A bill to establish the Small Business Information Security Task Force to address information security concerns relating to credit card data and other proprietary information.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege of being recognized to address you here on the floor of the House, and I have only a short privilege to look at some of the data that's been presented by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle in the previous hour.

I did look at the poster that says here's the economy as we know it in a very short snapshot in billions of chain GDP dollars. I don't know what chain dollars is. I have never discussed an economy within chain dollars. But I have also not discussed it within trends that are compressed down within the very few quarters that are presented in this graph that's been presented here before us on the floor of the House tonight, Mr. Speaker.

Here is what I would present. Let's just back up a little bit. Let's back up all the way to October of 1929 and think about what's really happened. This Nation has been challenged over and over again to come forward and determine where we are with our economy.

What kind of an economy are we? Are we the managed economy proposed by the Democrats on the other side of the aisle that believe that the President of the United States, the Cabinet, and the Pelosi Congress and the Harry Reid Senate should be the ones to make these economic decisions to manage the nationalized economy? Are we the kind of people that should be nationalizing even more of our economy? And I have gone through this list so many times I can almost recite it by rote in my sleep.

This Federal Government, albeit started under President Bush, with the support of Barack Obama all the way through and most of it picked up by him, has nationalized--and when I say ``nationalized,'' I mean owned, managed, or controlled--sectors of the economy that have to do with three large investment banks, and that's Citigroup, Bank of America, and Bear Stearns. Those three have been taken over by the Federal Government. AIG nationalized by the Federal Government, the insurance company. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The entities that the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, said he would never support a Federal bailout of Fannie and Freddie. No, he supported the takeover, the Federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

We have also watched General Motors and Chrysler be taken over by the Federal Government, and a bankruptcy proposal pitched by the administration to the chapter 11 bankruptcy court that dictated the terms of bankruptcy, and among those terms were: Hand over shares of the automakers to the automakers union. And while that was going on, the only bidder before the chapter 11 bankruptcy court with the case of Chrysler, where I actually have the data and probably have it in my hand here, the only bidder was the Federal Government. The structure of it going into chapter 11 was the Federal Government, set up for a bidder. The only bidder was the Federal Government. It was the Federal Government on both sides of that equation. Unprecedented.

A Federal takeover dictating to the bankruptcy court the terms of the resolution of Chrysler and handing over, in the case of General Motors, 17.5 percent of the shares in General Motors over to the automakers union, to the United Auto Workers. That's all taken place, including the takeover of the student loan program in the United States by the Federal Government.

Now, if we add this up, three large investment banks, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General Motors, and Chrysler, according to Professor Boyle of Arizona State University, that's one-third of the private- sector activity of America swallowed up over the ownership, management, or control of the Federal Government.

Then you add to that the student loan program, and then you add to that the financial services that are being regulated right now that are being negotiated in the conference committee that's been named between the House and the Senate, that would put the Federal Government in the position to regulate every single credit transaction in America.

Now, I don't just mean one of the large bailed out, federally owned investment banks is doing business with one of the other large federally owned investment banks, that the Federal Government regulates that. I don't just mean that when a small community bank is doing transactions with people that are coming in to borrow money for operating capital or for a mortgage that the Federal Government regulates that. I will take it right on down to this question that was posed by the dentists. Would their transactions that are set up where they set up monthly payments for the parents to pay for the braces on the teeth of their children be regulated by the Federal Government and by the White House? Answer, yes.

Under this bill that's coming at us under the language we are dealing with, yes, the Federal Government would regulate the transaction, the credit transaction between the dentist and the parents who would want to finance the braces on their children's teeth. Uncle Sam injects himself into that equation.

Do you think that's to the point, Mr. Speaker, where we can't tolerate Federal intrusion any deeper? I think it's gone beyond where we can tolerate Federal intrusion any deeper. But it goes deeper yet. Not just into the cavities into our children's teeth or the braces on them, but right down into a neighborhood, friendly poker game.

And I had them analyze the language for this purpose. I just asked the question: Where does this stop? What are the restraints? What are the constraints on the legislation that would give the Federal Government the authority to regulate every credit transaction in America? And I asked specifically: Will you analyze the language in the bill and tell me could the Federal Government, if they chose to do so, regulate the credit transaction that's embodied in an IOU that could be put in the middle of the pot in a poker game in a neighborhood or a friendly or a family poker game? It might even be an IOU for toothpicks. Yes, the language allows the Federal Government to inject themselves into every credit transaction in America.

So we have the nationalization of one-third of the private-sector activity in the form of three large investment banks taken over by the Federal Government, AIG, the insurance company taken over by the Federal Government, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and General Motors and Chrysler. That's eight. That's one-third of the private sector activity according to the Arizona State professor, Boyle. One-third. And you add to that student loans, which I don't know what percentage of the overall economy that that is, and I don't want to speculate without some basis of knowledge on that.

But we have got 33 percent of the former private sector activity nationalized, taken over by the Federal Government, by the Obama administration now in control and the management or ownership or control of these private sector entities. And now we are at 33 percent. ObamaCare has passed. That's, by a consensus of accounts, right at 17.5 percent of the overall economy that goes into health care under the ownership, management, or control of the Federal Government; 17.5 percent. Where do you round that to, anybody in sixth grade math? Up to 18. Eighteen percent plus 33 percent is 51 percent of the former private sector activity under the ownership, management, or control of the Federal Government; 51 percent.

And what did Alexander Tytler tell us out of Scotland back as a contemporary of Adam Smith? And in summary terms, when the public understands that they can vote themselves benefits from the public treasury, on that day democracy ceases to exist. That was Alexander Tytler in about the year 1776, a long time back.

Here we are. We are seeing data that shows that only 47 percent of the households don't pay taxes; 47 percent. We don't have a number that shows us the percentage of individuals. But if 47 percent of the households don't pay income tax, and that means Federal income tax, that tells us that we are only 3.0001 percent away from the majority of American households that don't pay income tax. Now, we are within the margin of error.

Who could think that the public hasn't figured out, with the tutelage of President Obama, that they should game the system? Because if you are a marginal employee individual, are you better off to game the system and put yourself on the public dole and tap into a myriad of the 72 different Federal welfare programs that are out there or are you better off to go to work every day?

If we default back to the statement made by Jimmy Carter back in 1976 in Iowa as he campaigned for President of the United States, impressed me--I didn't support him, Mr. Speaker; I want that to be clear in the Congressional Record--but he did impress me with a statement that he made. He said the people that work should live better than those that don't. I don't think Jimmy Carter lived by that, but he said that. And that impressed me that it was a simple, clear logic, the logic of clarity that should be delivered in this floor more often than it actually is.

Of course the people that work should live better than those that don't. But Jimmy Carter had a lot of trouble following through on that. But by today's standards, no, he wasn't. He was a piker by today's standards. Anybody that doesn't live up to an average standard of living can go to the public welfare rolls and expect that they are

going to have their rent subsidized, their heat subsidized. They are going to have food stamps. They are going to have 69 other Federal programs that they can have access to.

We have become a welfare state. And that works pretty good for the people that want to create a dependency class in America. And that is clearly what's going on with the Obama administration, establishing and expanding the dependency class in America, because they understand that people who are dependent want to make sure that they go vote for the people who require them to be dependent before they will send more benefits their way.

Independent people say, I want less government. I want less taxes. I want a smaller role in our Federal Government. I want the States to have their constitutional right to all the powers that are not enumerated to the Federal Government devolve back to the States or the people, respectively. That's what I want.

Because I know that when people are responsible for their own activities and they are rewarded for positive behavior and the markets and the conditions of a just society provide disincentives for people who are lazy, who are not industrious, who don't take care of their families, who are dishonest, who might be indulging in substance abuse, those negative indicators for a society are punished in a just society, and positive behavior is rewarded in a just society.

You don't have to rule or regulate a just society if you have the financial structures in place, the moral foundation in place and if you're not afraid to stigmatize negative behavior.

But this administration has capped off the effort so far of previous, shall I be nice and call them progressives, their effort, their effort to expand the dependency class in America. And whenever that happens, if this Congress expands the dependency class, it is the equivalent of taking a jackhammer and chiseling away at those beautiful marble pillars of American exceptionalism, chiseling them away, breaking down the very foundation that created American exceptionalism.

We're not a Nation that's created for greatness built upon dependency. The dependency class is anathema to the American people and the American spirit.

Independence is our spirit. Self-reliance is our spirit. Our vigor, our unique vigor is our spirit. Our liberty, our freedom is our spirit. That's who we are.

And how do we get to be in this great Nation? What are these pillars of American exceptionalism that are under assault by the active left in this Congress every single day, jackhammering away at those beautiful marble pillars of American exceptionalism? What are they?

Well, they're easy to find. You look in the Constitution of the United States, take a look into the Bill of Rights. Go right down through the list: freedom of speech, religion, and the press; the freedom of assembly; to petition the government for redress of grievances. Boy, that is beautiful.

Are those marble pillars, Mr. Speaker? Of course, they are.

Freedom of speech, to speak outward and openly of the things that we believe in without restraint or punishment, knowing that the State can't come in and crush us for our opinions, the freedom with a full- throated objection to our government if they're going down a path that we object to or a full-throated support for a President or a Congress or a judiciary branch of government or any of the agencies within the government that's serving our people in a Constitution and a just fashion. That's freedom of speech.

Freedom of religion. Freedom of religion, to worship in the church of our choice or not to worship or worship in our home or under a tree or out in the pasture or while we're in the traffic jam and any way we choose. Freedom of religion. Freedom for a pastor or anyone in the congregation whom he might accept to come up and step behind the podium to preach to the Word and preach the law of God and do so without fear, without fear that the IRS might come in and rule that these words were somehow political or partisan and to take away the 501(c)(3) not-for- profit status that exists for our churches within this country.

The IRS has intimidated pastor after pastor, congregation after congregation. The core of our faith in this country has been eroded because of IRS intimidation of our preaches and our pastors. Even though that speech is guaranteed in the Constitution, it doesn't guarantee that you get a tax deduction if you speak out too openly. So I tell my pastors, preach the Word, preach the law, preach your convictions and your faith to your congregation in a full-throated way, and if the IRS comes in and threatens to take away your 501(c)(3) status, tell them Steve King stands with you. I stand with you figuratively. If you need me to stand next to you literally, I will do so, and if you still don't have the courage to preach the Word and stand next to me, then I will come and I will preach the Word.

And if that doesn't give you enough conviction, remember this: Not in the history of this country has any church lost its 501(c)(3) status because a pastor spoke from his faithful religious heart and preached the Word, the gospel of the Lord to the congregation that has gathered together to hear that message. Not once, not ever, not in the history of America has a church lost its 501(c)(3) not-for-profit status because of preaching the Word from the pulpit.

The threat goes out continually, and when a conservative Christian takes a position that has impact, then you hear from the people like, well, let me see--to avoid controversy, let me just say liberal United States Senators who would like to use the IRS to intimidate their opposition. They aren't all alive today, but there's a history of these liberal United States Senators who have done so. None have been successful in removing the 501(c)(3) status. But the truth needs to be preached.

That's just the First Amendment. Freedom of speech, religion, and the press; freedom to peaceably assemble; and petition the government for redress of grievances, first amendment.

Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to own and control our guns and not have the Federal Government take them away or confiscate our guns. Now, I've been a Second Amendment defender for a long time, and I will be for as long as the Lord grants me breath in this life, but Mr. Speaker, many of the people that defend the Second Amendment seem to think that it's about owning and keeping firearms so we can target shoot, recreational shooting, hunt, or for self-defense. And I will take the position here, Mr. Speaker, that those three things that I've talked about, hunting, self-defense, target shooting, are all residual benefits, kind of like extra benefits that come with the Second Amendment.

We would have the Second Amendment whether or not there was target shooting, whether or not there ever was hunting, and whether or not there was self-defense because our Founding Fathers understood that we needed to have an armed populace to defend against tyranny. They understood that a tyrant would come and confiscate our guns and subjugate us to his armed forces, and we would have to knuckle under, and thereby would go our freedom. That was understood by our Founding Fathers, and they put the Second Amendment in so we could defend our freedom and our liberty and be an armed populace to defend against the tyrant.

And the good stuff that comes from that is we get to also hunt, target shoot and defend ourselves. Pretty simple concept. But you look around the world, I don't know of a country or a civilization that has registered firearms that has not confiscated them. When a Nation has confiscated firearms, that suppresses our freedom of speech, that suppresses our freedom of religion, that suppresses our ability to assemble and peaceably petition our government for redress of grievances because we would be intimidated by an all-powerful state. We need a state intimidated by the people.

That's what this country is about. The power in our government comes from God. Our rights come from God. They're vested in the people, and the people confer that authority into their elected Representatives. That is the very definition of a constitutional republic.

And so we have these rights: freedom of speech, religion, and the press; freedom of assembly; and Second Amendment, right to keep and bear arms, because that is a deterrent for tyrants

that might want to subjugate us as a people, that might want to take away our God-given rights that we have vested in our elected Representatives. That's just the First and Second Amendment.

Those are all pillars of American exceptionalism. No other country has these kind of rights. They have politically correct laws in places like Canada and Great Britain, and those places are freer than many other places in the world, but we provide a full-throated defense of whatever our particular position happens to be.

We're American. We aren't people that cower. We don't shrink from conflict. We don't shrink from disagreement. I had a lady approach me on the street a couple of months ago, about the time when ObamaCare passed, and she said to me, you have to find a way to get along. It's kind of a Rodney King statement: Can't we all get along? Can't we compromise? Can't we get away from all of this friction and this tension that's going on here over ObamaCare?

And I listened to her. I'd seen the lady on the Hill for several years, actually, and I'd never had a conversation with her. And she impressed me with her deep conviction and commitment to following what was honest, especially in Judiciary Committee. I don't know her name. Only time I ever talked to her.

But I said to her, you know, we have these arguments here, we have this tension, we have this disagreement, and I think we do so because we're called to come to Washington to have these debates, to have these arguments, to have the disagreements so we don't have to come to blows in the streets of America, so we don't have to clash with each other. All the way across from sea to sea, we bring our conflict here. We have these debates here. We test each other in this battle of ideas here, and it's even more effective, and I will say significantly more effective, than it was in the era of the Founding Fathers because we have real-time communications.

Mr. Speaker, we have C-SPAN. We have live radio. We have Internet. We have podcasts. We can have real-time interactive town hall meetings that interact all the way across America. We can carry this message all across this country. This constitutional republic is more effective today from a communications standpoint than it was in the era of our Founding Fathers, and we should be grateful for that. It's our job to use it and utilize it and to continue to build upon this.

