understand we have to enforce the laws here in America; and if we don't do that, we won't be forever America. That is the position on the enforcement side. That is in one corner of this prize fight debate going on across America. In the other corner are the people that say that they are for a policy for guest worker, temporary worker. They are for a policy of amnesty by any other name, but amnesty. They have been seeking for years now to redefine the term ``amnesty.'' You can look it up in the dictionary, but the definition I keep being told I should accept is the argument of what would not be amnesty. It would not be amnesty if someone came into this country, broke the law to come in here and broke the law to stay here, and they stayed here a long time, 5 years or more. Their roots went down. They made some money. They sent a lot back to their home country. They started a family. Maybe they bought some property. Maybe they are a valuable employee to an important business that is in the community. They sent their roots down. Now, they are law breakers. Whether they overstayed their visa or whether they jumped the border illegally, they broke the law. So then the argument is it isn't amnesty if you just say to them we think you are a pretty good citizen, other than the fact that you broke the law. We would like to just give you amnesty, but in order to avoid this argument, because we know Americans reject the idea and the concept and the real definition of amnesty, we are going to redefine it. So if you just pay a fine of $1,500 or $2,000, or the Senate kind of ratcheted it up in some cases to as much as $3,200, if you just pay the fine, that takes care of your punishment. So it is no longer going to be amnesty because you have paid a price for breaking the law. I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that it is not necessarily so much as pay the price as that it puts these people on a path to citizenship. The Senate language does that. The path to citizenship is an objective that is more than was asked for by the people who came here illegally. Many of them just wanted to work here and make money and send their money back home, or save money and go back to their home country and perhaps retire. But we are offering them the plum of citizenship for a price. And the price is maybe $1,500 or $2,000 or $3,000 or $3,200. But citizenship for a price. And that price, I believe, is cheap; and I think it cheapens the citizenship. Citizenship should be sacred. It should be precious, and it is to those who are Americans by choice, who got in line, waited long years to come into the United States, came here, learned to speak English, learned to write English, learned about our history, learned about our culture, learned about our civilization and went through that process of naturalization and became Americans by choice, naturalized American citizens. And I have had the privilege to speak at a number of those naturalization services in my district. And those are some very, very proud days for me, Mr. Speaker, but they are far more, as far as proud days are concerned, for the naturalized citizens. That is a highlight of their life. And in their lifetime, of the things that matter to them, the day of the citizenship ceremony stands out. It stands out and maybe stands with the day they get married perhaps, maybe the day of their first-born child, those kinds of milestones in life. The naturalization service and ceremony is a milestone that stands with the very finest events in our lifetimes. And so those people that came here and became naturalized citizens, they don't want to see amnesty for people who jumped the border to get here or broke the laws to stay here. They know what amnesty is, and they don't want to see their citizenship cheapened by having it for sale, putting it up for a $1,500, $2,000 or $3,200 check. What price citizenship for America? Priceless. But you have to demonstrate that you are going to respect the laws and live by the rule of law. And so, some time back, I went to a groundbreaking ceremony for a, it was an $81 million expansion of a plant in my district. There was an individual there who was protesting me, and his signs said things such as, I am a former or a current illegal immigrant, and I believe that we ought to give amnesty to these people that are here illegally, and they should have a path to citizenship--different phrases to express what I have just said. And so I find out afterwards that he is not shy about saying he is also a former illegal immigrant who was granted amnesty in the 1986 amnesty that was signed by Ronald Reagan. So here is an individual who jumped the border, came here illegally, living presumably in the shadows. 1986 rolled around, and by the stroke of a pen over at the White House, he and more than 3 million others received amnesty. Now he is out protesting in the streets, declaring that 10 or 12 million or, more appropriately, 60 to 90 million people should have the same path to citizenship that he achieved by the stroke of a Presidential pen 20 years ago. And he is advocating that people break the law, jump the border, come here and make demands on American taxpayers and demands for a path to United States citizenship after they have shown contempt for the laws of the United States of America. And their first act was to break the law of the United States of America. The very first moment they set foot on this soil across that border, they broke American law. And they march in the streets and demonstrate in the streets, with flags from other countries often, and argue that they are not criminals. But I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that if they cross the border illegally, they are guilty of a criminal misdemeanor. By definition, it is a criminal misdemeanor punishable by less than a year in jail. I think it is 6 months, actually. But that is a criminal misdemeanor. That makes them criminals if they are guilty of this crime. It isn't the Congress that has passed a law in H.R. 4437 that makes them criminals. That would make them felons. And they are arguing that they are not criminals. Yes, they are. They are criminals. They haven't been adjudicated to be criminals yet, but they admit to their criminal action. They just say, don't call me a criminal. Well, respect our laws, please. And if you do that and you don't break our laws, then we won't call you a criminal. And, in fact, we wouldn't be moving legislation that would identify felons either by that standard, Mr. Speaker. And so people who are granted amnesty, who have broken our laws, have contempt for the rest of our laws because they have profited from breaking our laws. And that is the wrong kind of reward. If we reward lawbreakers with citizenship, what are you going to get? More lawbreakers. The same Ronald Reagan that only let me down about twice in 8 years in office, and I have mentioned one of those times. That same Ronald Reagan said, what you tax you get less of. What you subsidize you get more of. And you know if you subsidize law-breaking you are going to get more law-breaking, Mr. Speaker, not less. You aren't going to be able to draw a line in the sand and say now we are not going to tolerate any more law-breaking. There is no will in this country right now within the administration to enforce the laws we have. And the White House is working against the laws that we are trying to pass asking for more enforcement. And they are working with McCain, Kennedy, Hagel and Martinez over in the Senate, working on their version of amnesty, saying we are for this. We are opposed to amnesty, but we think we ought to be giving people a path to citizenship who broke the laws to come here. They just should have to do this rigorous process of moving towards American citizenship and finding this path to citizenship, and it includes learning English and keeping a job and paying some of your taxes. That sounds like a lot, doesn't it? Paying some of your taxes should give you a path to citizenship, not all of your taxes, some of your taxes, 3 out of the last 5 years. You pick the 3 years to pay the taxes in. Well, I would like to be able to do that. I had a couple of good years out of the last 5. I would like to take those out and say, send me my money back, Uncle Sam. That was a little tough on me. And I want to do this. If we are going to give this to people who broke the laws to come here and who aren't paying any taxes, to offer them, you pick the lowest 3 out of the last 5 years and pay your taxes, and we will give you this plum of citizenship, I think we are going to have millions and millions of people who don't pay any income tax at all. In fact, we have that today. So this function of just pay your taxes 3 out of the last 5 years, it will be okay. That is not amnesty. I am saying that, itself, is amnesty to not require them to pay those taxes. Another argument that is in the Senate bill is, well, they have been here working, they have been paying Social Security taxes, so surely you will want to grant them credit for the money that they earned so that they can collect their Social Security and put pressure on that system when they reach that retirement level. Mr. Speaker, they earned the money illegally. If they weren't here working here legally, their earnings are not legal either. And to reward them with a retirement fund when our Social Security is going to go bankrupt if we don't overhaul that Social Security, and on that case, the President has been right all along, the need of a personal retirement accounts, need to overhaul Social Security, put more pressure on it because the Senate somehow believes it is not fair. It isn't just if we don't grant people that have been working here against the law the benefits that come with that in the form of retirement and SSI. Their families are going to benefit from this as well, the death benefit that goes along with it, the disability benefit that comes along with it, because they have been earning money under a false Social Security number. And somehow we are going to ratify and certify and give people a benefit for having broken the laws of the United States of America. That is wrong, Mr. Speaker. And so, Social Security is one piece of this. And putting citizenship up for sale is another piece. And how do you determine the value of that citizenship? Do you grant that by what is a coyote charging today? Is it $1,500, $2,000, $3,200 in order to get passage into the United States illegally? Whatever that price is, it seems to be indexed pretty closely to the price that citizenship is for sale over in the United States Senate. That is how I would describe what is going on here: citizenship for sale in the United States Senate, running contrary to the rule of law, undermining American values, weakening our entire culture and building, not shutting off the jobs magnet, but turning on the current to the jobs magnet with even more amperage, Mr. Speaker. Because once this carrot of citizenship, this path towards amnesty that would be granted under the Senate language happens, there will be untold millions more come across the border that want to come here and take advantage of the amnesty that has been offered, or if they aren't able to get on that particular bandwagon, then they will want to take advantage of the next inevitable amnesty that will come along. There have been seven amnesties in the last 20 years. We talk about the 1986 amnesty; there have been six others. Smaller, lesser, they came about because we missed some people in 1986, so we had to pass a few more amnesties to catch up and kind of clean up those people that are here in this country. And the promise in 1986 was, well, but this is the last time. This time we really mean it, in 1986; this time we are really going to enforce the law. This time we are going to make sure that we seal and control our border. This time we are going to be 100 percent confident that the Federal Government is going to do their job. 1986. And, you know, there was some enforcement going on in 1986. And it didn't take very long before we had a new President and then another new President, and then in 1992 we got President Clinton. And I was appalled at the lax approach that President Clinton had in enforcing our immigration laws. That is when I started to pay attention because I saw that there were people that were being naturalized before the 1996 election, particularly in California, perhaps a million of them, who were hustled through the process and went to the polls and voted. And they knew their duty. Go to the polls and vote. Vote for the President. That is the way you say thank you for getting hustled through the citizenship process. That was appalling to me. A million people, many of them in California. Those people, some of them have, for want of a better term, matriculated to Iowa in order to, and gone to work there, and that is how I hear these things, they come up there, a million people. Today, a million people sounds like chump change, Mr. Speaker. A million people coming into the United States quickly under the Clinton administration. But, the facts are, employers during the Clinton administration were far more likely to be sanctioned and punished for hiring illegals than they are today. Under the Clinton administration, they were 19 times more likely to be sanctioned by the administration for hiring illegals than they are today. The risk was 19 times greater. That is how much enforcement has diminished over the last 20 years. 1986 to 2006 enforcement of immigration laws has gone down to the point where it is almost nonexistent. Border control has not been anything that alarmed anyone in this administration until they got an alarm that they weren't going to be able to get their guest worker plan passed, and then that alarm sent out the message that said, we are going to have to position ourselves so that America sees that we are going to enforce the laws. So we have got a few more Border Patrol agents. We have got a commitment to send the National Guard down there. We have got speeches that talk about a virtual fence. And I would say that a virtual fence is not going to keep out the forces that are pushing on that border. Now, I could talk about this border to significant lengths. I have been there about four times in the last year. But I think that those trips down to the border are far less than those that have been made by my friend from Colorado. And my friend from Colorado has been on this issue, I believe, his entire congressional life. I have been on it my entire public life and before. I grew up believing in the rule of law. It wasn't something that we conceived of sanctuary policies, or we didn't think that because we were a municipality or a county or a State that we didn't cooperate in enforcing Federal law. Law is law and we have to work together at all levels to enforce all laws. And issue after issue has been brought to this floor and before the American people by my colleague from Colorado, and I would be very happy and honored to yield so much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Tom Tancredo.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Georgia. I yield back, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Colorado. It is important, I think, Mr. Speaker, that we are able to hear that direct message from the Colorado State legislature. That is an amazing thing beyond the conception of us, I think, here a year or two or three ago, let alone four or five or six when this issue first came up. And I would even go back to my recollection in 1996, when Pat Buchanan ran for the Presidency and he said, I will call hearings. I will make sure we have a national debate on immigration. And that was what we lacked in 1996. That is what Mr. Tancredo has been working for for all of these years he has been in this Congress. We are at this point now where you cannot avoid a national debate on immigration. It is everywhere. It is in the coffee shop. It is at work. It is here in this Congress, Mr. Speaker. It is in our churches. It is in our homes. It is absolutely everywhere. And the reason is because it has gotten so bad that Americans are being personally impacted piece by piece by piece. They are standing up saying, What can I do within the jurisdiction that I have, within the resources that I have? How can I step in and fix this? And we have seen other States take action too. There have been 8 or 10 States that have had some kind of legislative immigration activity going on. And so I applaud them for that. And the Minutemen, I had the privilege to go down to the border of Arizona and Mexico and help build some fence to get some of that project started. And I happen to have a list of 25 Members of Congress that would be happy to help put some fence up to be able to control this border. But I want to lay a little groundwork for that before I yield to my colleagues. And that is this: that an administration that had the determination to shut off the jobs magnet and enforce the laws at our borders; if we had the ability and the will to enforce our borders and shut off that jobs magnet, and add into that shutting off birthright citizenship, which is another magnet that brings people here and starts that chain migration for up to 350,000 babies every year that should not have been born in the United States of America, those kinds of decisions from an administration that was committed could have kept this under manageable proportions. But what really has happened is that lack of commitment has allowed for a lack of enforcement. The lack of enforcement, that message echoes through the entire countries south of our border, on the Rio Grande and at our border with Mexico. When that happens, it magnetizes and more people come into the United States. Now we have a situation where 4 million people a year pour across our southern border. Four million. And I went down there and repeated what the Border Patrol tells me here in hearings, that they stop perhaps 25 to 33 percent, a fourth to a third of the illegal border crossers. And they are not very free about talking about what percentage of drugs they interdict coming down there. They will talk about the tonnage, but not the percentage. They say 25 to 33 percent of the border crossers they stop. And I say that to the Border Patrol people who are down there sitting in a nice quiet place where they do not have to worry about a superior listening in on them. And some of them laughed when I said, You are stopping 25 percent, maybe 33 percent? Some of them laughed. None of them said yes. One of them went into hysterics and said, 25 percent? We are not stopping anywhere near 25 percent. I asked them all what is the number. The most common number I got was perhaps 10 percent. I had one of the high-level investigators tell me we stop about 3 percent of the illegal crossers and about 5 percent of the illegal drugs. But the power and the force of this is just awesome. It is $65 billion worth of illegal drugs coming across our southern border, and that is a powerful force, Mr. Speaker. That force is so powerful that even if we shut off all illegal people coming across the border, even if we shut off the jobs magnet here in the United States, even if we end birthright citizenship to shut off that magnet, that does nothing to shut off the $65 billion worth of illegal drugs. And that is why we have got to build a fence, and that is why we have got to build a wall. That is not an administrative decision on whether to enforce or not, whether to deploy people or not, or whether to actually arrest them and prosecute them. That is a physical barrier, not an administrative decision. That is why it is important, Mr. Speaker. And I would be happy to yield to my friend from Virginia who raised this issue with a powerful voice on immigration.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, there are really only two reasons that a person might ask for a ballot in a language other than English. One of those reasons would be if you are a naturalized citizen and you had received and earned your citizenship here. That is a Federal requirement, though, to demonstrate proficiency in the English language, both the spoken and the written. So one would presume that if you are a naturalized citizen and you ask for a ballot in a language other than English, that you somehow circumvented the standards that are in Federal statute. So I do not think that is a legitimate reason to ask for a foreign language ballot. The second reason would be if you were born in this Nation, by birthright citizenship, and you had grown up in an enclave where you did not absorb enough English to be able to go to the ballot box and cast a ballot in English. In that case, we have a Federal statute to protect your right to vote, and you have a right to vote, because you can bring someone into the voting booth with you to do that interpretation. So those two things are covered. What this Stearns amendment does is removes the Federal funding that enforces this multilingual ballot mandate. It ends the Federal foreign language mandate, at least for a year. It is a good thing to do. But if localities want to express this, they can. The States or the counties or the voting districts can still continue to present ballots in any language that they choose. That is why this is a good Stearns amendment. That is why it is something that we ought to do for the future. We are looking at bringing in perhaps millions and millions of new citizens. That is hanging in the Senate today. If we do that, with the President talking about the need to learn English, then for those reasons we need to assimilate and encourage people to use the English language. This is a gentle amendment. I urge its adoption.