So let's have the debate. Let's have a nationwide debate. Let's get after this, and we're doing it, and come November, the American people will decide whether this path of the Federal takeover of first one- third of the former private sector activity of our economy; then adding ObamaCare to this, another 18 percent of our economy going to 51 percent; then, sitting in conference committee right now being deliberated and debated by the conferee, another 15 percent of our economy, the financial sector of our economy, roughly 15 percent by some estimates, you add that onto the 51 percent, and we get up there to 66 percent of our economy; and then we have the cap-and-trade argument, roughly around 8 or 9 percent of our economy.

Now, if cap-and-trade is 8 percent of our economy, then that means, in case anybody wonders, cap-and-trade is about this: It's about capping carbon emissions and trading the carbon credits that you get. So if you are an electrical generating plant and you're burning coal like crazy in 2005, that's the measure, capping at 2005 levels of CO2 emission, and you're burning all kinds of coal and you're belching this CO2 out into the atmosphere, which doesn't alarm me, by the way, Mr. Speaker--I still don't think there's a scientific foundation for their hypothesis--but that's going on; the measurement of the emissions of the CO2 will be capped at 2005.

Now, let's presume that that same electrical generator takes half of his coal consumption down, replaces it with a nuclear generating plant--actually a new plant that will come online in 2017 in South Carolina. It will be the first one in probably 30 years by then. So you get carbon credits for taking the coal generation, the burning of the coal off line, that CO2 that's not emitted, and replaced it with the nuclear, just the tool that reduced the CO2 emissions. Now that coal-fired generating operation, which might be an entire utility network, will have half their CO2 emissions that have been cut now because of the replacement of nuclear become their carbon credits. Carbon credits that, what do they have now? They have something that has value.

They can take their carbon credits, and they can sell them through an exchange on the board in Chicago--there are two exchanges that exist as far as I know right now--and any organization, any entity, any utility that has to burn let's say more coal or more natural gas or more diesel fuel and emit more CO2 than they did before to supply more demand for electricity would have to buy the carbon credits from the entity that had created them by replacing the CO2 emissions with say nuclear or wind or solar or some other source. So these exchanges go on.

Carbon credits are expensive when they start, and as they dial this down, the idea is to reduce the CO2 emissions from the standard, the cap, that's the cap at 2005 emission levels, and trade the carbon credits, dial them down by 17 percent by a certain year, which seems to me is 2013, way too soon. And then from two thousand and whatever that year is, a 17 percent reduction, on out to 2050, reduce the CO2 emissions by 83 percent.

The vision is, by the time we get to 2050, we'd only be emitting 17 percent of the CO2 that we're doing today. I'm going to expect we're going to use the same amount of energy, and do you expect, Mr. Speaker, that these carbon credits are going to be worth more or less as the cap gets dialed down year by year, until the year 2050, where 83 percent of the CO2 emissions are shut down by the economics of this?

Now, it doesn't just shut down the CO2 emissions and give us the same amount of kilowatt hours, or some other type of energy for that matter, or consumption, that could be diesel fuel or gas or anything. No, Mr. Speaker, it doesn't do that. What it does is it shuts down some of the emissions, but the economics of it require that the cost of power goes up. As the cost of power goes up, the consumption of power goes down. That means we use less energy between now and 2013 or 2017 and 2050.

If we use less energy, why? Do we turn the air conditioner, set it on 80 degrees--reminds me of Jimmy Carter when he said set your thermostat at 60. Remember? Dial the thermostat down to 60, buy a cardigan sweater, button that sweater up and sit in your living room and put a shawl over yourself and sit there and shiver because, after all, we have an American malaise, and we will never be the Nation that we were before, and we will never be the Nation again that we are today. That was Jimmy Carter's message. It also fits pretty close to Barack Obama's message, who, Mr. Speaker, has said that electricity costs would ``necessarily skyrocket'' under his plan of cap-and-trade.

So what are we doing? We have an administration, and the opportunists in the Senate and the House that are looking at the oil slick over the gulf coast, which is an environmental tragedy, and seeking to capitalize on that environmental tragedy by pushing cap-and-trade legislation which will cripple American industry. For example--and I don't think, Mr. Speaker, that I can give the data on this, but I would just suggest that those that are interested should take a look at the American kiln industry and understand that where we have kilns, it might be a really simple thing, it might be like a dryer where you heat up asphalt and you crank it through a barrel that's got heat in it and it brings it through the other side, kind of like a cement truck cylinder, and comes out the other side hot mix asphalt. It takes a lot of heat to do that, takes a lot of energy; there's a lot of CO2 emissions.

There are a number of other processes that are far more energy- intensive, including the production of aluminum. We have a lot of aluminum in America, but it takes a lot of energy and emits a lot of CO2. This would about take the aluminum industry out of America to look at the cap-and-trade proposals that are out there.

Industry after industry in America would be crippled by cap-and-trade legislation. The cost of our electricity would ``necessarily skyrocket,'' to quote the President. The cost of our gas would go up, our diesel fuel, our kerosene, our jet fuel; I said our electricity. All energy gets more expensive. It just changes the proportionality of the cost per Btu from energy source to energy source. So we would, as a Nation, then make our energy more costly.

Now, what the cap-and-trade legislation does is it taxes everything that moves. It takes energy to move anything. Just moving my hand back and forth, you can count that in calories how much energy is consumed by that--not a lot, but it's some. If you would take a 200-pound man and run him up the stairs to the top of the dome in the Capitol and back down again--we have people that could calculate how many calories would be consumed by that effort to go up and down--you could turn that into and calculate it back down through Btus of energy. How could you replace that energy with gasoline or electricity with a motor that would take them up and down? This is energy. Anything that moves takes energy. You can't get something done without energy.

So this administration is for taxing everything that moves and a cap- and-trade scheme that would cripple America's economy and put us at a significant disadvantage from the developing countries in the world, in particular India and China--other developing countries, but India and China in particular--it chases our industry over there. And then what would we do? They produce things in countries where they have cheaper energy and cheaper labor. They ship it back to us and we buy it. Well, what do we buy it with? Right now we're buying it with credit, and we are running up the debt against the Chinese. Their holdings of U.S. currency--or U.S. debt, excuse me--are approaching $1 trillion in U.S. debt today.

We lament the cost when a young person finishes their college education, receiving their degree--and there's a number out there, this is not a survey number, it's a general ballpark number that has a consensus to it--roughly a $40,000 debt for a young adult that receives a college degree, $40,000 to move into adulthood to pay off that student loan. Now, whatever that real number is, I'm working with 40, which I think is in the ballpark, and we worry about that student loan being paid off by that young person that has a college degree and is entering into the job market.

I'm not so worried about that $40,000 student loan, Mr. Speaker, because the baby born in America today owes Uncle Sam, the Federal Government, their share of the national debt, $44,000. You can go into the nursery and be there when they bring a new little baby out and put them in the nursery in the hospital. There might be one or two or six or 10 of these new little miracles laying there wrapped up in blue or pink, with their parents proudly looking through the glass or going in to hold their babies. These little babies, every one of them laying in the nursery today, their share of the national debt--not their student loan, which when they get a degree that helps them earn the money to retire that debt, but these little babies' share of the national debt, $44,000. $44,000, Mr. Speaker, for the privilege of being born in the United States of America.

Well, I guess it's probably not the case for an anchor baby that gets citizenship along with it, at least that's an extra bargain that goes along--and I disagree with that. But that same little baby that's born today and owes the Federal Government $44,000, by the time that little baby goes on and learns to tie their shoes and goes off to kindergarten, works their way up through elementary school and walks into their fifth grade class--now, I pick that because that's 10 years, we have 10-year budgets here and we have 10-year budget windows and we calculate our costs over a 10-year period of time.

$44,000 in debt, welcome to America. This is the gift of life for being born in America, and you owe $44,000. A lot of them aren't going to pay their share, so if it's half of them, those other babies are going to owe $88,000. But the share for everyone who walks into fifth grade, according to this President's budget, by the time those $44,000 indebted children start fifth grade, they will owe Uncle Sam $88,000. That's the number, Mr. Speaker.

We should be very worried about a country that can't pass a budget, that for the first time since there have been budget requirements put into the rules here in the Congress itself, since 1974 when this began, this Congress doesn't have the will or the conviction to pass a budget because it is so abysmal, because the overspending is so atrocious, because the spending that they are conducting cannot be defended and they can't defend and vote against the amendments that would surely be attempted to be brought against a budget.

Now, there is a legitimate debate going on in this Congress and there is a legitimate amendment process going on in this Congress, but we don't have a budget and we're not going to have a budget. This Congress doesn't want to take responsibility for a budget.

We're going to see them package up a continuing resolution of some kind, a modified continuing resolution that pays off the political favoritism that they will need in order to go on in November, and we're going to get to the other side of the elections in November, kick the can down the road, and we'll be here on the floor of Congress sometime after election day in November; and this Congress will, by order of the Speaker, bring a huge omnibus spending bill to the floor.

If it's like the last one, 3,600 pages, several hundred billion dollars issued the night before, dropped on the floor with roughly 60 minutes to debate the issue, no amendments, voted up or down, and the government shuts down if we voted down. I will vote ``no.'' I would love to shut the government down for that kind of irresponsibility. It's unlikely that that will happen, however, because the Speaker has the votes and can do what she will.

So here we are, Mr. Speaker. This is a country that is built upon the rights that come from God, our liberty and our freedom. It's built upon this foundation that I declare to be the pillars of American exceptionalism. We are the unchallenged greatest Nation in the world, and we derive our strength from these pillars of exceptionalism, from free enterprise capitalism, from the rights that come from God, from our religious faith and foundation, this core of Judeo-Christianity that is America, and yet we're afraid to say so. We shy away and we shrink away from basic, simple utter truths.

I happen to have just heard a speech from, in town, the president of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre. He doesn't know I'm coming here to say this, but I was listening as he delivered his speech, and I wrote this down. He said, If you know the truth is on your side, say it and shout it as long as you can--excuse me. It might be say it and shout it as loud as you can. Stand up, shout them down, and don't you back down. Wayne LaPierre, president of the NRA, a man who has for a lifetime defended our Second Amendment and many of our other rights and freedoms, impressed me with the depth of his conviction and the clarity of his delivery tonight.

And now I take us to a subject matter that is on my mind to some degree, Mr. Speaker, and it has to do with what's going on from the White House and the Presidency through the Justice Department.

Now, the Attorney General, Eric Holder, came before the Judiciary Committee sometime in late May, right before we broke for the Memorial Day period of time, and he testified under oath that the Justice Department is not a partisan agency, that they don't operate on a partisan basis, that they are driven by the law. Well, I look at the President and the Attorney General and a number of the other representatives of this administration, it's hard for me to accept that statement on face value as being truthful because here's what I see and what I know: the President of the United States spoke out openly and plainly about the Arizona immigration law and made a case that in his view there was a built-in prejudice or bias or profile in the Arizona law because he said that if a mother were taking her daughter out to get some ice cream, they could find themselves having to produce their papers because of, presumably, their race. Arizona law forbids such a thing, but the President alleged such a thing.

Now, either the President misinformed the American people knowingly and willfully, or, Mr. Speaker, he hadn't read the bill. I'll opt to the side of he hadn't read the bill. I hope that's the case, and actually I believe that's the case.

Then we had Eric Holder, the Attorney General, who also alleged that there could be a profile take place under Arizona's immigration law that would bring about discrimination against people. It turns out that even though I asked Eric Holder before the Judiciary Committee, you have been charged by the President of the United States to use the force of the Justice Department to go against the Arizona law and seek to invalidate Arizona's immigration law, S. 1070, that bill that was drafted and put together by the fine and stellar State Senator, Russell Pearce of Arizona, that legislation--that has been signed into law and was enacted on the last day of July of this year--Eric Holder contends could bring about profiling.

Now, when someone says profiling in American Society today, they don't mean profiling according to, oh, let me say, whether you're a member of MENSA or whether you're a member of the Sierra Club. This is racial profiling whenever they say--when I say ``they,'' I mean the administration, people on the left, the self-professed progressives. They mean racial profiling. So the President implies, if not alleges, racial profiling, empowered by Arizona's immigration law, S. 1070. The Attorney General does the same thing. The Attorney General concedes that the President has ordered the Justice Department to seek to invalidate Arizona's immigration law.

When I asked the Attorney General, under oath, before the Judiciary Committee, Point to me in the Constitution where you believe Arizona's immigration law has violated the United States Constitution, the Attorney General could not do so. In the alternative, I said, Then point to me to a Federal statute that you believe preempts Arizona's immigration law. The Attorney General could not do so. So, when I said, Point out then for me a case precedent, case law, that you believe is controlling, which would indicate that Arizona's immigration law might be unconstitutional or could be invalidated by a Federal court, the Attorney General could not point to a single case precedent either.

So he failed to be able to point to the Constitution, to a Federal statute that could preempt or to case law that controls, the Attorney General of the United States, but he is still using the resources and the authority of the Attorney General's office and the entire Justice Department of the United States to seek to invalidate Arizona's immigration law, which, for the record, Mr. Speaker, mirrors Federal law and is at least as constitutional as Federal immigration law. The Attorney General can't point to any place where that might violate, but he is still willing to pour in the resources and testify that his department is not political, and he admits that the President ordered him to use the department for what I believe to be political purposes.

For each of them to essentially imply or to confess that they didn't bother to read the Arizona law--but they wanted to tell the American people what to think about it--is political. It is unjust, and it is not consistent with the Constitution, with Federal statute, or with case law. That, Mr. Speaker, is what is going on.

In addition to this, on Arizona's law, we have other people who have weighed in on this. We have other people who have similar levels of, let me say, information to work with. The President doesn't read the bill, and he speaks out against it, and he seeks to drive a wedge based on race. The Attorney General is the one who is on the record saying the American people are cowards when it comes to race. Well, I'm not, but some are, and I understand why--because they turn their PC minyans against people who would speak out openly on these issues.

I think we should talk about race. I think we should talk about people who use race for political benefit--people like the President of the United States when he was informed of the incident of Professor Gates and Officer Crowley, in Cambridge, when Officer Crowley conducted himself consistent with, let me say, the rules of engagement for a peace officer in that community. When there was a call for him to come because someone was breaking into a residence in the neighborhood, Officer Crowley came and applied himself to that task as he had, I'm sure, a dozen times before, but Professor Gates objected to having law enforcement there to help protect his property. That message got to the President, and what does the President do? He sides with Professor Gates.

Barack Obama was wrong on the Gates issue, and all of the American people know it, and he could not bring himself to apologize to Officer Crowley or to clarify the issue. He was looking for a way out. That's why the President had the beer summit on the South Lawn. That's why Professor Gates and Officer Crowley came and sat down out on the South Lawn. It seemed odd to me that they brought one beer alone, on a single tray. They delivered it and went back and got another one. That seemed a little odd to me. That's what happened.

But, in a just world, the person who conducts himself in a just fashion is the one who receives the apology from the people who did not conduct themselves in a just fashion. I will argue, Mr. Speaker, that the President and Professor Gates had an obligation to apologize to Officer Crowley because, first, the President had prejudged that situation. His knee-jerk reaction defaulted in favor of the African American professor and against the Irish cop. That's what happened. I don't think anybody who watched this incident could think otherwise.

We have the President of the United States who defaulted in favor of alleging that there would be racial profiling taking place in Arizona because of their immigration law, and he perpetuated a flat-out misinterpretation, and it may well have been willful, of Arizona's immigration law to the rest of America.

Now, we should be able to look up to the President of the United States and to trust that he is properly briefed and that he is factual when he presents a position to the American people. That is American executive branch policy. We should be able to trust the President for that. The President should have people around him whom he trusts, who would go back and read the law and would brief the President.

Well, it's obvious to all of us who have watched this and who have read the law that the President spoke about Arizona's law and had not read it. If he were briefed, it was off of the MoveOn.org Web site. He is surrounded by people who read those Web sites, who believe them, and I'm not sure that the President has access to the objective truth given the people around him and given the way he has responded.

So you have two cases where the President's default reaction falls in the favor of an individual because of skin color as opposed to individuals because of the rule of law--or let me just say truth, justice, and the American way. There is a default mechanism in place. He has an Attorney General who follows that same path, who lectures the American people and who says that the American people are cowards when it comes to race. Well, he has not been a coward when it comes to race.

His administration, his agency--the Justice Department--has cancelled the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of America, which is the case of the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia, who much of America has seen on videotape--let me say YouTube. They are paramilitary uniformed individuals, the members of the New Black Panthers, who were standing there in berets, with big, old billy clubs, smacking them in their hands as white people came to vote, calling those people crackers and telling them, We're taking over this country. We're going to be in power after that.

That's a generalization of their statements, but the accuracy of that record is out there on YouTube for all the world to see. That case was open and shut. The case was made by the Justice Department under President Bush. As the handoff took place and went over to the Eric Holder Justice Department under President Obama, what happened, Mr. Speaker? Loretta King, in the Justice Department, cancelled the most open-and-shut voter intimidation

case in the history of America because it would have brought about convictions on those New Black Panther party members. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez came before the Judiciary Committee and testified that they got the highest punishment allowed under the law-- negotiated.

Mr. Speaker, it was not true. It's not true today. The statement that he made to the Judiciary Committee was false--he knew it the day he said it--and it was to misinform because he was under some pressure and needed to get off the hook. That's a matter of the Congressional Record. He was under oath. It is something that we should pursue. It's unlikely that we can get anywhere with it. That's Tom Perez. So the administration has cancelled the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of America. It was a done deal. They cancelled it.

The administration and Loretta King in the Justice Department cancelled also the will of the people in Kinston, North Carolina. That's K-I-N-S-T-O-N. They dropped the ``G'' because they didn't want to be another Kingston, North Carolina. They voted by referendum the will of the people. The number that I remember--and it's generally memorized but not specifically accurate--is 70-30, a significant landslide majority. They voted to end the partisan local elections in Kinston, North Carolina, and to no longer label the candidates with an ``R'' or a ``D'' for ``Republican'' or ``Democrat'' by their names. That was the will of the people.

Though, because Kinston is a covered district, controlled by the Voting Rights Act, if they are going to move a voting booth 10 feet down the hallway, they have to get the permission of the Justice Department under Federal law. So, under the Justice Department, Loretta King, apparently, is the one who speaks for the Justice Department, who speaks for Eric Holder. She issued a letter that cancelled the election results of Kinston, North Carolina, and she declared that they would have partisan elections--and the city council and the mayor of Kinston, North Carolina--because African Americans wouldn't know who to vote for if a candidate didn't have a ``D'' beside his name.

Mr. Speaker, that is fact. That is the letter that was written and issued by our Justice Department under the pen and the signature of Loretta King, under the guidance and control of Attorney General Holder. Now, when we talk about things that have a racist flavor to them, when presuming that African Americans can't figure out who to vote for unless they have a ``D'' beside their names, I guess you could make the argument that you would want to profile all the African Americans and declare that they're all Democrats. Therefore, it makes it simple if you just label the people they want to vote for with a ``D.''

I think that has all kinds of racial implications. I don't think those implications have any place in the application of the laws or in the application of the Constitution of the United States. There should be equal justice before the law. This Lady Justice needs to be blindfolded and needs to stay blindfolded. Everybody should be subjected to the same level of law and enforcement without regard to race, creed, color, ethnicity, national origin, and a number of other indicators, but I've listed most of them that are in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act right now.

Now, this goes on. This is a Justice Department that can't find a dollar or an individual to commit a minute, let alone a career or a team and a few million dollars, to investigate ACORN--ACORN, the corrupt, criminal enterprise that everybody knows today is a corrupt, criminal enterprise. It has been undermining the very foundation that sits underneath our Constitution, itself, which is, Mr. Speaker, legitimate elections. Legitimate elections, the faith in the legitimacy of our elections, is what keeps this constitutional Republic functioning and alive and gets us back to well. ACORN has damaged all of that. ACORN has threatened all of that. ACORN has diminished our liberty and our freedom, and it has undermined the very foundation for our Constitution.

Any Justice Department worth its salt would investigate ACORN, but Eric Holder can't touch that--whether it's an order of the President, who used to work for ACORN, I don't know. We should remember that the President of the United States worked for ACORN. He represented them in court. He represented them pro bono in court. Can you imagine being an attorney and representing somebody in court pro bono and not agreeing to their agenda? He also worked for them in the form of Project Vote, which was when President Barack Obama made his reputation for organizing communities and politics in Chicago. Project Vote is, part and parcel, ACORN.

The President of the United States is ACORN. He is identified with ACORN. He made his reputation with ACORN. He has worked for and with ACORN, and he has trained ACORN workers. When he said during the campaign to his supporters to ``get in their face,'' it is pretty consistent with the message that they train ACORN activists, which is to ``get in their face.'' Go intimidate some bankers while you're at it and see if you can get them to make more bad loans in bad neighborhoods. Let ACORN be positioned to judge whether lenders are making enough bad loans in bad neighborhoods.

This became a big component of what has undermined our economy and what has caused this downward spiral. The President was involved and complicit in the effort that brought about the undermining of our financial institutions in America by his involvement of working with, for, and in promoting and representing ACORN.

Then, when he was elected President of the United States, he sought to move the United States census from the Commerce Department into the White House. He could manage the census, the counting of the people-- real or imagined--from the White House. The public uproar over ACORN caused him to back away from that and to sever the relationship that he had that ACORN was to be working as a contractor with the Census Department. Now, it doesn't mean because they decided not to have a formal contract with ACORN that ACORN wasn't going to be involved in the census. We know that people are policy. We know that there are a lot of ACORN people involved in the census. How could there not be with nearly a half a million people working to count the 306 or so million people who we are?

When we follow the money, when we track ACORN, the path leads us to the White House. ACORN should be investigated by any legitimate Justice Department. Kinston, North Carolina, didn't need to take place. The voice of the people said, We don't want partisan elections. We want to vote for the candidate. We don't want to vote for their political party. This was cancelled by Loretta King and the Justice Department.

We don't need to have voter intimidation with new Black Panthers out there with billy clubs and a Justice Department that would cancel the prosecution that was open and shut. We need no voter intimidation in America.

And where could you better send the message than putting those people that are the new Black Panthers, that are clearly wide open guilty, under the heaviest penalty allowed by law?

This is all part of the character and the makeup of this administration; this administration, who plays the race card; this administration, who defaults in favor of whichever minority they think might be the one that would most likely support their political party and their agenda. And I point to the new Black Panthers. I point to the President's remarks on the mother and the daughter going to get ice cream in Arizona. I point to the Justice Department canceling the prosecution, the open-and-shut case, by then almost closed case, of the new Black Panthers in Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia; of the city and their municipal referendum on no partisan elections in Kinston, North Carolina; the failure of the Justice Department to investigate ACORN; and the fact that the President spoke out--now this moves into a little bit different subject area, but it also ties, in my view, together--and the President demagoguing Arizona's immigration law, not having read it; the Attorney General doing the same thing, and finally admitting that he'd not read the bill. Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, demagoguing Arizona's immigration law, not having read it, and having admitted that to Senator John McCain.

And, let me see, the Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner taking Arizona's immigration law all the way to the Chinese and saying, Well, we brought it up early and often.

Apparently, we're a sinful Nation because we believe in the rule of law, Mr. Speaker.

And let me see, who's left out of this? Oh, yes. John Morton, the Assistant Secretary, who is the head of ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who remarked that he wasn't committed to handling all the people that might be picked up by Arizona immigration or by Arizona's law enforcement officers in enforcement of Federal immigration law.

So this whole picture of this administration paints something that makes it really hard for government teachers to get this message down to their students. We have students that are juniors or seniors in high school, and you're teaching them government. They might be younger than that, but juniors and seniors in high school. They might read the paper and watch the news, and they sit in the classroom, and the teacher will say, We have a separation of powers. We have the legislative. We have the executive. And we have the judicial branches of government. These are three separate powers. Some teachers will teach they're separate but equal. That's another hour to talk about it. I don't believe they're equal. But they are separate.

To argue that they're separate and having students watch the news and hear that the President doesn't want to enforce immigration law because he doesn't agree with it; that he wants to hold law enforcement hostage until the American people accept his form of amnesty. The President doesn't get that kind of discretion. The President's job is to enforce the law. The Attorney General's job is to enforce the law. John Morton's job as head of ICE is to enforce the law. And the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano's job is to enforce the law. Because you disagree with the law means nothing. You enforce that law whether you agree with it or not because you're not a policy maker. You're a law enforcer.

That's how our Constitution is set up. That's the power that's invested in them. If our Founding Fathers had wanted them to be legislators, they would have written it into the Constitution. If the people of this country wanted them to be legislators, I can tell you what they would have done. They would have amended the Constitution and had the power to change Federal law over to John Morton, Janet Napolitano, Eric Holder, for the President of the United States, or maybe even Michael Posner, the Assistant Secretary of State. Who knows.

That's not who we are. That's not the way it is. We must defend the rule of law. It is an essential pillar of American exceptionalism. We cannot sustain our greatness as a Nation if we're going to allow the discretionary--discretionary--enforcement of the law to come from executive branch people. And for a President of the United States, who taught constitutional law, albeit as an adjunct professor at the stellar University of Chicago School of Law, to think that that's the case, that he doesn't understand this any better, he thinks he can get away with it.

Well, I am here to say, no, the American people know better. We can read the Constitution. We can read our history. And we have access to the information necessary to keep an educated populace, coupled with an armed populace, coupled with the people that have enough self- confidence to be in a full-throated way to stand up and defend our liberty and defend our freedom. That's who we are, Mr. Speaker. That's who we must remain. That's the character that we must maintain. And we cannot allow ourselves to be diminished by a people who happen to find themselves right now sitting in controlling positions within this government that don't understand or willfully defy our values as a Nation or our Constitution.

Mr. Speaker, I couldn't have picked a better moment to yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It's my privilege and honor to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the House tonight and to pick up on some subject matter. I think my colleagues that spoke on the previous hour covered that subject matter pretty clearly and very well, the matter of global finances and the broader picture that we're working with. For me, I come here tonight with a number of things on my mind and things that are fresh on my mind, Mr. Speaker. They have to do with the immigration situation here in the United States.

Having had a long history with this subject matter, when I first came to this Congress, I recall listening to Congressman Tom Tancredo here on the floor. I actually was in my office and watching on C-SPAN and I thought, Well, this is a piece of history in the making. And so I walked over here and into the Capitol Chamber and sat here to listen to him speak. Tom, knowing the rhythm of the place here, saw me in the Chamber and concluded I came over because I had some things to say. He recognized me to speak on the subject matter of immigration. I was not preparing to do so, although I happen to have been prepared because of the issues in mind. From those days on forward, I have been active on this issue in my time here in Congress.

I happen to have had the privilege of sharing the stage with Congressman Tancredo Saturday night in Phoenix. It was the same good man with a passion and a great heart; a man that understands America, the need to have a sovereign Nation, a need to control our borders, a need to have a network across this country of all levels of law enforcement working together to enforce the law, the rule of law--I should say, reestablish the rule of law here in the United States--and build a greater country than we are today, Mr. Speaker.

It was a refreshing thing for me to hear those words again come out of the mouth of my good friend Congressman Tom Tancredo and to share some time on that microphone with Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County in Arizona, who has a national reputation for enforcing immigration law, for establishing and building Tent City. And when Sheriff Joe, when he asked me if I had been to visit--and actually I had. He had sent a guide to take me to Tent City last year and presented me with a pair of his autographed underwear. When he found out I have that in my office in safekeeping, I was his good friend, Mr. Speaker. That tent city was built because a judge ordered that the prisons provide more space; and the choice was, apparently, to turn some people loose, spend a lot of millions of dollars to put up a structure, or set up a tent city. They did what they needed to do to enforce the law, especially down in that climate, Mr. Speaker.

I also was able to share a microphone with State Senator Russell Pearce, who is the principal author of Arizona immigration law S. 1070, and to spend several hours probing his intellect, his sense of history, and his patriotism that runs so deep for America, and his dedication to the United States of America, the rule of law, the State of Arizona. Put those pieces together, and I looked across at the faces that filled the park grounds there next to the State Capitol in Phoenix, Arizona. A lot of red, white, and blue. A lot of the yellow Gadsden flags; the Don't Tread on Me flags, flying in the light breeze that we had there.

It was an event to remember, with people just clear out to the outside edges of the park; a good, respectable crowd that was there. People came from many of the States of the Union. This time, I don't

know that it's all the States but many of the States. A

lot from Florida came all the way to Arizona to express

their support for S. 1070, for the law that was

principally drafted and pushed through into legislation by

State Senator Russell Pearce. And he went out to bounce

his legislation off of the best experts he could find in

America.