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, let's be clear about what we are talking about here. This is a case where the police officers had a warrant, and it was a legitimate warrant, and that is not in question. And then, when they approached the location to serve the warrant, they knocked, and within about 3 seconds, and they admit this, then they entered to conduct the search, there was the subject of the warrant. And the question is, did the police officers then wait a reasonable time? Did they meet that reasonableness standard? And they agreed that they did not. But the issue really is, the warrant was there. It was a legitimate warrant. It was a warrant that, had it been served exactly according to the letter of the intent of previous case law and the Constitution, then that evidence would have been admissible in court, not excluded. So the court ruled that simply because the officers were abrupt in their entry was not a reason to exclude the evidence from the court. That is the case here with Hudson v. Michigan. That is the kind of thing that the Hinchey amendment would seek to preclude. Now, I do not know what the motivation is for that. I do not know why one would want to, because we had some maybe abrupt or rude police officers exclude evidence from a court, especially criminal court. I would think we would want to have that evidence available to the court, and then we would want to take a look at the kind of activities on the part of those officers, because there are other remedies that can be found. Those other remedies are in the civil courts, the remedies are in police officer enforcement, and there is also a particular Federal statute that allows for that relief. So I would submit then, Mr. Chairman, that there is plenty of relief here to resolve this, and the Hinchey amendment goes the wrong way. Furthermore, by the time, it would be impossible for Justice to comply with this amendment, because by the time the court ruled that they had not complied with the Hinchey language, they would have already served the warrant, already taken action on this, and already the funds would have been expended. So it would be impossible to comply with this particular amendment. The effect of it would be to tie the hands. If they did, they would have to be very, very cautious about how they take care of these activities, and that would mean that there will be times when these criminal cases that would not be investigated, warrants that would not be appropriately served for fear that they would be in violation of this amendment, even though there is a not a way to avoid it.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I do not believe that was my argument, was the practicality of how we comply with the Hinchey amendment, and the fact that it is impossible to comply with the Hinchey amendment, however impractical it is. So I would submit that this does tend to circumvent Hudson v. Michigan, and I would ask for opposition to the amendment.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, it is a Federal mandate for foreign language ballots. Anybody can vote locally on that. But it takes away the Federal requirement for foreign language ballots and allows individuals to bring interpreters into the voting booth. That is protected by Federal statute, those two points. So it doesn't take away foreign language ballots. It just takes away the Federal mandate that requires them. There is surname analysis. We are also using dialects, 16 to 17, in Michigan; and that has got to stop.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to address this issue. As a member of the Judiciary Committee, we do have concerns about our jurisdiction over this particular subject matter. But it is certainly true that there are whistle blower cases where multiple requests for extensions by the Department of Justice unnecessarily delay a final resolution of the case in the courts. But this amendment in its rigidity is not an appropriate solution, and I am concerned about this. The courts currently make the decision as to whether an extension should be provided to the government in these cases. The government cannot singularly decide to stall the case, and the use of the False Claims Act has proven to be one of the most effective tools we have to go after fraud against the government, especially large-scale fraud. But in those cases where a whistle blower has brought large acts of fraud to the attention of the government, the fraud is spread throughout a large enterprise. And in those cases, there may be a very real need to request multiple extensions in order to establish a viable prosecution on behalf of the government and therefore maximize the chances of recovery. In those cases, multiple extensions are to the benefit of both the government and the whistle blower. I point out some issues that have to be dealt with by the Department of Justice in these cases, and that would be, first of all, that if the government has a tip, they will have a 5-year statute of limitations to bring a criminal charge, a 6-year statute of limitations to bring a civil charge. And when you look at all the things that a case has to do, first we should keep in mind, each case is different, and they cannot all fit in necessarily to a 6-month extension clause, but they might be stretched out across that. They might be less time than that. The whistle blower often agrees to those extensions, but it is the judge that has to decide. And then, think in terms of the work that must be done by the Department of Justice. First of all, they have got to interview the whistle blower and document evidence and establish an investigative team and then to consider whether to conduct a criminal investigation and coordinate that with the agency. They may need also to issue subpoenas for documents, interview relevant witnesses and even perhaps defer a decision in case to case and also perhaps also include a grand jury. All of these things are things that have to be considered into this amendment that is offered by Mr. Baird. So I would suggest also that, of these kinds of whistle blower cases, a list of some of the very high dollar cases that took extensions beyond what the limitation of this amendment would be, for example, these are the things that would not have happened if we had been limited to a 6-month extension: HCA, $1.7 billion claim; Serono, $700 million claim; GlaxoSmithKline, $140 million claim; TAP Pharmaceuticals, $875 million; Astra Zeneca, $354 million; and I hesitate to say this, King Pharmaceuticals, $124 million; Advanced PCS, $137 million; Schering-Plough, $345 million. You get the understanding. That is about half of my list that I present here. I know there is a lot more discussion to take up. But all extensions must be approved by the judge, and I think it is worthy of deliberation. I appreciate the gentleman for bringing the amendment, and I am hopeful that we can find a resolution that is constructive to the justice we all seek and the efficiency that we seek within the judicial branch of government and the Department of Justice.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, the Fiscal Year 2007 Science, State, Justice and Commerce Appropriations bill would fund the JAG-Byrne program at $367 million, which leaves a gap beyond what many States and local law enforcement agencies can fill without cutting multi- jurisdictional task forces which are critical in fighting the war against drugs. At a time when meth and other drug crime enforcement has already stretched funding resources thin, this funding reduction will certainly have a negative impact. Most of Iowa's meth is in the purer form of ``Ice.'' It is coming into my State from a foreign nation, Mexico. Our cocaine seizures are almost all of Mexican origin. Recent marijuana seizures in Iowa are of Mexican origin. States, like Iowa, can use Federal assistance in dealing with this now national and international drug problem. State resources are being stretched thin to combat meth trafficking from Mexico and to work drug conspiracies that have their roots in Mexico and beyond. I continue to support increased funding for Byrne grants. State and local agencies take the brunt of meth investigations without Federal assistance. More than 90% of drug arrests nationwide are made by State and local law enforcement. Tom Constantine, former head of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) testified that the majority of DEA cases begin as referrals from local and multi-jurisdictional drug investigations. He was unaware of any major DEA case during his tenure that did not originate from information gathered at the State and local level. Byrne-JAG is an effective Federal partnership with State and local law enforcement. The key is local control and information sharing across local, State and Federal jurisdictions. Last year, Byrne task forces seized 5,600 meth labs, 55,000 weapons, and massive quantities of narcotics, including 2.7 million grams of meth. These results demonstrate the power of using Federal dollars to leverage State and local partnerships. The National Drug Threat Assessment 2006, authored by the Department of Justice, found that Mexican criminal groups control most wholesale distribution of powder and ice methamphetamine. According to DEA and HIDTA reporting, Mexican criminal groups are the predominant wholesale methamphetamine traffickers in the country--even in the Northeast and Florida/Caribbean Regions--supplying various midlevel drug dealers. Mexican control over wholesale and midlevel methamphetamine distribution is likely to increase as a greater proportion of wholesale methamphetamine production occurs in Mexico-based laboratories. Unfortunately, declines in domestic methamphetamine production, particularly by independent producers, will strengthen the position of Mexican criminal groups as midlevel and retail distributors. Iowa has made great strides. Iowa is a model for how to address domestic sources of meth lab production with its tough precursor laws. Unfortunately, to meet the demand, more meth is coming in from Mexico. A coordinated multi-jurisdictional response involving local, State and Federal agencies is crucial. Local law enforcement needs to have the funds in this amendment to fight drug crimes.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for yielding me time and for the privilege to address this issue. Mr. Chairman, we have heard from the other Member from Iowa (Mr. Latham) that the Food and Drug Administration has classified marijuana, along with heroin, LSD, methamphetamine, hashish and a number of other drugs, as Schedule I drugs. That is because they carry a high potential for dangerous abuse. And so doctors in most States even prohibit them for being prescribed for medicinal purposes. That is a standard. That is the national standard. The issue was raised about States' rights. But no one has raised the issue about States' rights about the other drugs that are Schedule I drugs. But we do have a right, a constitutional right and an obligation to regulate drugs in America. The question really is, is marijuana among them? And it is. And so we would be seeking to, by this amendment, usurp that decision and change that standard. But with regard to the addictive nature of marijuana, I am looking at a study here that says that if adults started at a fairly young age, say by the time of 26 or older, they used marijuana before the age of 15, 62 percent reported a lifetime cocaine use, 9 permanent reported lifetime heroin use, and 54 percent reported nonmedical use of psychotherapeutics. And this does not include methamphetamines, which is abused more than any of these drugs that I mentioned here. So this is a high use issue. It is also something that infringes upon or inhibits our ability and our reflexes with regard to driving. So, for example, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that marijuana use has been shown to impair driving performance. These things we know. Then with regard to the gentleman from California's statements about he could not, that Mr. Nofziger could not get himself to eat, if that is our issue, then let us focus on the synthetic THC that is now available. It is available in a drug by the name of Marinol, and it has been proven to be effective, especially dealing with cancer patients and with the nausea associated with the chemotherapy treatments and also with the appetite, that might help assisting the appetite with AIDS patients. There is a way that we can use the THC, and there is a way also that we can protect this country against that kind of Schedule I drug. Mr. Chairman, I urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I rose for the same point of order.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I do, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, this point of order is raised appropriately, and I concur with the gentleman from West Virginia in that it is legislation on an appropriations bill. It is actually a taxation. It is a revenue generator. It levies a tax on explosives and on firearms ammunition, and it is a way to generate revenue, perhaps as much as $130 million in this appropriations bill, in order to protect the interests of the firearms industry, the explosives industry, the people that are very closely regulated today and do not need to have additional regulation. Mr. Chairman, it is important that the section be struck out, but it is also important that we maintain our standard here and avoid legislating on an appropriation bill. So, with that, I again suggest that this point of order is one that is very solid on the policy of not legislating on appropriation bills, and I urge the Chair to sustain that point of order.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Tennessee, and I wish to associate myself with every remark made here in this spontaneous demonstration of Mr. Wamp's heart and head and involvement in this big effort that we have. I don't think it can be overemphasized, and I am going to make it a point to go back and look at the Congressional Record and read through those words again. Sometimes there is a gem that shows up here on the floor; and this is something that happened tonight, Mr. Speaker. I do greatly appreciate it. I want to emphasize that I believe that our United States military that is involved in this conflict, this global war on terror, it is the very highest quality military ever sent off to war. And I don't say that to diminish the contribution on the part of anybody, especially the greatest generation or those wars that came behind. I say this to build on top of that reputation, not diminish it. But some of the reasons we heard from Mr. Wamp were, first of all, they are an all-volunteer service. And not only that, they are people that have all volunteered for this conflict, because this conflict has gone on long enough that everyone had a chance to re up. So everybody that is in uniform got to consider the current state of conflict globally, and they signed back up again in numbers far larger than ever anticipated. They said, I am going back for a second tour, I will go back for a third tour, I will put my life on the line, and I will certainly put it on hold for a year or more to give the Iraqi people a chance at freedom. Because they believe, as Zach Wamp and I believe and as President Bush believes, that we never go to war against another free people. Free people resolve their differences at the ballot box, not on the battlefield. That demonstration of that has been true throughout history, and it can be true in the Middle East as well. I continually point out this example, and that is on 9 November, 1989, when the Berlin Wall went down, when people climbed over the top of it and chiseled pieces of it out and broke champagne bottles on it and families were reunited, the story in the mainstream media was all about how families were reunited, and they seemed to think it was all a personal thing, that now they didn't have to write letters across the wall or maybe wave through the Brandenburg Gate at each other or go to Checkpoint Charlie and figure out how they might get through. No, it wasn't about that. It wasn't about that at all. It was about the end of the Cold War. It was about the Iron Curtain crashing down November 9, 1989, not predicted until you look back at Ronald Reagan when he said, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. And the people tore down the wall out of a desire for freedom. That desire for freedom, once that wall went down, November 9, 1989, within about 2 to 3 short years, freedom echoed across eastern Europe, almost bloodlessly. And I will say virtually bloodlessly in the single most significant historical event of my lifetime, the end of the Cold War, Mr. Speaker. That freedom that echoed across eastern Europe for hundreds of millions of people can be the same freedom echoing across the Arab world for hundreds of millions of people. And that is a formula for a final victory in the global war on terror. But not until then. Because there is a habitat that breeds terrorists. There is religious fanatical beliefs that their path to salvation is in killing people who are not like them. And we are some of their preferred targets. Wherever we are, they will attack us until that ideology is defeated. You have got to do it boots on the ground there, and you have got to give people freedom and hope, and that is what we have been doing ever since September 11, 2001. The American people have voted on that issue. They have elected their Commander-in- Chief. I heard these Presidential debates in Iowa. First in the Nation caucuses and continually eight or nine and sometimes ten candidates for the White House would get up every morning and decide what can I say to tear down President Bush. And they would have advisory teams out there trying to find soft spots that they could attack the President