And I do give great credit to Governor Jan Brewer for signing and supporting Arizona's immigration law. It is a law that has been misinterpreted, I think willfully, by people on the other side of the aisle. But here's what it is. It is a mirror of Federal legislation. It doesn't go beyond the limits of Federal legislation. It's written within the limits that are there. And it simply says that Arizona law enforcement is going to enforce Federal immigration law.

Now, if you remember, Mr. Speaker, there seemed to have been a grudge match or something going on between now Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, former Governor of Arizona, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County. But when Janet Napolitano became the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, shortly after that she announced an initiative to look at how they were going to make some changes in the 287(g) law. The 287(g) law is the Federal law that provides Federal assistance to train local law enforcement officers so that they are well trained and certified to enforce Federal immigration law. And then it makes a commitment for ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to work in cooperation with the local law enforcement that has a memorandum of understanding that is the 287(g)--that's the section in the Federal code--that is an understanding that they now have reached an agreement where they're going to work and cooperate together.

There are a lot of jurisdictions in America that had 287(g) agreements. What it is, it's a commitment for the local law enforcement to enforce and support Federal immigration law. It's that simple.

Now, you don't have to have a 287(g) agreement in order to have local law enforcement enforce Federal immigration law. In fact, there's an Attorney General's opinion that was written under John Ashcroft that makes it clear that local law enforcement can enforce Federal immigration law. There are a number of pieces of Federal case law out there that address this. One of them would be a 2001 case, the 10th Circuit, and it's U.S. v. Santana-Garcia.

In case you want to look that up tonight, Mr. Speaker, if you're having trouble sleeping, I just will tell you simply what that says is that the Federal court, the 10th Circuit, has concluded that it is implicit that local law enforcement has the authority to enforce Federal immigration law, that it wasn't contemplated otherwise. And I would go further and say that if there's something implicit that local law enforcement can't enforce Federal law, does that mean then that if there is a Federal officer that's being assaulted or that is murdered by someone that we can't have local law enforcement pick them up, that it's a Federal crime so, therefore, only Federal officers can enforce Federal crime? If it's a national bank that would be robbed, could the county sheriffs pick up those bank robbers and support the violation of the Federal law against robbing Federal banks or would you have to wait until the FBI showed up to be able to pick up the robbers of the Federal banks?

By the same token, if it's a city ordinance that's being violated, can the State highway patrol enforce a city ordinance? I will suggest that yes, they should do that. They should do that when that becomes an obligation of their job. When there's a law being broken in front of them, they should enforce that law. If the speed limits are written by either the State or the city or perhaps county on county roads, if those are the speed limits set, does that mean the county sheriffs and deputies and people can enforce speed limit laws only on county highways but they can't do so on city streets or State highways?

I mean, it borders on ludicrous to make the argument that immigration law has been, up until this time, Federal. Therefore, the only people that can enforce it are Federal officials, and they only would be the ones who were trained within ICE and Border Patrol and Customs and border protection to enforce immigration law. It's ludicrous to believe that. There has to be a network of law enforcement working in conjunction, from city police to county sheriffs to highway patrol, departments of criminal investigation, all of

our Federal officers working in cooperation with each other with great profound respect for the Constitution of the United States, for the laws that are duly passed here in the United States Congress and those laws that are passed in the State legislatures, the ordinances that come from the cities, and the list goes on.

So it is a cooperative effort. It always has been a cooperative effort for law enforcement to work together, and it cannot be such a thing as we are going to separate statutes by the jurisdiction of the entity that passed the law. If we do that, then we will have law enforcement officers who watch crimes before their very eyes but don't enforce the law.

Mr. Speaker, that would be the circumstances that take place in sanctuary cities now, sanctuary cities across the country that number by name, places like Houston or Denver or San Francisco. Many other cities have established sanctuary city ordinances that would tell their local law enforcement, Do not work or cooperate in the Federal immigration law. And even though the 1996 Immigration Reform Act that was passed into law, and much of that work was done by now the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith), who deserves a lot of credit for language that is there, there is language in that 1996 Immigration Reform Act that prohibits the cities from establishing sanctuary cities.

I don't have the language in front of me, Mr. Speaker, but it is language that says to the effect that you cannot prohibit your officers from enforcing Federal immigration law or working in cooperation with. But the problem is that those cities got together that wanted to have a sanctuary policy, and apparently, they found out the same lawyer or lawyers, or sent out a memo to the League of Cities or whatever ties these larger cities together. And they found a way to write an ordinance around the Federal language, and they prohibited their officers from gathering information. And because they were prohibited from gathering, they didn't have any information to pass on and share with ICE and the other law enforcement officers when it came to immigration.

It created this thing called sanctuary cities. And so they have said that they are not going to enforce the immigration law within these cities. And what would happen? Of course, you create a magnet for illegals to go to those cities where they are sheltered by the sanctuary city language.

And we have, out of the House of Representatives, several times passed amendments on appropriations bills that prohibited any of those dollars coming out of those bills from being distributed to the cities that have jurisdictions where they passed sanctuary language and made sanctuary cities. But it never made it through the Senate, and it never made it into law.

So we have city after city that protects illegals within them because there is a political base already there for illegals. And in Arizona, what they have done is, S. 1070, in effect, it invalidates any city that wants to provide a sanctuary city, and simply requires them to enforce immigration law by their local law enforcement. And if they refuse or fail to do so, it allows a citizen to have standing to bring a lawsuit against that entity, against that city or county that is not enforcing the immigration law, not inquiring as to the legal status of the people that they encounter in the course of their normal law enforcement duties. I think that is a good thing.

Once 1070 is implemented into law, which I think will be on the last day of July of this year, then you will see the sanctuary cities that happen to exist in Arizona, that will shut down, and they will be compelled to enforce the law, or they are going to be brought into court by the people of Arizona.

But the uproar, the objection hasn't been about shutting off sanctuary cities in Arizona; it has been about whether there would be a boycott of Arizona because some claim that the Arizona law will bring about racial discrimination profiling.

Well, first, let me say, Mr. Speaker, that profiling has always been an important component of legitimate law enforcement. If you can't profile someone, you can't use those commonsense indicators that are before your very eyes.

Now, I think it is wrong to use racial profiling for the reasons of discriminating against people, but it is not wrong to use race or other indicators for the sake of identifying people that are violating the law.

Now we all get profiled. I had a moment of irony this morning when I stepped out of the USDA building down here several blocks west of the Capitol. I was wearing a suit, and I had just stepped out to the sidewalk. I hadn't even looked for a cab. I started to walk down the street thinking I would go to the corner. There was a cab going the other direction on the opposite side of the street. He tapped his horn. I looked up, and he swung around the street and picked me up. I asked, How did you identify me as someone who needed a cab ride? I hadn't indicated I wanted one. I was walking down the street.

He said, Well, you were wearing a suit and you stepped out the USDA office. There wasn't a car there to pick you up; I knew you needed a cab. He profiled me. He said, I don't stop for people wearing shorts and sneakers because they are not looking for a ride. People in suits coming out of that building are. There I was, profiled because I was a guy in a suit at a time of day when it would be logical I would be looking for a ride somewhere.

It is just a commonsense thing. Law enforcement needs to use commonsense indicators. Those commonsense indicators are all kinds of things, from what kind of clothes people wear, the suit in my case, what kind of shoes people wear, what kind of accent they have, the type of grooming that they might have. There are all kinds of indicators there, and sometimes it is just a sixth sense, and they can't put their finger on it.

But these law enforcement officers, if they were going to be discriminating against people on the sole basis of race, singling people out, that would be going on already. And we would have already the files of the objections that are taking place.

But this is about a political argument. It is not about Arizona's law being unconstitutional or preempted by Federal law or somehow had stretched the bounds that have been set by case law that is out there. It is not about any of that. They would like to say it is; in fact, they have said that it is.

But what it is about, Mr. Speaker, is about making a political argument that would like to brand Republicans as being anti-people because of race.

Now, could this happen? Could anyone start an agenda here to try to brand people and try to scare the American people on the subject of race or the subject of immigration? My answer to that is, You bet. I have seen it happen. It started here on this floor right over here, in 2006, when in the early summer, if I remember my dates correctly, we passed immigration reform legislation out of here headed up by at that time chairman of the Judiciary Committee Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin. Of the things that it did, it was enforcement of immigration law. In the original bill, it made it a felony to cross into the United States illegally. To sneak into the United States, it made it a felony. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) sensed that that would be a highly contested issue if it became law, and so he offered an amendment to strike the language that made it a felony to enter the United States illegally.

Now, had Mr. Sensenbrenner's amendment passed, then it would have eliminated the language that made it a felony to enter the United States illegally. Jim Sensenbrenner argued vociferously in favor of his amendment. He didn't actually convince me, by the way, but he understood what was going on. And when the vote went up on the board, 194 Democrats voted ``no'' on the Sensenbrenner amendment, which can only be concluded that they wanted it to be a felony to enter the United States illegally. And it is a crime, but it is not a felony. So 194 Democrats voted to make it a felony when they voted ``no'' on the Sensenbrenner amendment. And that Sensenbrenner amendment failed. And when it failed, brought down by Democrats, the streets filled up with protesters protesting that Republicans wanted to make it a felony to enter the United

States illegally; 194 Democrats wanted to, and almost all of them demagogued Republicans for the language that was in the bill when they had voted to keep the language in the bill.

It was completely cynical. They knew it. You all knew it, and there isn't anybody in this Congress that can challenge this statement. And I would be happy to yield to anybody who has a different perspective on this. I watched it happen. I was in the middle of it. And I watched the streets fill up with people that were storming in the streets, first with Mexican flags and then with white T-shirts and carrying American flags. And as they lined up for the protest, the organizers were taking their Mexican flags out of their hands, handing them an American flag, saying put on this white T-shirt, come out here and protest against these evil Republicans that want to make it a felony to enter the United States illegally.

It doesn't bother me that there is a little upset and turmoil in the streets if that's the case. We need tighter immigration laws. We need more tools to work with, not less. But my point, Mr. Speaker, is the very cynicism of voting one way and arguing the other way: 194 Democrats, and they turned and pointed their fingers at Republicans and said, You wanted to make it a felony. They brought down the amendment. It is a fact. It's a fact in the Congressional Record, Mr. Speaker.

So here we are now in 2010. No legislation of significance on immigration has been passed since then. It didn't happen in 2006 or 2007. The switchboards of the United States Senate were shut down at two different times during those years because the American people reject the idea of amnesty.

And I have watched immigration at the Federal level be enforced less with each administration since Ronald Reagan signed the 1986 amnesty act. But he was straight up and honest enough to declare it to be an amnesty act, Mr. Speaker. The 1986 amnesty act was the last amnesty. It was the amnesty to end all amnesties, and President Reagan signed it because he believed that there wouldn't be another amnesty.

It was supposed to be amnesty for about a million people. Turned out to be amnesty for about 3 million people by the time the system was gamed and the fraudulent documents and the people came out of the shadows. And 3 million people went through to receive the amnesty in '86, three times the number that they anticipated.

And we have had six lesser amnesties since then that aren't published very much. So we have had a continuous series of amnesties. And it's going to continue until such time as either nobody wants to come to the United States, or until such time as we simply give up on the idea that we can control our borders, or until we establish that we are going to enforce immigration law and we are going to stand by the rule of law and we are not going to equivocate and we are not going to compromise.

And that, Mr. Speaker, is where I stand. I refuse to equivocate, I refuse to compromise on the rule of law, I refuse to grant amnesty. And we should talk about what amnesty is. To grant amnesty is to pardon immigration law-breakers and reward them with the objective of their crimes.

Now, I don't know necessarily what their objectives are. It may be a path to citizenship. It might be a job. They might want to have access to the United States to do philanthropic good things. Or they might want to have access to the United States so they can travel back and forth into the United States hauling illegal drugs into America. And that happens a lot.

A couple of nights ago on Sean Hannity's program you could see the video that he ran, and you could see the backpackers coming into the United States with roughly 50 pounds of marijuana bound in a burlap bundle on their back with straps that might be woolen scarves used for straps, makeshift backpacks. And you might see 10 or 15 or 20 or more all in a row each carrying their 50 or more pounds of marijuana on their back. And this goes on night after night after night, Mr. Speaker. It goes on every night.

And I have gone down and sat on the border in the dark, sat there quietly, didn't have night vision equipment, and just listened, and just listened as the vehicles came down, they let people off, they would set their pack out on the ground. You could hear the packs thump when they set them on the ground. They would get out of the vehicle. They would talk a little bit. Somebody would hush them up. They would close the doors on the vehicle. You could hear that. They would hoist their packs up, put them on their back, and they would march through the mesquite, come across the border.

And when you sit by a barbed wire fence that's got four or five barbs on it and a steel post, you can listen to the posts and you can hear the wire when it stretches. And you can tell each time somebody crosses the fence, and you can count them. And at night I never trust my eyes to be able to actually give an accurate count. I see the shadows, but shadows are not clear enough for me to tell you how many. I can tell you I have heard the noise, I have seen the shadows, I have listened to the same rhythm come over and over again.

I have gone up through the stream beds that are in the desert and there seen where they have dropped off many of their clothes that are unnecessary, empty water jugs. When they unload the packs, the burlap bags that they are in will be dropped there. There will be food that's dropped off, some that's been eaten, some that's been left partially eaten, and some of it left. The desert is full of smugglers' litter.

And if one would go down to the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument down there where Kris Eggle was killed by an illegal, and he was a National Park Officer ranger, there is a monument to him at the headquarters at Organ Pipe Cactus, but there is a large percentage of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and that's a national park called a monument that's off limits to Americans. And I am guessing at the area. I know it's the southern side of it. And it seems to me that as I looked at the map, about 40 percent of Organ Pipe Cactus is off limits to Americans because it's full of litter, it's full of drug smugglers' litter. It's drug smugglers gulch there. And it is too dangerous for people that are out just enjoying the desert to walk down into. And it's too full of litter. And we don't have the labor to go pick up the mess. And if we did, the mess is accumulating day by day, every day, every night.

And the numbers of people that have been crossing the border illegally, we could take the information that comes from Secretary Napolitano, I suppose, and accept it at face value. They would argue that their interdictions on the border have gone down significantly over the last year. And they claim that because they are arresting fewer people on the border that there is fewer border crossings. Now, that may be true. I don't know what's true.

But to use the data that shows that there are fewer interdictions of illegal border crossers to conclude that there are fewer crossing attempts isn't necessarily a logical or rational approach. It could also be that they are just simply not enforcing the law as aggressively as they were a couple of years ago when the numbers were higher. I don't know the answer to that question.