on. They didn't stand up and debate the differences between them as candidates, to determine who would be the nominee for the presidency. They decided that they would line up and take shots at the President. Whoever could be the most aggressive criticizer of the President presumably would be the one who then won the nomination and went on to run for the presidency and perhaps the White House. That is when Howard Dean melted down, John Kerry emerged. The John Kerry who stood there and said over and over again, wrong war, wrong place, wrong time. First I voted for it before I voted against it. That example of leadership, that gift that kept on giving, and probably the biggest reason why we have this fine leader in the White House today is that that gift that kept on giving kept reminding the people that there was a stronger leader that had a clearer vision; and that has been true in spite of relentless, relentless attacks. My friend from Tennessee also talked about how important it is for us to be a sovereign Nation that secures our borders; and I wish to pick up on that subject matter, Mr. Speaker. Because, as I watch this situation, and we knew that when we were attacked by enemies from within, most of whom had violated our immigration laws in one form or another, faulty paperwork or let their visas expire, entered into the United States by a method that may or may not have been legal, but certainly the majority of them were not legal at the time that they attacked the United States, the 19 hijackers from September 11, tell us that if they want to come here to do us ill, then we needed to secure our borders. So we got busy and spent a lot of money and set up a lot of new standards; and we have things now that are halfway in place, like US VISIT, where we have a computer database now that tracks everybody that comes into America, that is not quite yet tracking everybody that goes out of America, so we don't have a balance sheet list of who is here. We just have a list of who came. If they come back again, then we can presume that they left and went home again and then came back again. But, other than that, we have not caught up with US VISIT. We set up the security in our airports where it is locked down tight. Yes, they make mistakes and sometimes things get through. But for a while there, you couldn't get a nail clipper onto an airplane without them breaking off the file that you might use to clean your nails and file them with. That is how tight it has gotten. And our matches and cigarette lighters, things like that have been shut off of our airplanes. So we have done a lot. We have done a lot to create a TSA that is there protecting our airports. And we are doing a better job at our ports. In fact, the job that is being done at our ports is far better than the critics would have you believe, because it has got a random and statistical selection process of these containers that are sealed containers, and it is more important than opening every one and looking through them to use our resources to pick which ones to open, which ones to x-ray, which ones to look through. In fact, I have been the witness to some of that success as they have gone through sealed containers in our ports and uncovered contraband material that is in there. But our most porous and most open vulnerability that we have, Mr. Speaker, is the vulnerability in the 2000-mile border between us and Mexico. Down there, when you have that kind of travel of people flowing across the border, and I sit on the Immigration Subcommittee, and for now 3\1/2\ years, I have heard continual testimony, nearly every week, that deals with how many people are coming across our border. And that number, the most consistent number that I come up with as I listen to this testimony from border patrol officers, high-ranking officials, it is their job to know this, and they will say that, well, that number is perhaps four million a year coming across our southern border. Four million. And they will testify that they stop 25 to 33 percent, a fourth to a third of those that seek to come across our borders, which means you have a positive opportunity, a chance, the odds are better that if you want to come into the United States illegally across the southern border, it is better that you make it that you don't. We stopped, out of that four million that come across the border a year ago, we had stopped 1,159,000. That was for 2004. For 2005, we stopped 1,188,000 of those. Most of those were put on a bus, turned around and taken down to the port of entry, and they got off the bus, and they watched them walk through. Some of them got picked up within 24 hours when they came back in again. We have a catch and release program that will stop them seven to 14 times before we adjudicate them and punish them, rather than just take them back. But I would be happy again to yield to my friend from Tennessee at any time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Connecticut.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman; and I will take a good look at the text of that. I know that philosophically we do agree, and I will give it serious consideration, and that is the spirit that we should operate in in this Chamber. I appreciate the gentleman's work on this cause. I do also, though, have an obligation to lay out a disagreement, and that disagreement is with the language we heard with regard to permanent bases. We know that a year ago there was language that was inserted into the Department of Defense appropriation bill, and this was language that I understood a year ago was introduced by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha). This language prohibited any of the funds from being used to negotiate for or to establish any bases in Iraq. Now that language was taken out in conference. It passed through this Chamber, and no one caught it, evidently, and it was taken out in conference, I understand, at the request of the White House, because the President is the Commander-in-Chief. That is something, Mr. Speaker, we didn't hear over here in the last hour, about who it is that conducts foreign policy in America. Constitutionally, the President of the United States has the duty to conduct foreign policy, and he is the Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces. The rest of this verbiage and rhetoric that comes out is an effort to try to fence him in, limit his options, and sometimes make him look bad across the globe. But the President is the one who conducts our foreign policy, and he is the Commander-in-Chief. But the Murtha language a year ago would have tied the hands of the President, would have tied the hands of the Iraqis and prohibited them from even negotiating for a temporary base, no matter how essential for the entire nation of Iraq. Well, that language was stripped out in conference, thankfully so; and the bill went to the President without the Murtha language. This time, the bill came to the floor with the same language back in it again. The language, they argue, prohibits permanent bases. But there is nothing in that language that says permanent. It just says no money will be used to either negotiate for or establish bases in Iraq. All bases, no matter how temporary. Not even to talk about it. Now we have a sovereign Iraq, with a new prime minister, Prime Minister Maliki, and we have a new minister of defense and a new minister of the interior, and now that they are finally standing on their own two feet, within a matter of weeks. We are tying their hands as well as the hands of the Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States, the conductor of foreign policy by Constitution, with language in the DOD appropriation bill that says that not $1 of those funds can be used to even negotiate for a temporary base, no matter how desperately it might be needed by the newly sovereign Iraq. Now, that is a shortsighted policy. That is a foolish policy, Mr. Speaker. It is a policy that if we had followed that policy in each one of the other conflicts we had been in, for example, we wouldn't have bases to operate out of in Kuwait. We wouldn't still be in Germany, a pretty handy place to have. We utilize those bases considerably in Germany. We wouldn't be in places across the Pacific. And, in fact, that place we finally found out was the horizon. When the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) said that we should immediately redeploy back to the horizon, we couldn't get him to define what the horizon was for months. Finally, he has defined horizon. Out on the horizon from Iraq, so you can quickly deploy in case there is a crisis, and I don't know why you would want to let it get to a crisis stage, but that was the strategy, and now he has said that horizon is Okinawa. We should redeploy to Okinawa. From there, we could mount air raids into Iraq, perhaps with some B-52s and do some carpet bombing to teach them a lesson, I guess. But when you are taking on a terrorist entity, you have to beat them on the ground where they are. You can't pull out and let things brew and then come back in with overwhelming force. The gentleman from Pennsylvania knows that. He knows that if we ever pull out of Iraq, they will do everything they can to make sure we don't go back for any reason whatsoever, no matter what the consequences. And I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, the consequences would be cataclysmic if we pull out of there, let things fall apart, and then the terrorists will have the very thing they were seeking to establish in Iraq in the first place. So the Murtha language in the Department of Defense appropriation bill did make it through this floor in the House of Representatives. We could have made some better decisions on that, but it will go over to the Senate, where hopefully it will get pulled out, but I am just confident, if that is not the case, that it will be pulled out by the White House at their request in conference. No president should have their hands tied behind their back and then be drubbed here every night on the floor of the House of Representatives and prevented from conducting his foreign policy. That is what happened at the end of the Vietnam War, and the end of that cost three million or more lives in Southeast Asia because this Congress tried to tie the hands, and effectively did tie the hands, of the Commander-in-Chief. Now, we also hear that they are quite offended by the term ``cut and run.'' And you can describe it a lot of ways, but I can't describe it any better than cut and run. That is what I heard they want to do. Why can't they simply wait for the new government of Iraq to get their feet on the ground and establish themselves and do what they are doing, which is taking on this enemy? They are taking out the enemy, going into Baghdad, in some of the neighborhoods in Baghdad and cleaning those areas out. Now, war is never pretty. It is always ugly, and it is always costly, and you can never measure the progress of a war by the minute or the hour or the day. It has to be looked at incrementally. And sometimes a battle that is lost might end up being the war that is won, and vice versa. We know that the writings that came from General Giap and other commanders of the Vietnam military, they were desperate. They were nearly ready to give up. But what gave them hope and what kept them in that war and kept them from giving up and surrendering was the rhetoric on the part of the left wing United States Senators and House Members. In fact, that is something that is in Bud Day's book. Colonel Bud Day, who is the highest decorated living American war hero, writes in his book that the first years of his incarceration as a prisoner of war at the Hanoi Hilton, as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese, after being shot down over there, the first years they had to write propaganda. But after a few years, all they had to do was quote people like Senator Kennedy and Senator Fulbright and Jane Fonda, and, he said, pick your House Member, that we quote as well. That is going on in this conflict as well, Mr. Speaker, in the same way these 30-some years later. The results are going to be different, because the American people are not going to fall for this same rhetoric again. They are advocating cut and run. If they would like to describe it some other way, honestly, I would be happy to pick that language up, too. I like to use a lot of adjectives. Cut and run is the short term for it. They say that 80 percent of the Iraqis want us out of there. I would like to know more about that poll. I would like to read the question. I would like to know who they asked. I think you could get a higher number than that. I think you could get 99 percent of the Iraqis to want us out of there, the same way they wanted us out of there 3 years ago. They said so. They said, we are happy to be liberated, and we want the Americans to go home, some day. But not any time soon, Mr. Speaker. Not before the Iraqi people have control of the security of their country, not before the political solution at least gets some roots down and gets to operate. And the President has made this clear. But the people on the other side of the aisle would not let the President move troops out of Iraq at a rate that he sees fit. They always want to be a little ahead of him. If the President says we have 150,000 troops there, and they are thinking, well, maybe he will pull 10,000 out next month, they might hear a rumor coming from the Pentagon, and that isn't an air-tight operation over there either, Mr. Speaker, they might hear a rumor from the Pentagon that we are going to move 10,000 troops back to the United States. So people on the other side of the aisle jump to the floor, run down here and say, I demand the President remove 10,000 troops and bring them back to the United States. And they will pound on the podium and make that demand in the hopes it actually happens. Because then they can stand up and say, he finally listened. He wouldn't listen for a long time, but, finally, he listened. They want to get ahead of things so they can declare they were the cause of those decisions. And that just makes it harder for a Commander-in-Chief to make the right decisions. In fact, running out front and trying to get in front of an issue reminds me of Robespierre, who was one of the leaders in France during the revolution, about the 1789 time period. He looked out his window, and he said, the people are marching in the streets; I better get in front of them and see where they are going, for I am their leader. A few months later, Robespierre was a head shorter. I don't know if he ever learned the lesson that you can't lead from the rear. You actually have to have some vision of your own. You can't get up every morning and try to decide who am I going to attack today; who am I going to make look bad. Surely if I can pull some people down the ladder on either side of me, I will look better, if I can drag them down the ladder. That is the mentality that motivates a lot of the people on the other side of the aisle. They said that, according to the Pew Foundation, I didn't hear the percentage, but a significant percentage had a negative image of the United States, a negative image of the United States. Do you suppose some of those people listen to the rhetoric on the floor of the United States House of Representatives on a regular basis? What do they think, the kind of message they are sending? What do they think of the United States? I wonder if they answered to the Pew Foundation's poll, I wonder what the gentleman that made this argument would say if they asked, do you have a positive or negative view of the United States? I am going to say I would expect they would have said we have a negative view, because that is all I hear is a negative view from that side of the aisle. I don't hear solutions. I hear negative attacks on the White House, negative attacks on the Republicans and Congress. Somehow they will learn how to spell Republican with four letters so we can truly be a four-letter word, instead of this optimistic, progressive operation that is looking for ways beyond the horizon to make the world a better place. Then the question was from the gentleman from Washington, Who was driving the bus when it comes to the Iraq policy? When you swear allegiance to uphold the Constitution, you are supposed to understand what is in there. I need to inform the gentleman, the person driving the bus, when it comes to Iraq policy, is the person driving the bus when it comes to foreign policy, and the person driving the bus when it comes to being Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces, in Iraq, its President Bush by Constitution. So I hope that has cleared up some of the issues here. There are no negotiations going on for permanent bases. There would be no negotiations going on for permanent bases. We have no permanent bases anywhere around the globe. We have no permanent bases here in the United States. They are all temporary bases. They are all established for a period of time, a term that can be agreed to by the parties involved. Sometimes it is a short term, sometimes it is a longer term; but none are permanent. If anyone thinks that here in the United States we have permanent bases like Fort Hood, for example, or Fort Campbell would be another, the answer to that is, no, they aren't permanent either. All bases in the United States are all subject to the BRAC approach. We voted on that, and we are closing some bases, and we are downsizing some bases and shifting some materials around. That ought to convince anybody in this Congress if they had ever been through a BRAC vote and a BRAC negotiation, that there is no such thing as a permanent base, no matter how badly Members of Congress would love to have permanent bases in their districts, even these Members, there is not any such thing takes a permanent base in the United States or overseas. We are not inclined to negotiate for them, but we are inclined to negotiate for temporary bases where they make sense and where we can reach an agreement with the people who are the sovereign government of each individual nation in question, including Iraq. I would point out also that we have a neighbor to Iraq called Iran, and this neighbor is developing nuclear capability, not just the ability to build a bomb and detonate a bomb, but the ability to deliver that bomb to a target site. They have said that Israel has no right to exist, and they want to wipe it off the map. They have named us as one of their number one enemies. So sitting next door to Iran, with a couple of large military bases, one would think that it would be a pretty good idea not to foreclose an option to be able to maybe mount an operation from the very bases that we have invested so many dollars into. We have billions of dollars invested in Iraq. We have a tremendous amount of blood and treasure invested there, and that investment should return something back on it. It already has. It has returned freedom to the Iraqi people. If we play our cards right, and we are able to negotiate with them, we might one day look at that and say it was a very good thing that we stripped out the Murtha language and saved the options and the authority of the President of the United States, who is Commander in Chief, and who by Constitution conducts our foreign policy. I would be happy to yield to my friend from Tennessee, Mr. Wamp.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to address you this evening, and I appreciate the fact that my message to you echoes across America in this technology that we have today. As I awaited my opportunity to address the Chair, I also reflected upon many of the remarks that were made by my colleagues in the preceding segment, and I would like to start out first by stating that there were some remarks that I do agree with. I know that may seem a bit unusual, but the objection to the proposed policy by the newly sovereign nation of Iraq to the rejection of the proposed amnesty is something that we stand together on, as I heard my friend Mr. Larson say; and I thank him for raising that issue tonight. As I think about what that means, to offer amnesty to someone for killing Americans or killing coalition troops but not amnesty if they happen to attack Iraqis, whatever stripe they might happen to be, and the same administration will be making demands on us to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law and punish American soldiers that may or may not, but certainly today we know are accused of those kinds of activities.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman and appreciate his delivery here on the floor. I would point out for his edification that at that town where you met that lady in Cleveland, Tennessee, is where I believe this suit was made. You will be glad to know that I look around to find American-made suits, and I buy them off the rack in Denison, Iowa, and I am proud to do it. I appreciate that contribution to this succession here tonight as well. And I point out also, Mr. Speaker, that it isn't just Americans that believe this way. It isn't just Americans that concur with the statements of Mr. Wamp and myself, but I have a survey in front of me. That survey is of the Hispanics in America, and some of these polls are this: that opposing increasing overall levels of immigration, overall immigrations of immigration, legal or illegal, 56 percent of Hispanics oppose it, and 31 percent say let us go ahead and increase the levels of immigration. But 56 percent, a significant majority, are opposed to increasing those levels of immigration. Benefits for illegal aliens, 60 percent of Hispanics oppose; 20 percent support benefits for illegal aliens. And then even a guest worker program is kind of split. It leans a little bit in favor of a guest worker program, but it is not decidedly in favor of that. A pathway to citizenship, Hispanics in America oppose that for people who are in this country illegally today, 52 to 38 percent. So this is not something that alienates Hispanics in America when you stand up for the rule of law. It is one of the reasons they came here. And they followed the law. They jumped through the hoops, and they respect this. And they want us to honor their citizenship and support this rule of law and also defend our border. And the time I spent on the border, and there have been a number of times that I have gone down and invested my time there, I sit down had and, of course, I meet with the highest ranking people that are there, and I see the display of all the equipment that they have and the technology they use and the tactics that they use, and the effectiveness that comes with that gives me a nice warm feeling. Then I go back down there, and I sit alongside the border, and I talk with the rank-and-file people that are the boots on the ground, Mr. Speaker, and I listen to what they have to say. I listen to the Texas border sheriffs, what they have to say, and the local law enforcement along through Arizona as well, and I come up with a little bit different picture. And that picture is, as I said earlier, 4 million people pouring across our southern border every year; and yet if we appropriate the funds requested by the President, it will be $8 billion to protect our sovereign border, 8 billion. And yet the numbers of illegal crossings are going up, not going down. The dollars' worth of illegal drugs coming across the border are going up, not going down. So one would think if money were the answer, if we just threw more money at it, and we had more Border Patrol officers and we had the National Guard down there that the border crossings would go down. Well, they will in some areas until they retool and do their end-run and go through the areas that are vulnerable. And the President has said that we simply cannot stop people at the border that want to come here for a better life. If they want jobs to provide for their families, they are going to come. That has kind of been his answer and it is almost the same tone. As he contends that we cannot stop people that want to come here for jobs, I would argue that we can. In fact, of the forces pushing on our southern border, the easiest force to stop is the one of the honest hardworking people that just want to have a job and a better way of life. Those are the easier ones to stop. And if we cannot stop them, then we sure in the world are not going to be able to stop the criminals, the terrorists, those that want to come here to do us ill, those that are carrying $65 billion worth of illegal drugs across our border. That is a tremendous amount of force, $65 billion pushing against our border and the drugs that come through there. Ninety percent of the illegal drugs in the United States come across the border from Mexico. Has anyone heard the Commander in Chief speak about that subject matter? Has that been uttered in a press conference? Is it anything that seems to be part of the lexicon or the rhetoric that comes from the White House? And I think no. But I think that needs to be a very big part of this debate. If we want to take a position that we cannot stop honest people from coming into the United States, why do we think we can stop the dishonest ones that want to come into the United States? And that is why I contend that the time that I spent on the border, the time that I sat down there in the dark and listened to the illegals unload from their vehicles that drive up near the border, get out, pick up their backpacks and infiltrate into the United States, those that I have seen that are crossing illegally, the things that you see in the streets, 500,000 marching in the streets of Los Angeles with Mexican flags, that ought to give us an image to go by. They are feeling so confident, so self-assured, so strong that they go to the streets to demonstrate against us, thinking that they will scare us into granting them amnesty. I mean, the threat of can you imagine a lawn that wasn't neatly trimmed or can you imagine having to cook your own steaks? Some of those things are arguments that have been made, Mr. Speaker. So I think the American people did get a message from that. I think they understand that there is a growing force here in the United States, and it is growing faster than 450,000 or so a year illegals coming in, growing faster than most realize. Because if 4 million come in and we stop a little over 1 million and take those physically back to the border and watch them go back through the turnstile, some are back the next day. Some are not going back to the border because the Mexican consulate has all of the credentials for them to have access to our stations everywhere along the border, and they decide which ones go back and which ones do not. Now, why do we let the Mexican Government decide that? That is the same mentality of one who would write into a bill that we have to go consult with Mexico before we could build a fence on our southern border. Now, I do not disagree with the gentleman from Tennessee. There is a lot of technology that we ought to be using. But I am a little bit more of a fellow that says I know what does work. We do not know that the technology works. I hope it does, but I know what does work. And as I sat down there on that border and I watched them catching drug dealers and pulling 180 pounds of marijuana out from underneath the bed of a truck and then hauling a Mexican across the border from Mexico that had been stabbed in the liver in a knife fight that just happened while I was there, those incidents come along so often that it is just part of the daily life down there. And the only way that you can shut that off with that force is to build a fence and a wall. And I do not submit that we do all 2,000 miles all at once. I submit that we do so where the highest pressure is, and then when they start going around the end, extend the fence and extend the wall. But I would put a 10-foot high chain link fence on that border. And I would put that fence all the way. We need to define the border, and ``virtually'' does not define the border. So I would put a 10-foot high wall. I would put razor wire on top. I would put a sign on the south side about every 200 feet in Spanish that says: Here is the Web page you can check with your wireless laptop, how to get in connection with the U.S. consulate and how you come to the United States legally. Go apply here. Do not be knocking on the gate on this fence because it is not open unless you have the credentials to come here legally. Every nation has to do that. And as they begin to tear down that 10- foot high chain link fence and cut holes through it and do it like I saw them down there south of Lukeville where they had cut through the chain link fence and chained it back up again and put a hinge in there and a gate through our chain link fence with a double padlock on it and a great big guard dog on the Mexican side, that is their passage into the United States, Mr. Speaker, and it has got to be shut off. Those are people who mean us ill will. So I am going to submit this: this box, before I cut the notch in it, this represents, let us say, the New Mexico, the Arizona, and the Texas part of the border, maybe part of California. Now, just plain old desert. We go in here to build this wall and we dig a trench through here. This is, Mr. Speaker, the trench that one would dig. And as we dig this trench, we build some machines up in Iowa that do a good job. They are the kind of machines that you pull this trencher along here, and as you do that, you pull the slipformer in behind it, and you pour a slipformer of about a 5-foot-deep tongue down in here. And it has got a slot in it, a notch in it. And you move along with that trencher and that slipformer, pouring a footing for this concrete wall that goes across the desert. A 5-foot-deep slot in it with a foundation so that it holds the vertical wall up and it is rigid. And then you get a footing that looks something like this. It won't quite be above the ground, Mr. Speaker, because this area right here would be flush with the ground. But, nonetheless, one gets the image here that we are working with. And then you bring in truckloads of these precast concrete panels. These panels would be 10 feet wide, about 12\1/2\ feet tall, tongue and groove, reinforced with steel, and you would just pick them up with a crane. They weigh about 188 pounds, and you drop them in the slot one at a time. The first one would go in like that. Then you pick up the second one and you put it in like this. And pretty soon we end up with a wall here that will keep illegals out. It will keep the illegals out, and it will also keep out the drug runners, the smugglers, the terrorists. And this is a pretty quick operation. It is not hard to do at all. Our little construction company, which I sold to my oldest son, could do about a mile of this a day. Now, we are not going to be in the business of bidding this. I want to tell you that in the beginning. That is not my interest. I am just taking my background, Mr. Speaker, and using it to demonstrate how simple it is to put together a design that they are not going to get across. Now, it doesn't mean that they are not going to have some kind of human catapult and launch people across it or that they will not design and build some kind of a 12-foot-high ladder. Yes, they will. But it is not going to be that easy because we are going to put some of this wire right on top of there called concertina wire, or razor wire. I only put on one roll, but you could put on two or three, set that the concrete. We can then put cameras on the backside, if we choose, or on the front side. This would be about 100 feet inside the chain link fence. So there would be 100 feet of no man's land that one could patrol. So they would have to come through our 10 feet high chain link fence on the south side with the razor wire on top of that. And they will try to do that. When they get to this wall, they would probably carry their 12-foot ladder through the fence. They would put it up on top and they would try to get over here on this side. They do not know what is over here. They cannot see the sensors, the cameras, the vibration sensors, the infrared, whatever is there that would trigger our warning, and that will let the Border Patrol converge on that area. We can shut this traffic off going across our southern border at least 90 percent and maybe even a number approaching 100 percent if we make a commitment to the manpower to patrol a wall like this. And it will take far less manpower. We are spending $8 billion on our southern border, $8 billion. That is $4 million a mile. And I would say this: if you would pay me $4 million and say, Steve, you protect that mile, I am going to protect that mile. There will not be a species of anything getting across that mile if that is what my contract says. So I will submit that the easiest way to do that with the least amount of manpower is build a fence, build a wall. This can be constructed for about $1.3 million a mile. One point three, when we are spending $4 million for that mile, every mile, to wear out Humvees and have our Border Patrol park on the X and watch people come through, sometimes a border that is not even marked, let alone fenced. And if it is fenced, it is not even a barrier for human beings. We are talking about building a lot of fences along the border that are vehicle barriers so semi-trucks full of marijuana cannot get through and straight trucks full of marijuana cannot get through and pickup trucks that have drugs in them, it is harder for them to get through. But, still, what they do is they just create burreros, pack horses, human pack horses. So they will bring the drugs up to the border, and if there is a vehicle barrier there, they will throw their marijuana through, their drugs through, go through and load their backpacks up with that, and each one of them carries 50 pounds of drugs, 25 miles across the desert, up to a predetermined location point where they will then take their packs and toss them in the back of the semi or the straight truck. Some of those people then, the illegals that are carrying drugs in that pack train, the burreros in the pack train, climb in the truck and they go on into the United States. Some of them are continuing drug dealers. Some are criminals, some want just an honest day's work. And some turn around and walk 25 miles back down in the desert and pick up another load and come back again. When they tell us that maybe 4 million people came into the United States, but a lot of them went back home again, some of them are going back to get another load of illegal drugs. That is how $65 billion worth of illegal drugs comes into the United States, and we can't stop that if we are simply going to sit down there and think that we are going to do this by a virtual approach to the border. We have to do it physically. We have to stop it. $20 billion gets wired back to Mexico out of the wages and labor that is there. Another $20 million gets wired to the Caribbean and Central America from the labor of the United States of people that are here. So there is $40 billion that goes south of the board that comes off of the labor. Out of the $75 billion worth of labor at the hands of illegal people in the United States, most of it comes out of there. It is $40 billion going south. Additionally, there is another $65 billion paying for the drugs that comfort north. So we have got altogether over $100 billion being used for drugs and the economic incentive for Vicente Fox. Over $100 billion. And what is the next highest economic factor in the Nation of Mexico? Oil. $28 billion worth of oil. But this overall drug and human package for just Mexico is $85 billion, nearly 3 times the value of the oil in Mexico. So we must stop this. We must do it with a human barrier. We can do it with this wall. We can build this for $1.3 million a mile. I will stand with it. We will design the machines to do it. We will build it, Mr. Speaker, and we need to stand together as a country.

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 move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the Speaker for the privilege to address this House of Representatives. I came to the floor here to speak about a number of issues, but the subject matter, as often happens when I arrive here and listen to the preceding speakers, that subject matter does change, and I would just take it from the top. Gas prices. Mr. Speaker, gas prices are exactly the same that they would be if we had Democrats in charge of this Congress rather than Republicans. The difference is people have a lot more money in their pockets to buy the gas with, because Democrats would raise the taxes, take the money out of the pockets of the working people and gas prices would not have changed. We need to do more with energy supply, and I am for that. We can't get past some of the Republicans in here. But there aren't Democrats that I know of that will support us expanding the supply of energy. We need to drill in ANWR. We need to drill on the Outer Continental Shelf. I am hopeful we will be able to bring out a bill within the next few days of proceedings in the House so that we can drill on the Outer Continental Shelf for gas and oil, within reasonable limits that we can work out with the States. So, gas prices are the same as what they would be. It is just that people have more money in their pockets under Republicans to pay for this gas. This is also a global market. It isn't a United States market. We are not able to drill for oil in places where we know we have reserves because the environmentalist coalition blocks that drilling in the United States of America, especially the Outer Continental Shelf and other places, our non- national park public lands. We have a tremendous supply of natural gas and oil. We are not able to get into that. That is focused over on that side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, not this side of the aisle. We need a far greater supply of energy, and you will have less energy, not more, if you listen to the advice of the people that spoke ahead of me. With regard to the tax issues that came here today, the estate tax, most of the money that is taxed in an estate tax has already had the tax paid on it. Most of that is earnings that have already had the taxes paid. So if you go out and you earn $100,000 over a year or a lifetime and you pay the income tax on that and that becomes savings that you invest, when that portion of that capital is taxed at your death, much of that, the core of it, the equity of it, the basis of it will be taxed a second time, not a first time. How many bites at the equity apple does government need? Does government need to tax people on death? Does government in fact need to tax people for their productivity? My answer is no. I would take all tax off of all productivity. I would put it on consumption. Then if people inherit a few million or a few billion dollars, when they spend that money, they would pay the tax and no one would escape it. But as we have it today, attorneys, and especially large corporations sometimes have whole floors of tax attorneys whose jobs it is is tax avoidance. So very wealthy people avoid the tax, and very poor people don't pay tax. In fact, even lower-middle income people don't pay very much, and sometimes not at all. It is those middle people in there that have earned a reasonable nest egg that get taxed, but they can't afford the attorneys or they don't do the planning because it is that marginal kind of an equation. But we need to quit taxing people upon death. No taxation without