But when the Bush administration used the same argument, I had the same questions. Just because you arrest fewer people doesn't mean there are fewer people crossing. It might mean you are just not arresting as many people. But here are the numbers that came before the Immigration Subcommittee in testimony from witnesses that had represented our Federal Government. And I am including Border Patrol officers. The number of interdictions they believed turned out to be they were stopping about one out of four. Twenty-five percent of border crossing attempts were being stopped.

If you do the math on the stops that they had, that means that there were 11,000 a night on average every night. Not during the day so much. At night 11,000. And that turns out to be four million illegal border crossings a year. And when I go to the border and talk to the people that are enforcing the border and I tell them, so you are stopping about one out of four, you are getting 25 percent of those that attempt. And they look at me and laugh. It's not 25 percent. The most consistent number I get from the people that are hands-on is maybe they stop 10 percent.

If you go to some of the other officers there that are not quite as optimistic, they will take that number down to 2 to 3 percent. But I have never heard an officer that works the border regularly tell me that they stopped 25 percent. And I don't believe I have heard a number higher than 10. So I will tell you I think it's 10 percent that get stopped, not 25. That's still a whole lot that get through.

If it's 4 million attempts and we stop 25 percent, that means 3 million actually get through into the United States. And, yes, a lot of them go back to Mexico and flow back and forth. A lot of them are drug smugglers. They do that for a living.

The people that are working our law enforcement in the desert tell me that they will catch some of these drug smugglers and maybe they will have somebody that only weighs--young men, 15, 16, 18, and they get older--weighing 100 pounds, 105 pounds, not very big people, wiry, tough, with great big calves on them carrying half their body weight or more in marijuana on their back through the desert 70 or 100 miles. Tough people that can cover a lot of territory with a lot of weight on them. And this goes on night after night after night every night.

And does America know, Mr. Speaker, that in some of the sectors on our southern border the policy is that if we catch somebody that has less than 500 pounds of marijuana on them we just simply take the marijuana off their hands and turn them loose? That there is not a prosecution for the drug possession in many of the sectors on the southern border because they argue that they don't have the jail space, they don't have the prosecutorial time, and they don't have the judges to deal with this? And I am convinced that this is true, Mr. Speaker.

I hear this as not necessarily testimony before the committee, but I hear it come out of the people that have to live underneath it. And I was down there and watched an interdiction take place. And I helped unload the bundles of marijuana from underneath the false bed of a pickup truck, and this was down near Sells, Arizona. It was roughly 240 pounds of marijuana in there. And that would have been under the amount that they would be prosecuted for at the time. They have since raised that threshold. It was 250 at the time I was there. Now the threshold in some of those sectors has been raised to 500 pounds.

Now, where I come from, if it's an ounce or a half an ounce or any little particle, that's something to prosecute for. That's the rule of law. But the rule of law has been stretched to the point of ridiculous on our southern border, and the lawlessness from across the border in Mexico is flowing over into the United States.

The murders, the intimidation, the deaths are taking it out in the lives of our law enforcement officers, innocent American people who are being murdered, who are being raped, who are being targeted as victims to crime that makes Phoenix, Arizona, the No. 2 capital of kidnapping in the world. Phoenix, Arizona, the No. 2 capital of kidnapping in the world. Does anybody believe that if we could enforce our immigration at the border that Phoenix would be the No. 2 capital of kidnapping in the world?

Mr. Speaker, it's important to note that 90 percent of the illegal drugs consumed in America come from or through Mexico. That means across our southern border, 90 percent of the illegal drugs.

I pointed out that we have 4 million--the number is probably down a little bit from that, but I don't have any other data--4 million illegal border crossing attempts a year, and maybe we stop 10 percent. So that means that we still have a number that is about 3.6 million successful border crossings a year, a 10 percent interdiction rate, 3.6 million. Now, just the attempts, I did the math and I said it was 11,000 a night every night. One might take a look, what was the size of Santa Anna's army? Well, 4,000 to 6,000. So we're looking at a number every single night that I will say is probably twice the size of Santa Anna's army, every single night pouring across our southern border, bringing in 90 percent of the illegal drugs in America. We are importing the violence and the death that goes with the illegal drug trade, and still, this President's heart is hardened.

So the President scares the American people by telling us that a mother and her daughter could be going out to get some ice cream and be pulled over and stopped and asked to produce their papers based upon a presumption of their skin color. Where is that in the Arizona law? It specifically prohibits such a thing, specifically prohibits.

Then, as the President of the United States had his shot or two shots at Arizona, he ordered the Attorney General of the United States to use the resources of the Department of Justice to seek to invalidate Arizona's immigration law. So when Attorney General Eric Holder came before the Judiciary Committee a couple of weeks ago, just before the Memorial Day break, to testify before the committee, he knew that Arizona's immigration law would come up before the committee, that that would be a subject matter that he would be questioned about. It was his job to be briefed on the subject matter so he could answer in an informed, intelligent way.

So as the subject came up, I asked the Attorney General if the President had ordered that he use the Justice Department to seek to invalidate Arizona's immigration law. I can't quote back into this Record his exact quote in the Congressional Record. I can tell you he didn't dispute that. So it was at least by assent that twice the Attorney General acknowledged that the President had directed him.

Now, this is supposed to be a Justice Department that's independent from politics, a Justice Department that makes its decisions based upon the law, an objective evaluation of the law, and, by the way, a Justice Department that has an obligation to enforce the law. These are not policy setters. The President of the United States, Mr. Speaker, is not to be a policy setter when it comes to areas where the Congress has legislated. That's what we do here. We set policy. We set policy here in the United States Congress. That's part of the separation of powers.

Just at the risk of being redundant, everybody in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, should know this. I think it's getting harder and harder to teach government class in our schools today because of the conduct of especially our executive branch of government. The separation of powers, the judicial branch of government will take care of things that have to do with the courts. The legislative branch of government, the House, down that hall, the Senate, we pass the legislation. We set the policy. We write the laws. The executive branch of government's job is to see that those laws are faithfully upheld, enforce the law, carry out the policy, the will of the people of the United States of America as expressed to the Republic, the constitutional Republic, the representatives that are elected by the people.

Yet, we have Members of the executive branch of government as high as the President, himself, who seem to not understand that simple concept. A President who taught Constitution law at the University of Chicago is still a President that would tell America that a mother taking her daughter to get some ice cream could have a problem and have to produce their papers. This is misinforming the American people. Is it willful? In his case, I don't know. I think when he said that he had not read the bill, and a week or so later he uttered a mitigating statement that indicated to me that either he was briefed or he might have read the bill.

But Eric Holder, the Attorney General, to come before the Judiciary Committee, and when I asked him the question, So you have directed the Justice Department to seek to invalidate the Arizona immigration law and to test it constitutionally or statutorily or by case law, could you point to me, General Holder, a place in the Constitution that gives you concern that Arizona's immigration law might be unconstitutional? No, he could not.

Could you, General Holder, point to a Federal statute that would preempt Arizona's immigration law? He could not.

Could you then, General, point to some case law that would be controlling and limit Arizona's ability to pass immigration enforcement law at the State level? He could not. The Attorney General of the United States could not point to even a potential constitutional violation or a statute that could

preempt Arizona's immigration law or any case law that would control, none of it whatsoever. Yet he was still committed and still taking the resources of the taxpayers of the United States of America to seek to invalidate Arizona's immigration law and bring suit against Arizona. And that's what he seems to be doing.

There is a draft memo out there--it's not the exact word for it. It's a draft something, Mr. Speaker, that is a product of the Justice Department now that apparently lays out the parameters by which the Justice Department would bring suit against Arizona to invalidate their immigration law, and here's what I believe happened, and I don't think it can be proven otherwise.

The ACLU has already brought a lawsuit against Arizona, and the ACLU along with the SEIU, and just name your leftist organization in America. They all joined in common cause. They have made these arguments. This is a lawsuit filed May 17, 2010. Here's what the ACLU and the Muslim group here in America and the SEIU and others have brought suit on, against Arizona's immigration law 1070.

It says that it violates the Supremacy Clause. That's the preemption component of this. I don't know where and the suit doesn't say where, not that I have found.

It says it also violates the Equal Protection Clause. It argues that plaintiffs who are racially and national origin minorities, including Latinos residing or traveling in Arizona, might be targeted. It does make targets out of them is what it says. I would argue that the bill says that you can't use racial profiling, and so if the targets are breaking the law, you have to enforce the law no matter what their skin color is, Mr. Speaker. That's the ACLU's argument.

Another is it violates the First Amendment. I don't know what the logic is on that, and I won't trouble this Congress with that part.

But this goes on and says that it violates the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure. Well, on what basis? I don't think it goes very deep into that.

And then due process, privileges and immunities, right to travel-- people breaking the law don't have a right to travel in the United States, and it violates 42 U.S.C. 1981, which is, prohibits discrimination under color of State law on the basis of alienage, national origin, or race. Well, no, the law prohibits such a thing.

But here's what I'll predict to you, Mr. Speaker: When we finally see the litigation that the Department of Justice is seeking to bring against Arizona, we will see that it has been copied and pasted right off of the ACLU's lawsuit. That's the work that I believe is being done. The outside groups, the left-wing groups play the tune--the tune is right here in this lawsuit from the ACLU--and then the Justice Department dances at the direction of the President of the United States, at the direction of the ACLU, the SEIU, and the rest of the left-wing organizations that have filed this lawsuit.

But this is not a rational approach. If the President can't articulate a problem, a constitutional violation--even though he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago--the Attorney General, under oath, couldn't articulate a constitutional Federal statute or a case law violation by Arizona's immigration law, S. 1070, but yet, this radical case that I think is irrational and illogical that's brought by the ACLU--and this is just a summary, it's about that thick, and I've read a lot of it, actually--this will make sole theories of specious arguments, and I believe that the Justice Department--if they come forward, and I think they will--will be making those same irrational speeches, arguments.

So, Mr. Speaker, I'm concerned about an unbiased Justice Department. It's hard for me to buy the idea that they are unbiased. When I look at this case, this all-out effort to focus on Arizona's immigration law and to invalidate it without a basis or a rationale, when I look at the many faces of the administration that have spoken against it that hadn't read the bill--Attorney General Holder, of course, would be the lead person that had admitted he hadn't read the bill. When Judge Poe asked him that question shortly after my questions of the Attorney General that day, he admitted he hadn't read the bill. Seventeen pages, he hadn't read the bill.

He clearly had not been briefed by any objective person that had read the bill. He may have taken the MoveOn.org or the Huffington Post talking points and read them. It sounded to me like he had. It sounded to me like the President had as well. And then Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, who is charged with heading up the office that enforces immigration law, the former Governor of Arizona, who should have focused on that bill--well, Governor Jan Brewer should have focused on that bill more; I know she did. Senator Russell Pearce focused on 1070 a lot more; I know he did. But Janet Napolitano, a former Arizona Governor and now Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, had not read the bill, but still made public statements that implied, at a minimum, that it would bring about profiling of people in Arizona and disagreed with the law. And when John McCain point-blanked her before the Senate hearing, she had to admit she hadn't read the bill either.

The President didn't read the bill when he talked about the mother and her daughter going for ice cream; either that, or he willfully misinformed the American people. We know that Eric Holder didn't read the bill. He admitted to that under oath. We know that Janet Napolitano didn't read the bill. She admitted that under oath. We go further down the line.

Michael Posner, the Assistant Secretary of State, he was so outraged by Arizona copying Federal's immigration law that he took the argument to the Chinese. We brought it up early and often, he said, apparently to compare Arizona's immigration law with the brutality that goes on in that brutal regime in China.

I don't think I'm done yet, Mr. Speaker. Let's see, who am I forgetting? Assistant Secretary John Morton, who heads up ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who made the public statement that he wouldn't commit to cooperation with Arizona when it came to picking up the illegals that would be arrested by Arizona under S. 1070.

Now, John Morton doesn't get to set policy, neither does Janet Napolitano, nor does Eric Holder, nor does Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner, nor the President of the United States; they have to work within the laws that they get. Now, there are other policies that they do get to set within the framework, but they don't get to amend the policy. Congress sets that. The voice of the American people sets it.

If John Morton, the head of ICE, doesn't want to enforce the law, if he doesn't want to pick up the illegals that are arrested by Arizona's law enforcement officers, then John Morton should just simply find himself a job that his heart was in. He should go do something that he could do that he believed was right if he disagrees with the policy. You know, a general that thinks we're off on the wrong mission will just resign their commission if they don't think they're getting the support from the political people, and that's happened a number of times throughout our history. When they get an order that they can't carry out, generals have just resigned. At least they maintain their integrity that way.

Well, there is an order out there, and it is, Enforce the law. Cooperate, by the way, with Arizona, who has uttered this almost a primal scream of despair and frustration that they've had to take their resources in their State and pass an immigration law that, by the way, I hope and plead goes to every State in the Union. If they can find ways to toughen it up, tighten it up and make it more effective, do that, but start with that foundation of Arizona's law. It's rare when a State takes an initiative that it begins to set the policy for America. I would be very happy to see this happen, Mr. Speaker, when it comes to the case of Arizona.

So our Federal officials that got this wrong, that are trying to mirror, by the way, the President of the United States, but the President misinformed the American people. He hadn't read the bill. Janet Napolitano misinformed the American people. She hadn't read the bill. Eric Holder misinformed the

American people. He hadn't read the bill. I don't know if John Morton read the bill, but he didn't want to enforce the law, you could tell that. Now I actually think he has made some mitigating statements, and he will be better to get along with. Michael Posner had no business sticking his nose in this whatsoever, and he carried it all the way to negotiations with the Chinese under the State Department.

And by the way, I can't stand here in this place on the floor of the House of Representatives, Mr. Speaker, without raising an issue of Felipe Calderon, back behind where I'm standing now and before Memorial Day, spoke to a Joint Session of Congress, and he had to lecture us on how he strongly disagrees with Arizona's immigration law. Well, if he does, he also disagrees with the United States Federal Government's immigration law because that's what Arizona's law does; it mirrors it. It mirrors the Federal immigration law.

And so we're in an era where the administration, the highest ranking officials within the administration aren't compelled to check the facts before they misinform the American people. They might check a left-wing Web site, but they're not checking the facts. And the American people, who are they going to trust? Shouldn't they be able to trust the voice of the President of the United States? Who's briefing him? Who's telling him what's in the bill? Did they all decline to read the bill? Couldn't anyone have given him an objective analysis? What kind of a shop is being run at the White House in that regard? I think we're getting an indication.