respiration. This bill that we brought out here today doesn't go far enough, in my opinion. And I am not one who is full of class envy. I believe I am the poorest delegate out of the Iowa delegation from a cash-in-the-bank standpoint at least. I am one of the richest on the part of family and those kind of blessings. But I don't envy anyone the wealth that they have earned. In fact, I am proud of them. I encourage them. Keep doing that. People that build equity, their capital, if it is invested in a bank or in stocks or wherever it might be, finds its way into the hands of people that are reusing that money to create jobs. We have to have wealth in this country to create jobs. That is why we have jobs. This idea that we can raise the minimum wage and somehow or another it is going to make the world a better place for people just belies the simple fact that labor is a commodity, like corn or soybeans or gold or the oil that we talked about, and the value of labor is determined by supply and demand in the marketplace. That is why it is $8.50 an hour or more to flip burgers at the burger stand in the Midwest. That is why very few people are working for minimum wage today, is because the supply of labor has not driven the price of wages down low enough that the minimum wage kicks in. The standard is higher. So now the people on this side of the aisle want to raise the minimum wage a couple bucks an hour to try to catch up with what the economy has already done. If the argument ever was there that we should raise the minimum wage, no, the markets have already raised the minimum wage. That is what we ought to have as markets. Sometimes people go to work for a minimum wage and then they realize, I don't like living here. I don't like this low wage that I am getting for the work that I am doing, so I am going to go get an education or I am going to train for a skill, because I want to upgrade this world that I am living in. That should happen to most of us that start out into the working world. It certainly happened to me, and it happens throughout the process. If an entry level wage is what the minimum wage is today, most people aren't there very long before they move on up the line. But if we can legislate a minimum wage without costing jobs, if people don't get laid off when the wage gets pushed higher by a potential Federal increase in the minimum wage, if we can legislate a minimum wage, Mr. Speaker, we can then legislate a living wage; and if we can legislate a living wage, enough money to live on, maybe raise a family on, maybe buy a modest house on, if we can do that, Mr. Speaker, without costing jobs, without reducing the number of opportunities for Americans, if we could take this $7.50 minimum wage proposal that perhaps takes it from $5.15 cents an hour, up a couple of bucks up to $7 and something, if we can do that without costing us jobs, why not take it up to a living wage? Why not take it up to $12, $13 or $14 an hour and call that a living wage, so that people could earn that much money and go buy their modest house and raise their family, and maybe they could do it on 40 hours a week. But I will submit that we don't do that because we know if you raise that wage to that level, it certainly will cost jobs. And if we raise the minimum wage, if you have a minimum wage at all, it costs jobs. We should let the marketplace determine. But the philosophy over on this side of the aisle says no, we have to legislate that at the Federal Government because it is a political kick for them, not because it is a rational economic one, Mr. Speaker. And I will submit that if we can legislate a minimum wage without a penalty to jobs in this economy, we can legislate a living wage at $12, $13 or $14 an hour without a penalty to the economy in this country. And if we can legislate a living wage, there is no rational reason by the rationale of the people on this side of the aisle that we can't just simply legislate prosperity. If we are going to do this and do it at all, then let's legislate prosperity so we can all live in opulent mansions and we won't have to work and work our way up from the bottom at all. What a wonderful country this would be if we could follow the rationale of the people on the other side of the aisle, who say that they don't even worry about partisanship. They don't worry about being bipartisan, about working with Republicans on this side of the aisle. But they say put me in, coach; elect those other people out and put me in, because I want to run this country. But it is night after night after night, 60 minutes, sometimes 120 minutes, of the most pessimistic message anyone could ever hear on any television show anywhere in America on any given night. I mean, if I had that kind of an attitude, I would not want to get out of bed in the morning. I would be afraid to walk over a bridge for fear I would jump off of it. No, this is an optimistic nation. That is not the right tone for America. This is an optimistic nation, Mr. Speaker. We have freedom. We have a freedom that was granted to us from God, that flows through the Declaration into the Constitution, the sacred covenant we have with God delivered to us through our Founding Fathers that he put on this Earth to guarantee us these rights. And we have these guarantees that flow through the Declaration and the Constitution; the freedom of speech, press, assembly, religion, guaranteed property rights. Not what they were before Kilo, I will admit, but guaranteed property rights. The freedom to be safe in our persons and freedom to be judged only once before a court of law. We have equal opportunity under the law, guaranteed under the 14th Amendment and also I believe the 15th Amendment, Mr. Speaker. We all ought to take advantage of that opportunity. We should recognize that on the day that we are born, our glass is half full. In America your chance to fill your glass the rest of the way up is greater than it is anyplace else on this planet. If you have a negative attitude and say your glass is only half empty, and you get this almost terminal case of the ``poor me's'' when you think about what it is like to have to go out and earn your share of the prosperity that is totally available in this country, if that drags you down, then I guess that is the motivation that brings you over here to the floor of the Congress, Mr. Speaker, and that is the motivation that just continually goes into this never-ending series of lamentations that we have heard now for, oh, maybe a year-and-a-half or so. I know that a lot of Americans just turn the channel on that. Well, that is good advice, America. But I am going to talk to you about some other things that are important in bringing out an optimistic message. I would submit, also, that there are bipartisan bills in this Congress and there are many of them. Any time that anyone wants to come into this gallery, Mr. Speaker, or watch this on C-SPAN and watch the votes or look them up on the Internet to see what the votes are, you will often see that there are significant votes up here where maybe almost all of us agree. Time after time after time, it is all green lights up here or all but three or four green lights up here on the board behind where I stand, Mr. Speaker. Those are bipartisan bills. There are bipartisan bills that come to this floor day after day after day. Often for the first day of the week whether it has a Monday or a Tuesday for votes, those votes that come up that night are under suspension because there isn't dissension. We have found issues that we agree upon. We have bipartisanship and we reach across to the other side of the aisle. It is just that sometimes that attitude of ``I don't even worry about bipartisanship'' that were heard over here from Mr. Meeks tonight, sometimes the hand that reaches across for bipartisanship gets bitten and then that causes the person to pull back again and think, well, all right, I guess maybe there are 232 Republicans and I guess we only need 218 votes to pass legislation, so is it worth the effort to have bipartisan legislation. I will submit, I do believe it is worth the effort. Issues come through the committee better. They come through more smoothly. They come to the floor. They pass more smoothly. In fact, there are times when the conscience of the left calls into check the conscience of the right. I am on the right. I am making this confession. We have bipartisan efforts and we need to have partisanship in this Congress. The reason we need to have it is so that we have viewpoints from both ends of the political spectrum so we can come together with a policy that is best for America. That is the mission and that is the vision. I didn't listen enough tonight to know if the people on the other side of the aisle, the lamentations group, have actually spoken about some of the other issues, about the national security. I suspect they have. That is part of the repertoire for every night. But regardless, I am going to rebut that as well. I would point out, Mr. Speaker, that we have some things going on around the world. We are involved in a global war on terror. We know that there is a battleground in Afghanistan and there is a battleground in Iraq. The argument that somehow we went there for the wrong reasons just astonishes me, and I am waiting to hear, maybe ever so faint from the other side of the aisle, the apology for being utterly wrong on weapons of mass destruction. I have not heard that apology from anyone over there, Mr. Speaker. Yet it is true. They have been utterly wrong. I have stood on this floor continually, and I said the law of physics is this. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Now, we knew that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. He admitted he had weapons of mass destruction. He said that he destroyed them and got rid of them, but we could, of course, not believe him. We sent the inspectors in. He had the inspectors running around in circles. Anyone who has listened to the tapes of Saddam and some of his henchmen there knows very well that they knew where the inspectors were at all times and they were giving them the runaround. They talked about it on the tapes. There are 12 hours of tapes there that say so. That material, that information, is available to the public today. And so we know that he had weapons of mass destruction. And we know that he was pulling the wool over the inspectors' eyes. And we know that he used them on his own people. In one instance with only three of the weapons, only three of the canisters for gas, he killed 5,000 of his own people up in Kurdistan. 5,000 people with only three. We got the news. We got the news a couple of days ago, Mr. Speaker. The information about the collection and the gathering of the finding of the weapons of mass destruction had finally been declassified by the Pentagon. When it was declassified then, we saw Senator Santorum and Chairman Pete Hoekstra go before the world and say, We have found weapons of mass destruction. Since 2003, we've accumulated 500 of the weapons of mass destruction. Now, there isn't very much information that is available to the public that has been declassified, and I will confine my remarks to the declassified information that is there. But I would submit, Mr. Speaker, the facts are that we have found over 500 weapons of mass destruction and among those are mustard and sarin gas and that they are lethal and the warning that comes out from the Pentagon is that they remain lethal. And so whether these were pre-1991 or post-1991, nobody on that side said, well, he had them up till 1991, then they're gone again. That wasn't a condition. In fact, they are going to find a way to put conditions on it. No matter how much we come up with, no matter what the reality is, they will never make an admission that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction when we went in. And so they were found. They were found perhaps in various locations around Iraq, and the cumulative total right now is 500. We are confident that we will continue to find more. I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that if we do not find them and if the terrorists do find them, they will find a way to use them on coalition troops, on Americans. They will use them on their own people if they think they can create the kind of chaos that would melt that country down, get us to pull out and turn that into a training center and a mission operations control center for al Qaeda and for their side of this global war on terror. No, Mr. Speaker, Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, he had significant quantities of weapons of mass destruction, and the fact that we didn't end up with great huge warehouses full sitting there waiting for us to ride in on doesn't prove that they don't exist. It has been proven and admitted and no one denies they did exist. Saddam had them. He used them. And so what I have said is, either you have to believe that Saddam Hussein used his last canister of gas on the Kurds and simply ran out of inventory. And so there he was, his warehouses were empty, and we came in to liberate the Iraqis and he simply had used up his supply of chemical weapons. Either you have to believe that or you have to believe that those weapons that we know existed are somewhere. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. So the King version of that is, everything has to be someplace, Mr. Speaker, and we found 500 of them and there are many more someplace, whether they were hauled across the border by the Russians and whether they were buried in Syria, whether they are buried in Iraq. But I would ask the people on the other side of the aisle, this group of lamenting pessimists that we hear every night, if you will confess that there are 500 different pieces of weapons of mass destruction, then you can make your arguments about how much that means to you. It means a lot to the American people. It means a lot to this war effort. But I would ask, then, if they happen to be something that the Iraqis forgot about, which one wag actually said, how do you forget about 500 pieces of weapons of mass destruction, if that is the case and you think they don't exist, where did we come up with these MiG-29s that were buried in the Iraqi desert, fully operational MiG-29s. They were ordered to be buried by Saddam Hussein. We found that out. Did we find these jets by having some kind of a United Nations weapons inspector walking around with a metal detector in the desert? No. Did we find them by using intelligence having someone who said, all right, I know what we did, we dug a hole and we buried these MiG-29s, scattered them around the desert. Here's where they are. Here are the GPS coordinates. Go dig them up. They're operational. You can dust the sand off, fuel them up, and fly them out of here. That didn't happen either, Mr. Speaker. What happened was the wind blew the sand off the tail section of a MiG. Some people looked over there and thought, That's funny. That looks a lot like the tail section of a jet. Let's dig down and see what we have got. They dug down and found out, a MiG-29 sitting there, fully operational, buried in the desert. If they can bury an airplane and we can't find the airplane except by happenstance, weather and good luck, tell me why anyone would think that they couldn't have buried weapons of mass destruction there when we know that they exist, we know that he used them on his own people, we know that he only took three of them to kill 5,000 people and we found 500 of them. And think what kind of devastation that could have been on the American troops and then think about how many others are there somewhere that might fall into the hands of the enemy and be used on Americans, coalition forces, or the brave Iraqis themselves that are in uniform today defending Iraqis to the tune now and the strength of 267,000 Iraqis in uniform defending Iraqis, performing well, fighting well, carrying on operations, taking over security of the country and providing that next level of safety, security and freedom for the Iraqi people. Mr. Speaker, this has been distorted so far that I don't know if I can express my disappointment with the message that the American people have been getting, having gone to Iraq a number of times myself, having looked our soldiers in the eye, having sat down and been briefed by our commanding officers, including General Casey and General Abazaid, having a working relationship with Secretary Rumsfeld on this and knowing that from the lowest ranking foot soldier or marine to the highest ranking officer in our military, to the Secretary of Defense and to the President himself, everyone's message indexes up and down the line, the message that comes out of there is, we are winning, Mr. Speaker, and we are scoring points, and we are providing more security in Iraq, not less, and the future is getting brighter by the day and the enemy is giving up more and more people and more and more equipment and more and more ability to carry out operations. Their will to fight is being destroyed, Mr. Speaker, and it is being destroyed systematically. So, Mr. Speaker, I submit to you that poster of Abu Masab al Zarqawi. Zarqawi was the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. He was pretty difficult to find for a couple of years. He pledged his allegiance to Osama bin Laden, and he was an inspiration and a recruiting force and probably the most evil, diabolical person that we have seen on this globe in my lifetime. He is the person that devised the most brutal ways to slaughter people. He is the one who made sure that he was on a videotape beheading Americans. The torture deaths, the burning deaths, those who were killed, a child killed and had bombs planted inside the cavity of the child and have that detonate when the family comes to collect the body. That is the kind of diabolical evil that Zarqawi was. Now, it is ironic, I think, that he said these things about Americans. Zarqawi said, Americans are the most cowardly of God's creatures. They are an easy quarry. Praise be to God. We ask God to enable us to kill and capture them. ``Americans are the most cowardly of God's creatures.'' That is the last thing I have seen out of Americans. I have not seen any of that out of Americans in Iraq or anywhere else when they put on the uniform. They are the most courageous, the most noble, certainly not the most cowardly, and are far from an easy quarry, Zarqawi. Zarqawi was in a safe house. I appreciate myself and I think, Mr. Speaker, Americans will appreciate the irony of Abu al Zarqawi being in a safe house. That safe house didn't turn out to be too safe for him and the pictures of that house after it was blown to smithereens by two 500-pound bombs that came from a pair of F-16s would tell the world how unsafe it is to be the number one enemy of the United States of America, of the coalition forces, of the Iraqi people and of the free world. And so Zarqawi went to meet his maker and checked into the next life. What has met him there, Zarqawi knows today. But if there is a place for evil people where they burn in infinity, I have to believe that Zarqawi is there. I have never seen such evil out of anyone anyplace on the planet in my lifetime. This is the individual that was the inspiring spirit of al Qaeda in Iraq and pledged his allegiance to Osama bin Laden. Zarqawi was the individual who was the inspiring part that recruited enemy soldiers to work for him. He is the one that organized the funding effort and the military munitions and the equipment that they needed in order to attack coalition forces and the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people, women and children included, where the only discrimination he made was occasionally he would spare the lives of some Sunnis because he had a preference to the Sunnis. This man is now dead and he is gone. In the aftermath of the detonation, the blowing to smithereens of the safe house, there were a lot of data that was gathered there, computer hard drive data and paper documents. And those paper documents and the hard dive data, Mr. Speaker, indexed with a lot of other intelligence that had been gathered around Iraq and other places that were indexed into that location in the world. All of that data that has been pored through now, and I mean all of it, Mr. Speaker, points to one thing: the enemy, the terrorists in Iraq are losing. They are having great difficulty recruiting fighters. They are having difficulty finding funds. They are having difficulty pulling together weapons and they are having difficulty finding the material to improvise explosive devices with. They are having difficulty logistically because security in Iraq is getting tighter and tighter and tighter and moving from section to city, from city to section, and from city to city. It is ever more dangerous than it was before. They are getting demoralized and dispirited. The very thing that some of the people on the left would like to have the enemy think about the United States is actually happening to al Qaeda and the terrorists in Iraq. We are very close to putting this thing away. Their spirit is weak and Von Clausewitz wrote a book, and the name of the book was ``On War,'' and Von Clausewitz's statement on war was the object of war was to destroy the enemy's will and ability to conduct war, and that seems to be a little bit obvious, but I think it is something that bears repeating. We should all be in the same effort here. We should be in the effort of destroying the enemy's ability to conduct war, and that means we need to turn our military loose on them with a ferocity that we can bring to bear, and we have been doing that. We have been doing a great job, both in Afghanistan and also in Iraq, but additionally to that, we need to be destroying the enemy's will to carry out war, to conduct those acts of war, and that means they need to understand that our will will not be shaken. We will not let up. We will provide all of the troops and all of the support for the troops and all of the equipment and the training and the munitions and the weapons and the tactics and the technology necessary to take them out until this is over because the stakes are far too high. We cannot tolerate stepping back from this confrontation. We made a commitment to go in there, and there is only one option, and that option is victory, Mr. Speaker. There is no option to any phased pullout or any drawdown unless it is something that it is no longer necessary to have troops there. There is also an option to escalate if we need to do that, if we see the need to do that, but if we need to do that, that option is on the table. If we needed to double the troops there, that is what would happen, if that is what the generals asked for because this enemy, this one is dead. The ones beneath him, some of them, many of them are actually dead, and the one who follows will soon be. Those that are part of the officers will be sent into the next life as well, but at some point, they are going to understand that they cannot carry on this fight, that it is absolutely hopeless. The best part of it is, Mr. Speaker, it will be hopeless when the political solution in Iraq is fully manifested. Now they have a prime minister. Now they have a fully operational Cabinet, one that was carefully chosen and it was a little bit of a struggle to get to that agreement, but their minister of defense and the minister of the interior, in particular, are very, very important cabinet positions. Those positions are now filled with good people. People that are going to have the best interests of the future of Iraq in mind, not their best interests in mind, but the best interests of the future of Iraq. That means that the minister of defense is going to continue aggressively taking out the enemy. We have seen that kind of leadership out of the prime minister, and we will see that kind of leadership out of the minister of defense. The minister of the interior is going to be looking at their national resources and thinking how do we convert this oil into cash, and they will set up a formula to do that. When that cash starts to flow into Iraq, prosperity begins, and it will take a little while, but it will take root. When prosperity takes root, the root that is there now for freedom goes deeper and wider. It has something to nourish itself, and that will be the profit that comes from marketing the national resources called oil, and the wealth of that will generate the many layers and the cycles and the interconnectivity of the economy. That is all going to take place. That is going to take place because the Iraqi people see themselves as Iraqis first and Shi'ias, Sunnis and Kurds second. They understand that they have one chance at freedom, and that is as a unified Nation, and they are fighting together to do that, and we need to stand with them. We made that pledge. Our commander-in-chief is the commander-in-chief. The President of the United States has that constitutional duty and responsibility, Mr. Speaker, and we need to stand with him. When I see amendments come out here on this floor that undermine the President's authority to conduct this military operation as he sees fit, then that is unnecessary interference. If there is anything that takes away a tool from the battlefield, if there is anything that undermines our ability to do negotiations to work with and cooperate with the Iraqis, that is undermining the war effort, and that should not ever happen out of this Congress. We committed to this task. This Congress voted to commit to this task, and we put up at least two resolutions since then committed to this task. We will, Mr. Speaker, stay committed to this task, and those who work against it are working on the side, and this is what makes this guy, what made him smile was when our left-handed leaders here stand up and say we cannot win: wrong war, wrong place, wrong time. Some say that the American soldiers are carrying out operations that are not becoming of American soldiers. Things happen in war, but our soldiers are conducting themselves with honor and with dignity. Zarqawi, Mr. Speaker, is now gone, checked into the next life. I will tell you, then we have another leader in the other side of the theater in Afghanistan that ran a tape just other the day. This, Mr. Speaker, is Ayman al Zawahiri. He would be second-in-command among the al Qaeda and operating, we think, out of the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has put out a tape, and let me see, it is kind of interesting to watch how they do this when they take some serious blows, as they did when Zarqawi was killed by those American bombs. As we see the intelligence that they are operating out of desperation and despair, that every bit of that intelligence says that they are losing the war, and when we see these weapons of mass destruction have been discovered and accumulated since 2003, when the people on the other side of the aisle say, well, that is not really any big deal, killing Zarqawi was not that big a deal and finding the weapons of mass destruction is not that big a deal and the intelligence is there that says that they are dispirited and they are running out of resources and they are having trouble recruiting, that is not that big a deal. Then we have Zawahiri who does about a 3\1/2\ minute video. He is calling out also I think in desperation, and he says I am calling upon the Muslims in Kabul, in particular, and in all Afghanistan, in general, and for the sake of God to stand in the face of the infidel forces that are invading Muslim lands. Well, I do not know that we have invaded Muslim lands, and I am surely convinced that there is a lot of strong Christians there. That would be a definition, by my definition, would mean they are not infidels. He also calls out to Egyptians. He is an Egyptian-born fugitive, Zawahiri, who says, here is his operation. The collapse of American power in Vietnam, they ran and left. He thinks that is going to happen in Afghanistan. He thinks it is going to happen in Iraq. Americans did not run and leave, but they were deployed out of Vietnam by the direction of this Congress. This Congress lost their will, and losing our will back in 1974, Mr. Speaker, has given inspiration to a man like this in 2006. It is costing American lives today, coalition lives today in Iraqi, and innocent and civilian lives today because that has been what has inspired this Egyptian-born fugitive who also said in his tape, the young men of Islam in the universities and schools of Kabul should carry out their duties and essentially go volunteer for Jihad. But we have a prime minister in Afghanistan. They are a free country. They are a sovereign nation, Mr. Speaker, and people went to the polls in Afghanistan for the first time with those routes to the polls and the polling places being guarded by American soldiers, by coalition soldiers, and for the first time in that place on this planet, free people went to the polls and elected their national leaders, chose and helped direct their national destiny, the first time ever in Afghanistan in the history of the world that that has happened. They elected Karzai. So he says, of Zawahiri, the truly elected leader, the leader of the Afghan people says, Zawahiri is the first enemy of the Afghan people, the first enemy, and then the enemy of the rest of the world, says Karzai during his press conference. He killed Afghans for years, thousands, and then he went to America and destroyed the twin towers. Mr. Speaker, Karzai went on to say we and Afghanistan want him arrested and put before justice. Well, Mr. Speaker, many of Zawahiri's supporters have been delivered to justice, perhaps 600 of them in these last operations. Coalition forces, Afghani troops and Americans are serving well in Afghanistan in some of the most intense operations that we have seen over there in some time, and they are serving effectively over there, Mr. Speaker. They are going to preserve and protect the freedom of Afghanistan. I just have not heard the criticism of the other side of the aisle with respect to Afghanistan as I have with Iraq. I am wondering why that is. Twenty-five million people freed in Afghanistan; 25 million people freed in Iraq. It takes a little longer in Iraq than Afghanistan. Fewer casualties in Afghanistan. There are more in Iraq certainly, and it is sad and it is a tragedy for every family. It is a tragedy for every family, but they can take great pride in knowing that that sacrifice has great value, frees people around the globe, and it is not just the freedom of the Iraqi people or just the freedom of the Afghan people. This is an inspiration of freedom that will one day free every Arab in the world. Everyone through the Middle East will one day breathe free and perhaps even in my lifetime we will see that happen. The return for that sacrifice does not just do that. Some may think why do I care about freedom for an Arab people. I will submit, Mr. Speaker, that to the extent that the globe is free, we can also be more free in this country, safer in this country, Mr. Speaker, because wherever there are free people, they are not plotting and scheming to go to war against us. The United States of America has never gone to war against another free people. We work out our differences in a democratic process. To the extent that the globe becomes entirely free, with people who can have their differences in the voting booth instead of on the battlefield, is also the extent that the world becomes a safer place. Even though we have had ongoing conflicts going on around the world, it seems like it never ends, and in fact, Mr. Speaker, it does not end. It has been a long, long time since we have had conflict that took lives by the millions as opposed to lives by the thousands or even the hundreds. That means that millions of lives, I believe, have been saved, and if this inspiration for the Arab people, if Afghanistan and if Iraq become the lodestars of inspiration for a free people, that echoes across the Arab world the same way that freedom echoed across Eastern Europe, Mr. Speaker, that is the formula for victory in this war. We can get there. We are getting there. Freedom has never been easy and it has never been without price, but freedom is priceless, Mr. Speaker, and it is a profound honor for those who have given their lives also, for those who have given their limbs and other parts of their bodies or a year out of their life to give the Iraqi people a chance at freedom and to help ensure safety and freedom for the American people for perhaps a long time to come, and that, Mr. Speaker, is the reason why we fight. Now, there is another subject matter that needs to be brought up because I hear from the other side of the aisle that it is intolerable. It is intolerable to have the level of violence in Iraq that we have. It is intolerable to have the level of casualties in Iraq that we have. So, therefore, we should cut and run, Mr. Speaker, and that is almost the words that get used, and sometimes they actually do get used. Well, the ranking member of the Defense Subcommittee came here on the floor some months ago, and in news conferences around the country and nationally, and then globally it got picked up and certainly by Al Jazeera and Arab TV that we should pull out of Iraq immediately. Here we are holding together this country and nurturing and training troops, and we have someone who is viewed as a leader in the armed services in this Congress who says we should immediately pull out and pull back to the horizon. That was much discussed around America, and sure it was discussed in the Middle East. I am sure it was a great inspiration to people like Zawahiri. In fact, it was a great inspiration to Zarqawi. He was alive then. But Mr. Speaker, if we should pull out to the horizon, the horizon to me would be some place in range, someplace where kind of the top of the hills so you look down in the valley and shoot down in there if you need to or rush down there if you have to. No. We found out where that horizon was in this past week, Mr. Speaker, when that Member, the representative from Pennsylvania, said, no, we should immediately redeploy to Okinawa. Now, how many people in America could have gotten that multiple choice question right? I would have missed it, Mr. Speaker. If you would have given me two answers, if you would have said Okinawa and let me see if I can pick another one, Australia, I would have gotten it wrong. I would have picked Australia. If you had given me 10 choices across there, I think you maybe could have picked two or three, I could have, as being more likely or less likely but Okinawa? I would have never done that in an essay question or a fill-in-the-blank. I do not know where he came up with Okinawa as a place to deploy all of our troops over to. It is not a tactical thing that makes any sense. It is not a political thing that makes any sense to take our troops and say we are going to take you out of Iraq and we are going to put you in the barracks in Okinawa where you can train, let us say train beach landings in Okinawa to get ready to one day go back and fight in the desert in urban warfare. Does not make sense to me? Now, if he said let us deploy them down to the border, to the illegals that are coming across this border, that would have made sense, but Okinawa? To say we are going to mount military operations out of Okinawa to go into Iraq in case there is some civil unrest where you have to be there quickly, where you have to have boots on the ground, when our troops, our coalition troops and Iraqis have to understand the neighborhood, have to know the people, have to have relationships there in order to be effective? Okinawa? Okinawa? Okinawa? I don't think that there is anybody in America that can, with a straight face, defend such a proposal. And it causes me some concern about the foundation of where that came from. I would like to know. I would like to know if this is kind of a mental equation where you take a kaleidoscope and you bump it and it looks a certain way; and then you leave it like that for a while and you say, this is the way it is. And then over time, you bump it again and it cracks a little differently and you get a different picture entirely. I think that is how we come up with Okinawa. It can't be a rational, deductive reasoning path that gets you there. Even the argument that you can mount air missions out of Okinawa to come into Iraq and somehow they can be effective from there, no, Mr. Speaker, we have many bases a lot closer to Iraq. If there was the idea we would run out of those bases or fly out of those bases, it would not be out of Okinawa. But I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that we do have a base agreement there in Okinawa. We do that in the aftermath of any of our military operations. We have open discussions with the sovereign nations that control those territories and we enter into those agreements so that we can have better security and be better positioned militarily. We have bases in Germany and we have them scattered around in other places around the globe. We have Gitmo down in Cuba that is a legacy left over from the Spanish American War of 1898. So that is something that a sovereign nation must do, Mr. Speaker. So I think we have covered some of this with regard to the enemy, but the issue of the casualties being too great needs to be raised, Mr. Speaker. So I am going to submit something. I was asking the question on how dangerous is it for a regular civilian in Iraq. How dangerous is it? What would it be like when I see violence on television day after day after day? I think sometimes they must announce to the television cameras there is going to be a detonation of an IED so they can set their cameras up and be homed in on the site so they can see the dust and the smoke from the explosion and the flying parts that come out of there. How else would they know to have a video camera set up down there? And I know some of that film comes from the enemy. They set the cameras up and make sure it gets to the news. But we see it day after day after day, something that would appear to be an intolerable level of violence, and something that the people on the other side of the aisle surely can't stand to see, because they come down here on a daily basis and say, bring them home, Mr. President, we can't tolerate this type of violence. But what must it be like for a regular Iraqi citizen, an average citizen that could be living in a random place in Iraq? They might live in a small town or city somewhere. But what are the odds that you are going to be killed in an explosion of a suicide bomber or the detonation of an improvised explosive device? I thought I would look into that, Mr. Speaker, and I came up with some very interesting statistics, and I have them here. This is a little example that tells us about the violent death rate across some countries, some of them selected for their high rates of violence and some selected for their low rates of violence, like the United States; but it is designed to tell us about how dangerous it is to be a regular citizen in Iraq, Mr. Speaker. We went to a couple of Web pages and pulled the most reliable information that is available. This is the information that is used by Congressional Research Service people who provide us factual data to be used here on the floor of this Congress, Mr. Speaker, and in committees. This is the factual data that is used as a foundation for the decisions that are made in Congress. That factual data came up with these numbers for us. The violent death rates for civilians are rated in