And so, furthermore, while I talk about the immigration subject matter, there is another one out here that causes me reason to be concerned. It was reported in the news that President Obama's aunt was granted asylum--and I always have to check her name to make sure that I get it exactly right. Zeituni Onyango is President Obama's aunt, and she has lived in public housing--reported by the news, at least--in Boston for some time. I believe she came to the United States in the year 2000. We don't know necessarily how she got into the United States, whether it was on some type of a visa, whether it was a tourist or what it might have been, but she stayed. And along about the year 2002, she became the focus of the immigration law enforcement personnel. By 2004, his aunt, Zeituni Onyango, had been adjudicated for deportation by an immigration judge.

Well, she defied the deportation order. She stayed in the United States, purportedly on public benefits of a series of kinds. I don't know how she actually did that, but that's what the news has reported. Then not that long ago, after her nephew became President, she received asylum. Now, ``asylum,'' in this case, is the equivalent of amnesty for an individual, Mr. Speaker. So Zeituni Onyango, who, if she had honored the deportation order, would have left the United States and would have gone back to Kenya, stuck around here, and couldn't be deported or was not forcibly taken out of the United States. She defied the order, and now she is rewarded with the objective of her crime.

Remember when I said that the definition of ``amnesty'' is to pardon immigration lawbreakers and to reward them with the objectives of their crimes?

Well, it is a crime to come into the United States illegally. She may have overstayed a visa, in which case it puts her onto the civil side of this, but if her objective were to be able to stay in the United States, the asylum that she has been granted has come from a judge to whom she has argued that it is too dangerous for her to go back to Kenya because, now, the notoriety of being related to the President makes it too dangerous for her to go back and live there.

Well, if that's the case, if the President's aunt who lives in Kenya can't go back to Kenya because there is too much focus on her there, then I think there are a lot of the other relations of the President who are in Kenya who would be living under the same kind of fear. Wouldn't they get the same asylum if they came here to the United States? Is that something that the President is for, her getting asylum after the court had said ``no,'' based on the fact that her nephew was elected President? Would that be a reason?

As I read that law, I have a lot of questions that come up, but one of them is: If his aunt gets asylum, then wouldn't all of the Obama relations get asylum if they just snuck into the United States? Maybe they can move onto the White House grounds. Then none of them can go back to Kenya anymore. I don't know. I think we should be concerned about whether there was favoritism involved. If a court would grant asylum with no greater basis than what I read here, then I think it is one that should be questioned.

Robert Gibbs said, no, there was nothing out of the ordinary, and there was no impropriety. No one from the White House had anything to say about that. They just let the court do what they did. Really? I would wonder if the administration would say the same thing about the bankruptcy court for General Motors and Chrysler. Yes, they have.

I happen to have thought about this to the point where I reached in, and I wanted to look at some of the testimony before the Judiciary Committee on hearings that took place some time back. I, actually, don't have this date in my record, but it is a matter of the Congressional Record. This would be testimony of the Indiana State Treasurer, Treasurer Mourdock, who gave some compelling testimony before the Judiciary Committee. I listened to a number of the witnesses testify on this similar theme. The theme was that the White House had dictated the terms of bankruptcy to the automakers. So I asked the question of Treasurer Mourdock:

Did any of that testimony that came before the bankruptcy court-- ``did any of that testimony alter the anticipated result of chapter 11?'' Well, this was for both Chrysler and General Motors. Did it alter it? In other words, did the evidence that was presented to the bankruptcy court change the terms that had been offered to it by the White House?

Here is what Treasurer Mourdock said: ``No, it did not.'' Now, that's a quote. ``No, it did not.''

I'll just embellish that a little bit and say his answer was this-- and this is how I interpret the answer, is more accurate: the White House dictated the terms of bankruptcy to the bankruptcy court. Now, whenever in the history of America has the President of the United States determined the terms of bankruptcy and told a bankruptcy court this is how it will be?

Furthermore, to go on with Treasurer Mourdock's testimony--and being from Indiana, he was in the middle of this, and he was speaking only of the Chrysler industry, I should make it clear. He said this: ``You had the situation where one party was negotiating, setting values, determining which creditors would be in, which ones would be out, what they would be given, what would be liquidated, all to be set up for an auction sale for which there was only one bidder--the United States Government. It was on both sides of the table simultaneously. The impropriety of that in trying to establish value for a sale goes beyond plausible.''

That entire string comes out of his testimony. It says to me, and my conclusion is that he was a witness of this, that the Federal Government set the terms of bankruptcy, and when the testimony went before the chapter 11 bankruptcy court, the court had to make a determination. The determination was already made and offered to them. He said there was only one party negotiating, only one party setting values, determining which creditors got paid, which ones were the winners and the losers. There was one party that was offering shares over to the unions--that didn't have an interest in but they walked out of there with an interest in General Motors at least--of 17.5 percent of the shares. Yet this quote is about Chrysler, determining what they would be given, what would be liquidated, all to be set up for an auction sale for which there was only one bidder. That means the Federal Government, the United States Government, on both sides of the table simultaneously, bidding and receiving and dictating the terms to the bankruptcy court.

An administration that could do this we are to believe wouldn't find a way to provide amnesty and asylum for the aunt, Aunt Zeituni Onyango, who lives still in the United States and whom I've invited to testify before the Judiciary Committee?

This is not an obscure aunt of President Obama's. I've read his book, ``Dreams from My Father,'' and this is the aunt who was his guide when he visited Kenya. I believe the year was 1988. President Obama writes extensively about his trip to Kenya. It was a transformative or at least it was a very enlightening experience for him, according to his book, which I take at face value. I know that it was fiction, at least in part, but it was based upon fact.

So I went through it the other night and searched to take a look as to when this subject matter came up. I thought, well, maybe he made just a light reference to his aunt in the book. So I went through and counted the references to his aunt, who now has received asylum in the United States after defying a deportation order. President Obama mentions Aunt Onyango 66 times in his book ``Dreams from My Father''-- 66 times. She took him to place after place. Almost everywhere he went in Kenya, she was the one who took him there. His impressions of Kenya were delivered to him through her.

It is not conceivable to me that an aunt who is that close to him would have come to the United States without his knowledge, nor is it conceivable to me that an aunt who lived in the United States in public housing, presumably under public benefits--and I don't know how those terms were reached and how that could have happened--nor is it conceivable to me that an aunt could have gone to an immigration court and could have been adjudicated for deportation and could have escaped the knowledge or the awareness of Barack Obama. It's not conceivable.

It is not conceivable to me that a President can dictate the terms of bankruptcy to General Motors and to Chrysler and can take the shares away from the secured creditors, who are the people who should be first in line to receive the benefits or to receive any liquidation or any purchase or settlement of the automakers General Motors and Chrysler, and can ice them out, box them out, and give them nothing and hand shares of the automakers over to the unions that had no investment in and no collateral hold on those companies. It has mirrored the language exactly out of the Democratic Socialists of America, off the Socialist Web site.

If all of that can happen--and it has happened, and some of the evidence I've read into the Record here tonight, Mr. Speaker--it is not conceivable to me that this amnesty/asylum for President Obama's aunt happened independent from the influence of the White House. Perhaps show us the records. Let's open up the case. Let's see.

By the way, Attorney General Holder, let's see your draft complaint that you've prepared now to bring the suit against Arizona. When that draft complaint is released--and I formally requested that as a document--I will take it myself and go into the ACLU's lawsuit, and I'll show you where the Attorney General's office copied and pasted right of the ACLU's lawsuit into their own. It will be what comes from that draft complaint.

I know it's coming. That's how they're operating. They're not operating independently within that operation. They've been politicized. They have canceled the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of America, which is the New Black Panthers' case in Philadelphia. It is on videotape. They had a conviction. All they needed to do was to follow through. They canceled the case. Loretta King did so inside the Justice Department. Her name rings back to me because she is the one who canceled the will of the people in Kinston, North Carolina, who voted that they wanted no more partisan elections in local elections. They wanted to take the ``R'' and the ``D'' off the names of the candidates; and with a 70 percent vote, Loretta King invalidated that because she said, Well, black people won't know to vote for another black person unless there is a ``D'' beside his name.

That is not equal protection. It is contempt for people's judgment. I think we need to have equal protection under the law. We need to uphold the Constitution, the rule of law and the separation of powers.

I am going to stand with the people of Arizona, who have done a great thing for America; and we are eventually going to get to the point where we establish this rule of law and enforce our immigration laws. When that becomes a practice in the United States of America, then we can talk about some of the other solutions when it comes to immigration.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your attention this evening, your indulgence and the opportunity to address you here on the floor of the House.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I will be joined throughout the course of this evening by some of my colleagues, including the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison) and others who might join us. We want to speak tonight about a topic that's been in the news lately and is incredibly important to the American people, and that's the topic of immigration, securing our borders, immigration reform. A lot of us were, frankly, shocked at some of the steps that Arizona took a couple of weeks ago which has sent a powerful message to us here in Washington that we need to act.

It's not up to States to patrol their borders, to protect who is here, and to enforce workplace laws; it is the responsibility of the Federal Government. The Federal Government has failed to enforce our immigration laws. It's time to act now to pass comprehensive immigration reform. I have heard the message from Arizona loud and clear, and I hope that that passage of that bill provides an impetus for us to take the politically challenging but critical steps necessary to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

Today was an exciting day for immigration reform. In the Senate, they introduced their conceptual proposal for immigration reform. This was introduced today by a number of Senators. Now, it's not a bill. We have a bill in the House that I proudly joined as a cosponsor of with about 100 Members to fix our broken immigration system. But this is the first step towards a bill in the Senate, which I hope will be introduced soon and will be bipartisan. It starts out 1(a), ``securing the border first before any action can be taken to change the status of people in the United States illegally.'' As long as we have a porous border and we are failing to secure our border, there won't be any meaningful reform in our own country. There will continue to be people who enter our country extralegally.

It's absolutely ridiculous that in this day and age, a sovereign Nation, the greatest Nation on Earth, cannot secure our own border. It's also critical that we know who's here. The Senate plan and the House plan that I am a cosponsor of require our undocumented population to register and undergo a background check. That's an important step, because right now we don't even know who is here in our own country. That's a security threat that every American should take seriously, and I think it's critical that we know who's here.

Arizona has triggered a national crisis and underlined the critical need for action at the Federal level. This ridiculous measure that Arizona passed--and I should point out that we should expect, if Congress continues to fail to take action, other States to pass some misguided and extreme State laws. But this Arizona law has triggered a moral crisis by forcing American citizens, families who are American citizens, to live in fear.

What does this law mean? It means that as American citizens are going about their business, going to school, going to the 7-Eleven, whatever they're doing, and if an officer thinks, thinks, suspects that they might be an illegal immigrant--could it be the clothes they wear? Could it be their race? Could it be an accent they speak with?--that officer can then demand proof, proof of their legal status in the U.S.

Now, I ask you, who carries the proof of their American citizenship with them? I know I don't when I go out shopping. I know I don't when I go for a walk. So these Americans will be detained. They could spend days, weeks, even months away from their families as they have to prove their American citizenship and request the documentation to do so. That can frequently take a long time, and I have been to these immigrant detention facilities. We have one in Aurora, Colorado. That is the type of facility that an American citizen will be taken to simply because they are not walking around or going about with the documentation of their American citizenship.

This threatens to turn Arizona into a police state. It threatens to strike fear in the hearts of hundreds of thousands of Arizonans, particularly Arizonans of particular ethnic heritages. That's why I feel very strongly this bill is a racist bill, one born of xenophobia, but one that will affect the rights of American citizens. Will it lead to the apprehension of more undocumented immigrants? It might. It will, on the margins. But it will lead to the detention of American citizens accidentally because American citizens, as we go about our own business in our own country, should not have to carry with us proof of our citizenship in this great Nation.

Where does this overreach of government end? This new law has triggered a political crisis in Arizona, effectively causing the law enforcement community, which has strongly opposed this bill in Arizona, to face the choice of going after people based on their race or protecting people from crime.

The fastest growing segment of our electorate will continue to pay attention to this issue. Latinos want to know that we have an interest in fixing the broken immigration system and making sure that no other States overreach and go after American citizens like Arizona does.

And yet we can all understand--me from Colorado, others across the Nation--why Arizona felt it had to fall to them to take action on this issue. It's because the Federal Government has failed to act on comprehensive immigration reform. Immigration is a national issue that requires a national solution. It can't be solved on a State-by-State basis. We need the Federal Government to take bold and decisive action, and we need to pass comprehensive immigration reform now.

We stand with the Arizona Association of Police Chiefs, the Yuma County sheriff, Mesa police chief and other law enforcement officials who are opposed to Senate bill 1070 in Arizona because it makes Arizonan communities less safe and threatens American citizens with detention. If people are afraid that their families and neighbors and friends will be rounded up by police, they live in constant fear of a government and a police that are there to serve and protect.

The Arizona immigration enforcement law is an example of the chaos that's been created by the Federal Government's failure to protect our borders and act on comprehensive immigration reform. The new Arizona law is an attack on our American values. President Obama's acknowledged that Arizona's law undermines the basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans. This is a challenge of who we are as a Nation, who we are as human beings, and whether we're going to stand up for American ideals or reject those to appeal to our worst instincts and the worst among us.

Let's do the right thing and fix our broken immigration system. That is a challenge to us here in Congress, and it shouldn't take courage from Members of Congress to talk about, support, and pass immigration reform. Quite to the contrary, it should take courage to avoid passing immigration reform, because the American people overwhelmingly want immigration reform, and those Members of Congress who stand in the way of securing our borders and ensuring that only people can work legally risk not returning next year and having a different voice that demands the action of the United States Congress.

This is one of the few issues that has broad agreement among my constituents in Colorado. I have said this to a number of audiences. When we talked about health care, there were many of my constituents who supported health care reforms and many who opposed it. With regard to immigration, I have not found one constituent on the left or the right that believes that we are doing everything right with regard to immigration. It is broken. Conservatives agree it's broken. Liberals agree it's broken. Nobody believes our immigration system works perfectly.

We have an undocumented population of over 10 million people. We have thousands, hundreds of thousands of businesses across this country that violate the law every day. The rule of law across our great Nation has been challenged and undermined. But we in Congress--I hope that we in Congress have heard the cry from Arizona, the cry from the 49 other States, the cry from the American people demanding that we in Congress take action to fix our broken immigration system and may restore the rule of law to this great Nation.

I see I am joined by my friend from Minnesota, who I will yield to.