the per 100,000 category. So here is the United States: 4.28. That means out of every 100,000 Americans each year, 4.28 of them, on average, meet a violent death. That is considered, in the civilized world, a relatively low violent death rate. There are other countries that have lower rates, certainly. Many of the States have lower violent death rates, including Iowa, I might add. But 4.28 is compared to Mexico, with a rate that is more than three times higher. About three times higher. The violent death rate in Mexico is 13.02 per 100,000. Now, Mr. Speaker, I take us to where Iraq is. This is our subject here, Iraq's violent death rates. An average citizen in Iraq is going to be faced with this statistical reality, that 27.51 Iraqis will die a violent death out of every 100,000. Now, keep in mind, there are 25 million of them. So you can calculate what this number is, and I just haven't done this for this survey. But what does that compare nation to nation? Well, it is clear that Iraq is about twice as dangerous as Mexico, 27.51 compared to 13.02. So you are about twice as likely to die a violent death in Iraq as an average citizen as you are in Mexico. But as you can see here, about seven times more likely, 6-point-something times more likely to die a violent death in Iraq than you are in the United States. So it is not so safe by that standard, Mr. Speaker. But when we look down the line on some of these other representative countries, for example, Venezuela, with Hugo Chavez down there, who is really running a tight ship down there, I hear, with 31.61 violent deaths per 100,000. It is more dangerous to be an average citizen in Venezuela than it is an average citizen in Iraq, Mr. Speaker. And even more dangerous yet in Jamaica, only by a little bit, with 32.42 violent deaths per 100,000. So there is your comparison. It gets a little more dangerous as we go down the line: Iraq at 27.51, Jamaica at 32.42. But South Africa, Mr. Speaker, has 49.6 violent deaths per 100,000. Significantly more dangerous to be an average citizen in South Africa, in the nation of South Africa, than it is to be an average citizen in Iraq. Not quite twice, but moving up the line along in that direction. Then we go to Colombia, almost a neighboring country down there. They produce a lot of drugs down there that come up into the United States. There is a drug culture down there and it is violent there, and the death rate is 61.78 violent deaths per 100,000. Clearly more than twice as high a death rate in Colombia as there is in Iraq. Now, that seems to be a little bit shocking, but when you go to Swaziland, 88.61 violent deaths per 100,000. So you are up there a good solid 2\1/2\ times more dangerous to be walking around in Swaziland as a regular citizen than it is to be walking around in Iraq as a regular citizen. That gives us a sense of the level of violence that is there. Can they tolerate that level of violence? Can they be a sovereign nation with that level of violence? If it never diminishes from where it is today, can they still continue to move on and have a civil society; and could they still produce and deliver electricity and goods and services and have shops open up and close down at the end of the day and people could go on with commerce? The answer to that is, well, they are doing it, Mr. Speaker, in Venezuela, in Jamaica, South Africa, Colombia and Swaziland every day, and we are not hearing a word about that in the news. But every day we see the violence in Iraq that the cameras have been trained on before it happens, Mr. Speaker, and it is a distorted viewpoint. Safe in the United States, three times more dangerous in Mexico than in the United States. They have a drug culture down there too that is coming at us at a rated of $65 billion worth of illegal drugs a year, but almost seven times more dangerous in Iraq than it is in the United States, but then incrementally more dangerous in Venezuela, Jamaica, South Africa, Colombia, and Swaziland. I think I made my point on that, Mr. Speaker. So, then, okay we are talking nation to nation, Iraq compared to other nations. But what is it like for those of us who live in cities? We have a sense of what it is like here, for example, in Washington, D.C. Well, I just happen to have, Mr. Speaker, this little chart right here that lays out the relative violent death rate for civilians in the cities. Now, I would point out that we have exempted military deaths in Iraq and police deaths in Iraq, and done so because they are involved in combat over there in a war against the terrorists. So they are faced with running into that on a daily basis and those casualties will certainly be higher. But we are comparing an average civilian to an average civilian in some of these other places in the world. So we will start out here. Let us go to the low side of this, with 27.51 deaths in Iraq. Now, we could not find any reliable statistics for city-by-city data of violent deaths in Iraq, so I can't give you Mozul, I can't give you, Mr. Speaker, Kirkuk, or Basra, or Tikrit, or any of those places. That information is not available by the CRS research that has been done on these Web pages that provided this data. If it doesn't come through CRS, I don't have enough confidence in it being reliable. In fact, we just simply could not find it, so we put out what we have. An average citizen anywhere in Iraq, to give you a sense of what it must feel like to live there, compared to Oakland, California, it is a little bit safer in Oakland, California, with 27.51 deaths per hundred thousand in Iraq and 26.1 in Oakland, California. So if you are walking the streets of Oakland, California, and you are wondering whether it is dangerous or not for you there, you should have about the same kind of feeling if you are living in a random place in Iraq. That doesn't mean there are not highly violent locations in Iraq, but it just means that overall average citizens feel about the same as in Oakland, California. But St. Louis is a little more dangerous than Iraq, on average, with 34.4 deaths per 100,000. Atlanta is more dangerous yet than Iraq, at 34.9 violent civilian deaths per 100,000. Someone said, well, you didn't include the policemen's deaths in these cities. They are not included in this data. And I can't tell you actually whether they are or whether they aren't, but I went back and looked at the level of deaths that we had in the last year, one in Atlanta, and none in Washington, D.C., so you can see statistically it just simply is not relevant. So that issue doesn't really matter to this debate. So we have 27.51 deaths per 100,000 in Iraq, average citizen; Baltimore, 37.7. If you feel safe in Baltimore, you ought to feel safe in Iraq. Detroit, 41.8. The rate is going up. If you feel safe in Detroit, you ought to feel safe in Iraq. Washington, D.C., 45.9 violent civilian deaths per 100,000, and 27.51 in Iraq. Now we are getting up there to that number that is approaching twice as dangerous in Washington, D.C. as it is for an average citizen in a random place in Iraq. If you feel safe in Washington, D.C., you should feel equally safe in a random place in Iraq. There are many places more dangerous than that, but a random place in Iraq. Now, when you get to New Orleans, and this number is pre-Katrina, 53.1 violent deaths per 100,000. And guess what, Mr. Speaker? They called out the National Guard and deployed troops down to New Orleans because the level of violence got so high down there, even with the diminished population. There was a violent murderous event down there, and so the Governor called out the National Guard to deploy them on the streets of New Orleans to get control of that city. Is anyone on that side of the aisle talking about that, about calling the troops up and mobilizing the National Guard to go to New Orleans because of the crime rate? Well, it has finally happened, Mr. Speaker. This crime rate of 53.1, that is almost twice as high as the crime rate in Iraq, might well be higher than twice the crime rate in Iraq after this last flurry of crime they have had, where there were five people that were executed in one vehicle. We don't know whether it was over drugs or a grudge or both, but likely that would be the foundational excuse. There would never be a reason for doing something that horrible, Mr. Speaker. So the Governor called out the National Guard. And the people on this side of the aisle, they are not saying, what is your exit strategy, Governor Blanco? When are you going to get the National Guard out of New Orleans? We don't need to have troops deployed there, in an American city that ought to be a civilized place. They are not calling for pulling the troops out. They are not calling for an exit strategy. They are not objecting to troops being deployed to New Orleans to keep order for a simple crime rather than the kind of violence that comes in Iraq from the terrorists that are trying to turn that society into an uncivil society, Mr. Speaker, the terrorists that are attempting to break that country up and start a civil war; the terrorists that think if they just kill enough people, maim enough people, if they can kill enough people in a heinous enough fashion, sooner or later everyone will say, enough, I can't take it any more. Will you please just stop killing us in the brutal fashion that you are. Why would anybody think they would ever stop? That is their religious belief. That is their religious mission. They think somehow their path to salvation is brutally killing us; killing people who are not like them. And I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that they kill more Muslims than they do Christians or Jews. Not that they are their preferred target, but it is just simply, I think, because they are handier. Those who announce that there is a civil war in Iraq, that resolution that has been introduced over in the Senate and I believe a resolution that may have been introduced here in the House that says there is a civil war in Iraq, how can they come to such a conclusion, Mr. Speaker? I will define a civil war in Iraq so folks can have a measurement to go by, and that is this: 267,000 Iraqis in uniform defending Iraqis trained on the job today, taking over more than 30 bases, covering a high percentage of the real estate in Iraq, Mr. Speaker, and these Iraqis are recruited, and they are mixed up. They are not sorted out by Kurds and Shi'as and Sunnis. They are blended together in one force. When those Iraqis choose up sides and start shooting at each other wearing the same uniform, Mr. Speaker, that will be the definition of a civil war. So great strides have been made. There is a great reason for optimism. There will be a successful conclusion. This Nation will not blink. This Nation will not retreat. This Nation will stand forward until victory. There is no alternative but victory, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, you and Mr. Gates both are giving nerds a good name. Taking up from there, the issue of the balanced budget by the people on the other side of the aisle. I spoke to what happened here in the nineties to balance the budget and what happened to the economy when the dot.com bubble burst and the 9/11 attacks came, and we had to invest billions and billions into homeland security and invest billions and billions into the overall global war on terror. Things will go fast on you in a hurry when you have got to do quick reaction, but the tax cuts have brought a lot of that back. We are moving in the right direction. I am willing to balance this budget. The people on the other side of the aisle are willing to balance the budget if they can raise somebody else's taxes, not their constituents' taxes, but perhaps my constituents' taxes. But I would balance this budget. It is a simple equation. And we always should know what it takes to balance the budget and know whether we are willing to do so or not and have a debate here on this floor, Mr. Speaker. That really hasn't happened a lot of times. But I would submit that if we were to balance this budget, this one that we are in the process now with doing our appropriations bills for the 2007 fiscal year, what it would take is, we have the entitlement spending for Social Security, for Medicare and Medicaid. That goes on. Unless we change the policy there, those expenses are already locked in, and they grow year by year. Interest is something that as long as there is debt, there will be interest. That is also locked in, and it will grow. Those are the entitlements, the automatic spending, if you will. We also have defense spending, which is necessary. I would take that defense spending off the table as far as something that I am willing to cut. I want to make sure that our military have all the best equipment, the best training, the best protective devices, and that they are properly taken care of and well fed and well housed. I believe we are doing that better than any military ever in the history of the world. So what is left is called discretionary spending, these items where we could actually go in and cut some of this spending, this spending that is not on autopilot, and what it would take to balance the fiscal year 2007 budget, when you take nondefense discretionary spending, and that is that smaller piece of the pie, and I have forgotten exactly the percentage that is, but take what we spent in 2006 and cut it 5 percent. If we simply spent 95 percent of the money that we spent on nondefense discretionary spending, that part that we can actually control, if we cut that 5 percent and spent 95 percent of what we spent in 2006 for 2007, we would have a balanced budget, Mr. Speaker. In fact, we might have a balanced budget with a little bit less than that because our revenue has been coming in more than we anticipated, significantly more, because the economy is doing better than we anticipated. That is part, also, of the climate that we are working in. And part of it is also because the dynamics of the Bush tax cuts. The two rounds of Bush tax cuts are the reasons why the economy is going better than we anticipated. So we will get there over time. I think we should be more aggressive in cutting our spending. I have been working to do that. Many of us have. We don't have the votes in this Congress to do that. But the people on the other side of the aisle are not willing to cut a dollar anywhere. They are only willing to raise taxes on somebody else's constituents. And then they say, Give me a balanced budget. That equation doesn't work, Mr. Speaker. The equation that will work is cut the spending. It is the spending, not the taxes. If you raise the taxes, you lower the overall revenue because people will stop doing business. What you tax, you get less of. That is the equation. And the concern about the national debt, let's get to this balanced budget. In fact, let's get to a surplus budget, and let's start paying down the national debt. We did some of that in the middle nineties. If we can do that, we can work this national debt down. It is not a matter of the difference so much of which country that might be holding that United States paper. You see that on the map that Japan holds a lot, China holds a lot, but that is not the issue so much as it is the size of that debt and the willingness to pare down our spending, and the willingness to stop creating new programs and eliminate the programs that are no longer necessary and get rid of this unnecessary funding for the programs that would embarrass a person to have to vote for them and rolling them up into an omnibus spending bill or into a conference report without having a chance to strike them out by line item. Those are the things we need to do, Mr. Speaker, and so we can get to a reduction of our national debt. We are going to have do that with a dynamic economy and reducing the growth in our spending. I would submit also that we need to do some overhaul in Medicare and Medicaid and in Social Security, and this is another way that we get a handle on this budget. Otherwise, Social Security grows and becomes out of control. It was not the people on this side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, that pulled down the effort to overhaul and reform Social Security and give people control of some of their own retirement funds. It was the people on that side of the aisle, and that is another reason why we do not have control over this budget. But it is not imminent, and if it is not in imminent threat, that means that politics and this democracy as some call it, I call it a constitutional republic, will not operate unless there happens to be an imminent need and urgency to get that accomplished. Let me also, Mr. Speaker, speak about the balance of trade, and we have a negative balance of trade. A year ago it was a minus $617.7 billion. We got the report out near the end of February this year, and I do not have the exact number in front of me, but it was in the neighborhood of minus $725 million, growing at the rate of about 20 percent a year increase in the negative balance of trade, meaning that we are buying more goods from other countries, goods and services from other countries, than we are selling to them. We are to the point even where agriculture, which always used to be a big surplus for us, is narrowing down to where there is hardly a margin at all for agriculture, and the way it is going it is probably going to be a trade imbalance. It could be in the red just for agriculture in a few years at the rate that it is going. But if we are down to minus $725 billion a year in this balance of trade, that means that we are buying $725 billion more of goods and services from foreign countries than we are selling to them, and that has got to be turned around. That is a sign that we are not manufacturing as much as we should, we are not marketing as much as we should, and it should tell us that we need to do some things with our tax structure so that we can adjust our taxes and provide those incentives to be able to produce and market in foreign countries in a more competitive fashion. Perhaps, Mr. Speaker, I will come back to that in a little bit, but before I had the colloquy with Mr. Ehlers, I was talking about Iraq and about Afghanistan and Iraq and the global war on terror. I would like to take us back to that, that global war on terror, and specifically the battlefield, the theater of Iraq, which is a major component of that. We know that that is the central battle in the war on terror. We know that Zarqawi wrote a letter a couple of years ago that was about 17 pages long, as I read it, and he said in there that they were having a great trouble, that Iraq was essentially their last need out; that they did not have mountains or forests to hide in; that they had to find a way that they could hide in the homes of the Iraqi people; and that the Iraqis that were willing to take them in, the terrorists, the al Qaeda that had been operating in Iraq now since liberation of Iraq, the Iraqis that were willing to take them into their homes, which is the only place to hide, you do not hide so well out there in the desert, were as rare as red sulfur. Mr. Speaker, as rare as red sulfur. Now, I am going to have to do some research sometime to determine how rare red sulfur is, but I expect that is quite a rare commodity and the Iraqis who would take them are rare. Well, they are even more rare today than they were then when Zarqawi not too long ago, a couple of weeks ago, was sent to meet his Maker by two bombs from two different F-16s. When he was sent to meet his Maker in the rubble of the so-called safehouse, now there is an oxymoron is it not, Mr. Speaker, a safehouse that Zarqawi was hiding in turned out to not be so safe because intelligence had gotten information to our military and our military had targeted the house and dropped a couple of bombs in on him, killed Zarqawi. In the rubble were computer hard drives and paperwork and a lot of intelligence, and a lot of intelligence has led us to other intelligence, and a lot of other intelligence that we had were dots out there that got connected by the intel that was within this so-called safehouse that was turned into rubble. From all of that intelligence, the body of that intelligence as it has been released to the public and our intelligence people have pored down through it, the body of that intelligence says that al Qaeda and the terrorists in Iraq are in a very difficult situation. They are having trouble recruiting fighters. They are having trouble getting military supplies and munitions. They are having trouble with their communications. Their operations are being disrupted, and that the effectiveness of the coalition forces, and I will say in particular American forces, and especially the effectiveness of the Iraqi troops that are now in uniform defending Iraqis and taking on these terrorists in the midst have al Qaeda in disarray. All of the information that came, all of the data came, all of the intelligence that came, all pointed to the same thing. This is a desperate enemy and a desperate condition with a very limited amount of supplies to work with, a limited amount of recruitment ability to be able to recruit troops and a limited ability to affect life in Iraq. We are winning, Mr. Speaker, and it has become very clear as the intelligence unfolded. I would point out also that Saddam's trial is nearing its end, and we are going to see a verdict in Saddam Hussein pretty soon, and it has been drug on now for about 8 months. That is plenty long, but in the meantime, Mr. Speaker, I would submit that we are going to get a verdict. I happen to know that if he is found guilty of crimes against humanity that in that section of the Criminal Code of the Iraqi law, and I have actually sat there with the judges in Baghdad and discussed this with them, and they spoke English to me so I could understand it directly and not be dependent upon an interpreter, but in that section of Iraqi law, crimes against humanity only provide for one penalty. If you are guilty, there is only one penalty, and that penalty is death. Now, there have been three of Saddam's attorneys that have been murdered throughout the process of this, and some of the other people involved in this have been as well, but the punishment that may come if Saddam is found guilty is only one punishment. He has been, of course, an active person there, I will say, since there is a case before the court in Iraq. We know the evidence, Mr. Speaker, and I am going to let the evidence speak for itself at this point. But I would say that Iraq is coming along. They are making good progress. They now have a sovereign government. They now have a full cabinet. They now have a prime minister. When you get a sovereign government, they can make decisions. They can make decisions about like what to do if Saddam is found guilty, whether they will bring another trial for other crimes against humanity, whether they will mete the punishment should he be found guilty, what they should be doing for their citizens. I hope they do this: open a bidding process globally so they can bring in oil companies that have the capital and the technical ability to sink more wells into the vast oil fields in Iraq and build some pipelines and some refineries and get more oil coming out of that country so they can get cash coming in. It is a shame to have $70 oil in a country that is starved for cash and that has oil sitting underneath its sandy desert and not having that turning into cash at $70 a barrel for them. I want to see that happen. This was not American blood for oil, but this was American blood, coalition blood and Iraqi blood for freedom, for freedom, Mr. Speaker, and they will have the freedom to do with their oil as they choose and to cash the checks for that oil, and they need to get it flowing out of there. That would be the first order of business besides the security issues that come before this government, if I were the prime minister or in the parliament of Iraq. So this military security situation is making good progress, and the intelligence that we have gathered and after the death of Zarqawi, their leader, and they have taken on a number of their leaders in the first and second tier who were very close to Zarqawi, but after that, all the intelligence says they are in desperate condition. Now, why would we do what has been proposed here on the other side of the aisle, why would we pull out? Why would we cut and run? Why would we want to redeploy to the horizon, Mr. Speaker, when this war is making progress and we have people who have this opportunity to be free? I sat down with Benazir Bhutto shortly after the September 11 attacks, and she happened to be giving a speech in my district at the Buena Vista University in Clear Lake, my hometown. Benazir Bhutto is the former prime minister of Pakistan. She served at two separate segments of time there in Pakistan and is a very respected leader of the Pakistani people and has a sound judgment, which is the reason that she has been able to be in power in Pakistan. I asked her a question and I was trying to understand at the time our enemy, how do we conduct a war that we could finally get to the point where we can declare victory, what would victory look like and how do we get to that point so we could declare victory. We need to define it and we need to get there. We were talking about radical Islamists, that perhaps 10 percent of the Muslim world are lined up against Muslims, as well as Christians and Jews and an attack on Western civilization to some degree, and how do we finally defeat them. Her answer was, this hatred comes out of having no hope. It comes out of not having an opportunity to build a better life for their families, for their homes and their communities. She said, you have got to give them freedom; you have got to give them a chance at, she used the word, democracy. If they have that freedom, like we have here, then they turn their focus to hatred and murder and barbaric slaughtering like they did of our two soldiers a couple of days ago in Iraq. They turn that hatred over, and they put their efforts towards their families, their community, their churches, their mosques, their countries. When that happens, that energy that is within all of us is used for a constructive good. There is a culture change. That culture of hatred that breeds terror that is in the heart of poverty and hopelessness that is in many of the cities, especially in the Arab world, can be replaced by freedom and hope and prosperity. That is the definition for victory, Mr. Speaker. That is the definition that was given to me in a very private conversation, without any reservations I would add, by Benazir Bhutto. I appreciate that from her. I respect that from her, and I think she laid that out in a way that indexes in, links in very well with the Bush doctrine. President Bush understands this. He came out with this philosophy within weeks of September 11, and he stuck by this philosophy all along. He has defined victory. He is leading us to victory. We need to stand with him on that issue, and I do, and standing with the President also stands with our soldiers and marines, and it stands with them and it stands with their mission. Those two things, Mr. Speaker, are linked together. If you are going to support your marines, you also have to support the mission that they are on because some of them have given their lives. Some more of them will give their lives for global freedom and for the freedom and safety of the American people. They have to believe in their mission. I believe in their mission. The President believes in their mission. The American people believe in their mission, and some of the people on the other side of the aisle do not, and they claim that they can support the troops and oppose the mission. I would think that there is not a soldier in this country that would say send me off on a mission that you do not support but tell me you support me. No one could be asked, and you cannot ask anyone to put their life on the line for a mission that you do not believe in. That is the crux of this debate: Do you support the troops and the mission. And that is not negotiable. Then, as I talked about balancing this Federal budget, there is also this imbalance in trade that I was talking about, $725 billion imbalance in trade. What we need to do with that, Mr. Speaker, is fix that. We need to fix that by changing the tax policy. The tax policy that we have now taxes all productivity in America. I spoke about that a little bit earlier, and in fact, we can change that around totally and utterly. I came to this conclusion in 1980 after the IRS had audited me one too many times in a row. When they did that, I went back to work after 4 days of pulling papers out of my files and handing them over to the IRS and sitting there throughout this audit. When it was finally done, it cost me some money, and I believe to this day I did everything exactly legally and technically correct. It was my intent to do so, but they I believe had to justify their 4 days in my office. So they made a Monday morning quarterback decision, and I had to accept the result of that if I were going to stay in business because I could not take anymore capital out of my business or anymore time away from our productivity to go fight the behemoth system of the Federal Government. So I went back to work, and as I went back to work I began to start with this conclusion: I would like to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service. I would like to eliminate the IRS code. I would like to see to it that no one has to go through what I went through ever again. I would like to have people have a voluntary tax system so that they can decide when they pay their taxes. And as I worked this system out, Mr. Speaker, and I really put together a fairly complete proposal on my own as I was sitting in the seat of a bulldozer meditating for 10 or 12 hours a day, and there is plenty of time to think there, I thought about this policy, and this policy today is called H.R. 25, The Fair Tax. Now, I couldn't find anybody that knew anything about this issue in 1980, but as I worked my way through that, throughout that decade, I found a little more information and a little more information, and by about 1991, I found a book written by Daniel Pilla, a former IRS agent, called Fire the IRS. He had worked for the IRS for years, and in that book he had done the data, had pulled the data together and done the research that supported the conclusions that I had drawn just simply from working my way through this policy. I didn't do the math, but he did. He did the analysis, and his analysis fit my philosophy. We linked together at that point. I don't know if Daniel Pilla ever recognized that, but I want to thank him for the work he did on that book. It was inspiring to me and confirmed my conclusion and helped move me into public life. I believe that we should take all tax off of productivity. I think as a fundamental change, if we do that and put it on consumption, then people can volunteer to pay taxes. They will do that when they make a decision to purchase. We take all the Federal tax off of all productivity. That means you get to keep all the money you earn, with the exception of whatever State taxes might be there. People in America would get another 56 percent more into their paycheck. If they got a $1,000 check for that week, they would have $1,560 more they would get to take home. If it was a $100 check that week, it would be $156 more they would take home. That extra money, that 56 percent more, is money that would be saved and some would be spent, but people would make a decision on paying their taxes themselves without having the IRS stand there, or more figuratively Uncle Sam standing at the time clock on Monday morning. You know, America gets up, takes a shower, shaves, goes to work, and walks through to punch the time clock, and as soon as they punch that time clock, Uncle Sam's hand goes out. He's going to take every dollar that you make that day until he is satisfied. When he is satisfied, he puts that money in his pocket, Mr. Speaker, and then you can go to work for the State for a little while. They put that in their pocket, and then you are on your own for the rest of the day. But we can change that entire dynamic where Uncle Sam is no longer standing there. The image won't be of Uncle Sam by the time clock any longer, it will be the image of your being able to get all the money you earn and then be able to decide when to pay taxes with it. Alexander Tyler said, when a majority of the people figure out that they can vote themselves benefits from the public Treasury, on that day democracy ceases to exist. Well, we are very close to that because 44 percent of Americans don't pay any income tax right now. I heard a number the other day, and I have to qualify it because I haven't verified it yet, but it was that 3 percent of the people pay 97 percent of the taxes. I don't know if that is true, but the philosophy is there. A small percentage of people at the top of the income bracket are paying a large percentage of the income tax on the other side. And many, many people, millions of people are absolved from tax liability whatsoever. They are not paying taxes, but they are voting, and they are writing letters to their Congressmen and putting demands on government to provide them services. So their incentive is to push people to grow government and to lay back and use more government services, rather than have the incentive be to go out and go to work and grow the size of their own pie, fill their cup, so to speak, feed the goose that lays the golden eggs. That is what we need to do, Mr. Speaker. We are underproducing in this country. What kind of a Nation would be having a debate about an immigration policy that would take in, they are saying with a straight face, 10- to 12 million people? I remember when under the Clinton administration, prior to the 1996 elections, they accelerated the naturalization process for a million people, a lot of them in California. Some of them made their way to Iowa, and some of them made it clear what they thought their agreement was, and I will speak about that another time perhaps, Mr. Speaker, but a million people came in prior to the 1996 Presidential elections. I was appalled that a million people could come into the United States like that, without having a real policy established here in this Congress, but just simply let across the border, naturalized, legalized, and given an opportunity to vote. But we are, and as appalled as I was by a million people in 1996, the United States Senate now is speaking openly about 10- to 12 million people, and I think they know what I believe and what my senior Senator believes, and that is that the number is not 10- or 12 million, it is more like 20- or 22 million, or a number greater than that. And we are talking seriously, Mr. Speaker, about legalizing all of those people that are here in the United States, or all but a relative handful of the people here in the United States illegally. Now, the justification for it would be because we don't have enough Americans that are willing to do the work that needs to be done. Mr. Speaker, I object to that kind of thinking and that kind of talk. It is an insult to the hard-working Americans that are out there, those that took pride, like Mr. Ehlers, who grew up with his cup one-eighth full. I said mine was half full, and not because of wealth, because we weren't well off, but because of family, and because of our work ethic, and the culture that I grew up in was a tremendous head start to be anchored in that way. But here we sit now with the argument that Americans won't do this work. Well, they may not do it for 4 bucks an hour. No, Mr. Speaker, in fact, they may not do it for $5.15 an hour. But there is supply and demand in the labor force, and the labor in this country has been altered and distorted by 10- or 12- or 20 million people in this country. And all of them are not working, it is a percentage of them. That number is somewhere over 50 percent, or about seven-twelfths would be one way of looking at that. All of them are not working, but perhaps 6.3 to 7 million, according to a CIS study, are working. And so let's say it is 7 million people. I referenced earlier in my remarks, Mr. Speaker, that there are 7.5 million unemployed in America. There are another 5.3 million that have exhausted their unemployment benefits that are still looking for a job. So you get up there to 12.8 million. That is already more people on unemployment, at least by the statistics the Senate is dealing with, who are here illegally. It is almost two to one for those working that are here illegally. And then, if we look at those who are on welfare, there are about 4.3 million of those. If we take a look at teenagers, and teenagers need to be busy. One of the good things about raising kids is if you can keep them busy, if they have energy and you keep them busy, they will be all right, but you have to work them a little to do that. And so of those between the ages of 16 and 19, there are 9.3 million of them who are not in the workforce in any way, not even part time, not even flipping burgers down at the hamburger stand or picking up a check whatsoever. 9.3 million. Some of them presumably could be hired to do some of the work they claim Americans aren't doing. Then if you look at the, I will say the young senior citizens, between the ages of 65 and 69, there are about 4\1/2\ million of those. Some of those would like to be working, but we have a few disincentives in place so that they do not. That is a universe to go and hire from; 7.5 million and 5.3 million and 9.3 million, and then the 4.5 or so million that are the young seniors. But in between the ages of 20 and 64, that real working age, none of those people have been addressed yet, except for the welfare folks that I am talking about. There are 51 million not working Americans there. But even if I pare this down and take those that are over 70, actually I haven't spoken to those at all, but those over 70 out of it, those over 65 out of it, and if we go down and take those under the age of 16 out of this equation, and we roll this all back together and think what is the universe, what is the size that we hire from for our workforce, that force, Mr. Speaker, that workforce is about 61 million. That is a reasonable number to look at. And we are trying to hire perhaps 7 million people to replace? If we did that, we would hire maybe one out of nine of the nonworking people that are of primary working age in the United States. We surely should be able to do that. In fact, Mr. Speaker, we could also replace some of these jobs with technology, but we will not do that as long as there is a very cheap labor supply to go to. Cheap labor causes employers to de-adopt technology, and that is a retrogression of our economy when that happens. We need to be driving technology not de-adopting technology. That technology would reduce some of the demand for that labor. No one, no one I know of, has addressed the subject of how much of this 7 million people that are doing this work, which is only 2.2 percent of the gross domestic product, in other words the illegals are about 4.6 or 7 percent of the workforce, and they are about 2.2 percent of the productivity, that workforce is not all necessary work, Mr. Speaker. I will conclude this statement on another evening, but I appreciate the privilege to address the House, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. KING of Iowa

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