I appreciate Mr. Ellison bringing up employer verification. One of the key components of the Senate outline requires biometric employment verification. So this is not a Social Security number that could be used by somebody who is 6 foot 1 and 52 one day and someone who is 5 foot 3 and 42 the next day. This is a real biometric ID. No later than 18 months after the date of enactment of this proposal, the Social Security Administration will issue biometric Social Security cards that will be fraud resistant, tamper resistant, wear resistant, be machine readable, contain a photograph and an electronically coded microchip processor which possesses a unique biometric identifier for the authorized card bearer. It could be a fingerprint, eye scan.

We are going to be serious about knowing who can work and who is not legally employable. We need to be serious about making sure that it is the right person that we are talking about.

Again, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of violations of this area of employment law every day in this country, and we are not even remotely serious about cracking down on those. That is why we urgently need, why Arizona and the rest of the country has called on Congress to address this issue and why we only ignore them at our own peril.

We are joined by the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Chu) who, in her time here, has already become a champion of comprehensive immigration reform and making sure that we can fix our broken immigration system. I am glad to welcome Congresswoman Chu from California.

Thank you, Congresswoman Chu, for your leadership on this issue. Those are very powerful words that you shared. The stories that you shared, those individuals are not alone. There are hundreds of thousands of people across our country every day who have powerful stories about what has happened to them through our immigration system.

Let me briefly mention something that the Congresswoman alluded to about detention. It could be an American citizen or somebody who is undocumented and taken to detention, that means that taxpayers are paying their way. Taxpayers are paying $120 a day on average in these detention facilities. So if this Arizona law leads to more undocumented people being apprehended, then we are putting them up for free at a government hotel. So rather than working and not being a burden on American society, Arizona's new law forces taxpayers to put up illegal immigrants, feed and clothe and house them at taxpayer expense.

I bet if the people of Arizona knew that, they would have second thoughts about this law. But that is exactly what will happen. Not only that, there will be American citizens who are swept up in this. You go out for coffee, run your errands, don't bring your proof of citizenship with you, boom, you're in a detention facility. American taxpayers are paying $120 a night for you, and it might take a week, a month, however long it takes until you can get your documentation. God forbid you are visiting from Alaska, visiting from Florida, were born to a midwife and don't have a hospital birth certificate, you could be in that detention facility even though you are an American citizen for months, all at taxpayer expense.

I think the solution that the American people want is a lot better than that. I don't think that the American people want to put up illegal immigrants in hotels for months or years at a time. I think the American people want to make sure that we don't have an undocumented population in this country. That is exactly what the House conference of immigration reform bill would do, as well as the Senate proposal that was outlined. The Senate bill would require that anybody who is here has to register and have a background check and they would get a prospective immigrant status, a transitory, temporary status to be here.

And eventually if they learned English, went through all of these steps, they could become a permanent resident. But that is quite a long way down the road. And to ever achieve lawful permanent residence, they would have to speak English, have basic citizenship skills, updated terrorism, criminal history and background checks, pay all Federal income taxes, fees and civil penalties and register for selective service after 8 years on the temporary status.

No, the American people don't want to put illegal immigrants up in hotels like the Arizona legislature are proposing. The American people don't want to have a large undocumented population.

I would also like to point out the problems that this law has interposed on one of our Nation's most important strategic relationships, and that is our relationship with our neighbors to the south, Mexico. I am the founder here in the Congress of the U.S.-Mexico Friendship Caucus to facilitate one of our most important trading partners. The flow of ideas and goods between the U.S. and Mexico is an important part of the prosperity we have here, and the growing economy in helping Mexico meet the demands of its growing middle class. And yet this law is hurting our bilateral relationship with Mexico.

You know, before I got to Congress, I occasionally used to travel internationally. I had been to places like Tunisia and Egypt and Australia. And on our Department of State, there is a site where they list any country with a warning. Don't go to this country because it has a civil war or it has terrorists. My mother wouldn't have liked it very much if our own Department of State said you might die if you go there.

Well, you know what, Mexico is now advising their citizens, their tourists, not to go to Arizona. Yes, one of our very own States is being warned against visiting by a country that sends many tourists to our Nation.

I represent some of the ski resorts, Vail, Beaver Creek and Copper Mountain in Colorado. We have tens of thousands from Mexico every year. It is one of our larger countries that sends tourists that keep Americans employed and spend money in Colorado. But by criminalizing a whole status of people, any Mexican tourist would have second thoughts about going to Arizona. And it saddens me as an American, having looked at these warnings that our Department of State has and always seeing Third World developing countries, saying glad I don't live where that civil war or dictator is, well, now one of our closest and most important friends and neighbors, the great country of Mexico, has listed one of our States on their warnings.

That's a blow to the American pride. I am proud to be an American, and to think that our country has some of these problems that only developing countries or dictatorships or police states have had in the past is not only disgraceful, but it will undermine the economy of Arizona. Tourism will dry up.

And it won't be just Mexico and Arizona. I have a feeling that many other countries will follow suit from East Asia and Latin America because who wants their citizens to be apprehended and placed in detention for months at a time. And that would be a very reasonable response. I hope that this law in Arizona is tossed out as soon as possible.

Again, it is important for us to understand why Arizona passed it. It was a message, a message to us in Congress that Congress has failed the American people. Congress has failed to enforce our borders and implement real employment enforcement, real security. Indeed, Congress' lack of action is leading to the undermining of American sovereignty not only in Arizona, but in many States, including my home State of Colorado, that has hundreds of thousands of people who live extra- legally--we don't know who they are, we don't know where they are-- work, in most cases, extra-legally because Federal enforcement has been a joke.

This is a solution that we can solve. It's not a solution that should involve posturing from the left or the right. It's one that the American people and the people of Arizona, very rightfully so, have demanded action on with a shot across our bow.

I hope the people of Arizona don't suffer too much under this law because I understand and sympathize with their goals. I hope it's overturned soon. Certainly, if it's allowed to continue, it will hurt their economy, they will lose jobs, Arizonans will lose work, and Americans will be forced into detention at taxpayer expense. I hope that that doesn't happen. I hope this law is overturned before that happens. But the shot across the bow has been received, and I hope that it provides the urgent impetus for those of us here in Congress to move forward now on comprehensive immigration reform.

I yield to my friend from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).

The people of this country are tired of this problem being used for political purposes from the left and the right. The American people just want to see this issue solved. The American people are smart; they recognize that the longer we delay taking action the bigger the problem gets.

Our immigration laws should reflect our interests as Americans and our values as Americans; but we need to treat this as something to solve, not an opportunity for politicians to score points on the left or points on the right by preying on our legitimate or illegitimate concerns or prejudices. Yes, we truly are a Nation of laws, but we are also a Nation of immigrants. We need to make sure that immigrants obey our laws, learn English, and pay their taxes; and then we welcome them as our American brothers and sisters.

It's amazing to see some of the nonconventional alliances, some of the groups that have been pushing for immigration reform. Among the strongest has been the faith-based community. Now, while I have many people who have supported me in the past who are of the Catholic faith, the archbishop, Archbishop Chaput in Denver, is somebody who I don't agree with on a lot of social issues; he and I disagree on many issues, such as a woman's right to choose, but on this issue, he and I joined together in an event in Denver in support of immigration reform that 1,500 people, on a Sunday after mass, packed into a church in strong, universal support for comprehensive immigration reform across the faith-based community. From the evangelicals to the Catholics to the Jews to the Muslims to the humanists and the atheists, there is strong support for comprehensive immigration reform.

There is also support--and this is very unusual in the context of politics--from both the organized labor community and unions and businesses in the chamber of commerce. Among the strongest advocates for immigration reform have been high-tech businesses, chambers of commerce, arm and arm with their workers, their unions. It's very rare to see that happen here in Congress. And yet, why hasn't Congress achieved anything? It seems like politicians on both sides of the aisle have preferred to keep this issue out there. Is it to rally their base? Is it to talk about the undocumented, about why they need more time to do something? And yet both sides have refused to take action. And it will take both sides working together to solve this issue with an American solution.

Obey our laws, learn English, pay taxes, and welcome to America--that has always been our message. And it needs to continue to be the underlying values with which we construct an immigration system that works, restores the rule of law to our Nation, and is an opportunity for us in Congress to rise to the challenge that the people of Arizona have put before us, that frustrated voters in cities and States across the country have put to us. And if Congress doesn't act to pass comprehensive immigration reform and solve this issue, I believe that the American people will elect a Congress that will.

I will yield to my friend from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).

Madam Speaker, how much time remains?

Thank you.

I am glad that my friend from Minnesota brought up the important issue of detention. The Department of Homeland Security and ICE had 380,000 people in 2009 who were detained at taxpayer expense. One of the things we fear with the Arizona law is that these could actually be American citizens out working one day.

Oh, you don't have your papers. You're in detention. It could take a week. It could take a month.

There are many Americans who might have difficulty furnishing those records. Again, I point in particular to those who were born of a midwife or who are very elderly or whose birth hospitals have been subject to fires or to disasters, where records are unable to be located or where they've been lost or where it simply has been human error. Each of these 380,000 people who were detained last year were detained at taxpayer expense. Now, I would argue that that is not good for them and that it's not good for us, the taxpayers.

First of all, as my colleague from Minnesota mentioned, 107 died, in many cases, due to medical treatment being withheld, due to abuses. In the incarceration system, in many cases, they are put in with actual criminals who have been convicted of crimes. Again, these are people who are not serving criminal sentences. They are being detained while awaiting decisions on their immigration proceedings. They might either then be released into our country or expelled through a different country, but despite that, they are held in prisons and jails, and they're often mixed with the general prison population, putting them at risk for their lives and limbs, all at taxpayer expense.

To the extent that it allows for the apprehension of more people, the Arizona law will simply result in the greater taxpayer expense of putting people up at the tune of $120 a day. You know, that's what it costs. When I looked at it, I said, Gosh. We can put them up at Motel 6 for a quarter of that cost. Yet we continue, the taxpayers across our country, because of our complete failure to protect our borders and to have real immigration policy that works for our Nation. Over 300,000 people were incarcerated at taxpayer expense last year.

Comprehensive immigration reform is an American solution. It's common sense. It's fair. It's balanced. It has overwhelming support from the American people. Eighty-one percent agree that comprehensive reform is a balanced approach and that it's fair to taxpayers.

Voters across the board, from liberal to conservative, believe it is unrealistic to simply try to deport our way out of this problem. Seven in 10 voters agree that, in addition to increased enforcement and securing the border, illegal immigrants should be required to register and to meet conditions for permanent status. A comprehensive approach to immigration reform secures our borders, cracks down on employers who hire illegally, makes sure that we have real verification of who is able to work, and requires that illegal immigrants pay taxes and learn English to be eligible for permanent status. Voters should know that comprehensive immigration reform is an orderly process and that it will turn what has been completely uncontrolled and chaotic into a controlled flow of immigrants that continue to build our Nation and to reestablish the rule of law across our great Nation.

Americans are tired of the posturing on the left and the right. They are tired of the lack of solutions coming from Washington. They don't want to hear us complain about this, complain about that, hyperbole on this, hyperbole on that. What the people of Arizona have very clearly said they want and what the people of our country have very clearly said they want is for us here in Congress, the only place that this problem can be fixed, to fix this problem.

Border security is a joke. Enforcement of our laws at the workplace is a joke. We have over 10 million people violating the law in our country every day. The rule of law--our sovereignty--has been undermined. Taxpayers are putting up hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals a year at the cost of over $100 a day. Why not put them up at cheap hotels and save three-quarters of that? I don't know, but this is what we're doing.

Does this make sense to anybody, Madam Speaker? The answer is no.

I have brought this up at almost all of my town hall meetings in Colorado, and I have yet to find a single constituent--and I have a lot of diversity among my constituents. They range from the Tea Party patriots on the right to the socialists on the left and everything in between. Not one of them is happy with the immigration system in this country. Not one of them is happy that we are putting up 300,000 people a year at the cost of $120 a day. Not one of them is happy that we have an undocumented population of 10 million working illegally in this country. Not one of them is happy. Yet, to this point, Congress has failed to hear and to act upon that.

I believe that we will continue to fail at our own peril and that it is incumbent upon this Congress, with the fiercest urgency that the American people have placed on this issue before us, to solve this issue. We are a Nation of laws, and we are also a Nation of immigrants. That's why we need to make sure that our laws, our immigration laws, reflect our interests as Americans in order to create jobs for Americans, to provide safety and security for Americans and to help American businesses grow and succeed, which is why immigration reform is supported by chambers of commerce, by business interests as well as by unions, by faith-based communities, and by law enforcement.

We here in Congress should not be afraid of talking about solving the immigration issue. We should be afraid of not talking about solving the immigration issue. Every day that goes by without bills being moved forward or with bills being dropped or without solutions being discussed is a day that the American people will hold their Members of Congress accountable for not doing anything to solve this pressing national issue.

I yield to my friend from Minnesota.

I thank the gentleman from Minnesota.

With due respect, it is really the American people who have kept the fire under this issue. The American people do not want Congress to continue to ignore our broken immigration system.

What would ignoring immigration do? What if we just said we're not going to deal with it, you know, that there's too much to work on? We've got, you know, health care. We've got energy. Why bother doing immigration?

You know what? Failure to act on immigration reform will mean that we will likely have twice as many illegal immigrants in 10 years than we have now--twice as many. Instead of 10 or 12 million, we could be talking about 20 or 25 million. The longer we wait, the bigger the problem gets.

The goal of immigration reform needs to be to eliminate--to bring to

zero--illegal immigration. If immigrants who have been living in our country illegally want to become taxpaying American citizens, they need to pass a background check, pay extra taxes, work towards citizenship, learn English, register.

We need immigration reform that is both principled and pragmatic. We in this country have the right to decide who lives in our country and who doesn't, but we haven't been exercising that right. We've been allowing millions of people to live here without knowing who they are or what they are doing. Yet we continue to refuse to take action, and we do so at our own peril.

Yes, we should hear very clearly from Arizona and from other States that they are demanding action of the Federal Government. There is no good solution for a county or a State. I sympathize with our cities, our counties, and our States which are dealing with the failure of a Federal policy to protect our borders--Federal policies that undermine the rule of law and our national sovereignty, but it falls to the United States Congress to act to fix our broken immigration laws. People should not be able to cross the borders or to overstay their visas without permission, and businesses should not be able to exploit cheap labor off the books, undermining jobs for American citizens.

We in Congress have a unique opportunity now to take action. The American people are tired of excuses. They are tired of demagoguery. They want a solution that works and that ensures that we will have zero illegal immigrants in a year and in 10 years and in 20 years rather than seeing an increase from 10 or 12 million to 20 million or to 25 million or to 30 million.

What does ``national sovereignty'' mean if you don't even know who is within your borders or what they're doing or whether they're criminals? Why are we putting over 300,000 of them up at expensive hotels at over $100 a day at taxpayer expense? Is that part of the solution?

It doesn't sound like part of the solution that the people of Arizona want. It doesn't sound like part of the solution that the American people want. Obey our laws, learn English, pay taxes, and welcome to America. We need to replace a broken system with one that works.

I call upon my colleagues in this Chamber and in the United States Senate on both sides of the aisle to stop playing political games with an issue that the American people are crying out for a solution on and to act and bring forward a real solution along the lines of the proposal that was introduced in the Senate today, along the lines of the House comprehensive immigration reform bill to demand that Congress move towards fixing this problem, restoring security to our borders, sovereignty to our Nation, preventing the undermining of the rule of law that this Nation was built upon, and strengthening our economy and providing jobs for American families.

Madam Speaker, I hope that my colleagues join me in moving forward immediately on comprehensive immigration reform to fix our broken laws and replace it with a system that works and is enforced.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Congressman Keith Ellison here from the State of Minnesota, and it is very timely that we are here to talk about immigration. The fact of the matter is that it is a symptom of the Congress' failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform that we get these draconian pieces of legislation such as were signed into law in Arizona on April 23, 2010, just a few days ago. If the United States Government would take hold of this immigration debate and pass comprehensive immigration reform, States would not have to resort

to these extreme measures--unconstitutional in my view--that Arizona has taken.

Let me just point out a few things. The law says that police officers can stop and detain people who are suspected of being illegal aliens and demand that they provide proof that they are U.S. citizens. The fact of the matter is that this--some people have said, Well, you know, Keith, this could make people who may have a brown complexion and dark hair, who sort of have a typical Mexican appearance, that might subject them to unfair and illegal stops. My response is, That's true. It may stop Latinos, but it will stop anybody, because there's no certain way that a Latino person looks. There is a wide diversity all throughout the community, a wide diversity, no color, no language, no culture. People look all kinds of ways. The most Anglo-looking person in Arizona could be stopped and demanded to show their proof of citizenship, and if they don't have it, they could be carted off.

The fact is that I am making this argument because I don't want Americans of any background to think that they are going to be somehow safe from a law as sweeping and unfair as this one. No one is safe when the Constitution is offended in such a dramatic way as it has been by this Arizona law. But at the same time I have no sympathy for this Arizona law, I will say that it is a symptom of the Congress' failure to deal with comprehensive immigration reform.

I want to say that the argument has been made that somehow this is about addressing issues of crime and law enforcement. You know, if that were true, why would the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police oppose a law for fiscal and public safety reasons, noting that the fear of government officials would diminish the public's willingness to cooperate with the police in criminal investigations, and it will negatively affect the ability of law enforcement agencies across the State to fulfill their many responsibilities in a timely manner?

The fact is that law enforcement officials who know something about law enforcement don't like this law. They are right. And the fact is this law is offensive to our Constitution. But again, it calls into question what we are doing here in Congress on comprehensive immigration reform, which is nothing much. The fact is we need to get busy on immigration reform. The American people want it. It is popular. It is something that the American people have asked for, and the Congress should step forward and do something about it right away.

So let me yield back to the gentleman from the great State of Colorado and just point out that comprehensive immigration reform is something that I believe we need.

There are just a few principles that I want to mention before I yield back, and that is that the progressive immigration reform agenda passed by the Progressive Caucus believes in keeping families together, creating a path towards citizenship and employment verification. Because as much as we talk about securing the border--and we should secure the border--you can't always secure the border at the border. We need the cooperation of all employers to make sure that they are doing employment verification so that we can make sure that the border is being secured. So yes, at the border, but also at the point of employment which people are drawn to.

There is more to be said about this, but I yield back to the gentleman.

Let me thank the gentleman from Colorado for really raising these issues.

The fact is, I do just want to say that the Progressive Caucus has some essential principles that we believe are essential to have in any immigration bill. We know that a version was dropped in the Senate; there was another dropped in the House earlier.

What we say is we think that we've got to keep families together. We have to create a path to earn citizenship. This isn't handing out citizenship to anybody. People have to take care of the business that the gentleman from Colorado already mentioned--paying all taxes, going through courses in English and citizenship, making sure that they do everything that they have to do, but at least they're allowed to be on a path that will lead them to citizenship and that there would be employment verification.

But there are other important values that I think we should talk about as well. The fact is that one of those values is respect, another value is identifying the fact that young people studying hard every single day, graduating from an American high school, brought to this country by their parents, in my view, should be able to go to a college in their State and pay in-state tuition. So that's another value I think is very important. It enhances education, values and achievement, and it indicates that young people who have lived their lives here and grown up here and who came here through no fault or through no choice of their own can have a future.

The fact is that there are some basic principles that I think we should pursue. The thing that does concern me, though, is that sometimes we hear people, Madam Speaker, say things like, well, you know, this bill is dead on arrival, or that bill is not going to go anywhere; they just declare bills to be not in motion sometimes.

But I believe, Madam Speaker, that whether comprehensive immigration reform moves or not is up to the people of America if they demand that it move. The same way that health care reform moved because people wouldn't let it die, immigration reform can move because the people are demanding it. The same way financial reform is moving, immigration can move because if people say we've got to have this, we need it, no more of our fellow neighbors living in the shadows, we need to have a legitimate path towards citizenship--it's not amnesty--that does involve real accountability, but at the same time allows people to come out of the shadows and have some status that they can have so that they can do what they need to do for themselves and their families. The fact is that this is the decent thing to do, it's the right thing to do.

By the way, I will point out, Madam Speaker, that there is a growing and strengthening coalition for immigration reform. In my own State of Minnesota, we used to have immigrant groups, people who are directly affected by immigration policy from new American groups, whether they're Latino or east African or Southeast Asian, or whatever community, a lot of times they would be at the forefront of this question of immigration reform.

But then we began to see labor come into the conversation. Labor does not want an exploitable, abusable group of people who are in the shadows that can undercut their wage rate. They want everybody aboveboard and walking through the front door to have a status so that they can organize them so that they can have some stability. Even the chamber of commerce in my city has said, look, we're for comprehensive immigration reform as well. I'm not speaking for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but I can tell you that there are many local chambers of commerce around this country who know that immigration reform is the right policy.

So the fact is we have a growing coalition; we have a coalition that's coming together, that's deepening and coming together to demand this. So I guess my message, Madam Speaker, is to say, never say that we can't get comprehensive immigration in 2010; it can happen with a strong will and with a committed champion, and with people who demand it of their leaders who are charged with the responsibility of representing them in Congress.

I yield back to the gentleman.

I just want to go back to an important point that the gentleman from Colorado made just a moment ago. Congressman Polis, Madam Speaker, made the point that people are in detention for months and

months as they await their immigration proceedings and the decision. These are not people who have robbed or hurt anyone or sold dope or anything like that. These are folks who are awaiting a decision in their immigration case. They are not criminals; they're awaiting immigration proceedings, decisions. These folks, these people in immigrant detention are just languishing, rotting.

There have been, since 2003, 107 people who have died in custody because they were in detention. If they were out, could they have gotten the medical attention that they needed? I'm sure in many cases they could have. The fact is that these are folks who are not serving criminal sentences. They haven't been convicted of hurting anyone or stealing people's property or doing anything wrong. They're just awaiting proceedings.

In fact, Madam Speaker, I was at an eighth grade graduation only a few days ago; and my daughter, who I was so proud of, was there with her friends and they were all abuzz--you know how kids that age can be. And I talked to another adult who I had known for a number of years because my older children went to school with her children and one of her children was in my daughter's class. And she said to me, you know, I want you to know it's good to see you. I was in detention. I recently got out of immigration detention. This is what this lady said to me. And it shocked me because my son, who is now 22 years old, was buddies with her son, who is now 22 years old, but they were running around my house when they were both seven and eight and nine years old and now here she is--I haven't seen her in a while--and she just told me that she had been there herself. I didn't even ask her how she got out--I was glad she was out--but the fact is that she had been in ICE detention herself. This is a woman who is a bright lady, smart, capable, raising children on her own, doing the best she can, happens to find her roots in Mexico. I didn't ask her about the details of her life, but I was concerned that she found herself in that awful situation.

I connected her with my office to do everything we could for her; but the fact is there is a human toll being taken on people every single day, people around us, people we know, people we don't even know what they're going through, but they have their own immigration nightmare that they're struggling through every single day.

Her children, I know the younger ones were born in the United States and I know the older ones came here at a very early age, they're my kids' close friends. But the fact is that it kind of struck me right across the face like a cold bucket of water that here is this lady who I know. I couldn't exactly call her a friend, but I can say that this is a person who I know, who I respect, and who was living her own private nightmare with regard to immigration.

It seems to me that the rules ought to be clearer, they ought to be fairer, they ought to be predictable. It seems to me that the children who come here at an early age ought to be able to pursue their education in an institution in their State and not have to pay exorbitant out-of-state tuition just to do that. It seems to me that we ought to try to unite families. As Americans, we value families, and we ought to do something about that.

The fact is that people in immigrant detention, these folks are often some of the most abused folks in our community, Madam Speaker. I will just refer again to what the Congressman from Colorado mentioned a moment ago, detention, people are there for months, but these folks, some of them have been through tremendous ordeals; some are torture victims, some are victims of trafficking, some are from other vulnerable groups and are detained for months and even years, further aggravating their isolation, depression, and sometimes mental health problems.

The fact is that this situation is not right. These people are not criminals. They should not be held this way. And they're held at our expense--we're the ones who fork it over--but it's no picnic for them either. The fact is that we have to do something about it.

Over 30,000 people are held in immigrant detention on any given day at an average cost of more than $100, $120 per day. This has resulted in over 380,000 people held in detention in fiscal year 2009. Think about it: that's an incredible expense that we are paying because our immigration system has not been corrected, has not been addressed, and the fact is that we have to do something about it.

Since 2005, ICE has increased the number of detention beds by 78 percent. Taxpayers are paying the price of DHS's skyrocketing use of immigration detention, and DHS spends about $1.7 billion on ICE custody operations.

So the fact is that a human toll is being taken. The broken immigration system offends our sense of fairness, and it offends our sense of being a humanitarian country. We've got to do something about it right away.

I yield back to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I was just in my district about a week ago at a little church called Sagrado Corazon de Jesus. It's right there in south Minneapolis where a lot of folks gathered from the faith community. They were Catholic; they were Protestant; they were Jewish; they were Christian; they were Muslim; they were Hindu; they were of the Hmong spiritual tradition; and they were of no faith at all. Yet they came together to make an appeal to the American people for comprehensive immigration reform.

I think it's important to understand that the faith community has done a tremendous job in making sure this issue is at the forefront. The faith community has done such a great job because the faith community understands one essential thing, which is that all human beings are endowed with an inherent dignity which we, as fellow human beings, must respect if we are going to be in accordance with that faith tradition.

I want to thank them for their advocacy, and I want to let them know that I respect and appreciate their work.

Because I would like to see our anchor tonight be able to take the last 5 minutes to wrap it all up, let me also just mention in our waning minutes of our presentation that, as I've been sitting here, I've been checking my Twitter account, and I know that some people are happy that we're talking about comprehensive immigration and that some people are not.

Madam Speaker, I just want to say, to those folks who are happy about it, keep on working hard. We can do this thing. To the folks who aren't happy about this discussion topic tonight, I just want to say, Madam Speaker, that I know people are not happy with the current system. The status quo isn't working. Madam Speaker, people can say that they don't like this part of a bill or that part of a bill, but can we get together as Americans and discuss what we are going to do? Because the fact is that simply saying ``no'' is not an option.

I'll also submit to you that we are not going to get 12 to 20 million people on a bus and send them back home. That's not realistic. Many people who emigrate here without proper documentation don't even cross a border. They come in on airplanes. These are folks whose visas have run out and things like that. So just thinking that this is an ``other side of the border'' issue is missing much of the complexity that is going on here.

You're also not going to incarcerate 12 to 20 million people. You know, Madam Speaker, I had somebody say the crimes that the undocumented immigrants are committing are, one, being here and, the other, taking jobs from Americans. Let me just say, if you think what they're doing is a crime, Madam Speaker, what you're saying is that we're going to have to have 12 million to 20 million more jail cells to put people in. That's not practical.

We need a solution that makes sense, that is a pathway toward citizenship. We need a solution which does involve border security but which also involves employer verification so that people will not think that they can emigrate to the United States without proper documentation and just find jobs. That's one of the things that attracts folks.

I will say one more thing, which is not in the progressive principles but which, I think, we do need to talk about. We need to talk about how poverty in other parts of the world, particularly in our own hemisphere, attracts people to the United States. Therefore, we should take a real look at our policies--at our trade policies, at our ag policies--and see if we are actually incentivizing people to come to the United States.

If we dump cheap corn into Latin America, what happens to the corn farmer in Latin America? I think we need to ask that question.

It needs to be part of the conversation, because I can't imagine most people who are undocumented really want to leave their homes, their languages, their families, or their friends in order to come to a country they don't know, where they don't necessarily speak the language and where they don't necessarily know anyone just to try to make lives. They probably would rather stay home, but there is something that is drawing them here, and it probably has something to do with the great economy of the United States. It probably also has something to do with trade and agriculture policies, which have put a lot of pressure on economies in this hemisphere.

So, with that, Madam Speaker, I am going to yield back to Congressman Polis for the closing. He has really been a champion on this issue, and he has really kept the fire burning on it. I think, Madam Speaker, that we all owe him a debt of gratitude, along with other champions like Luis Gutierrez and many, many others.

So I yield back to the gentleman, and I thank him for his work.

Today I stand here to say our immigration system is broken and fixing it is critically important to the long term security and prosperity of our Nation. Of course, I have a much different opinion on how to fix it than some on the other side of the aisle. Where they see an attack on American culture and way of life, I see a chance to strengthen our Nation with a new generation of productive and active citizens. Where they see fear and paranoia, I see an opportunity to do the right thing, the humane thing, and bring 12 million immigrants out of the shadows and into society.

What they don't see is the ongoing family separations, the exploitation of workers by unscrupulous workers, and the true human cost of our broken immigration system.

I get calls every day in my district from families who have sacrificed and worked hard to put food on the table and send their children to school. Take the case of Maria, an American citizen, who came into our district office last month with her two children, ages 2 and 4, crying torrents of tears. They were trying to do the right thing. Her husband was undocumented. She had gone to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, with her husband for an appointment with an immigration official where she was petitioning for her husband to receive legal status. The immigration officer denied it saying there was insufficient hardship.

It is now more than a year since her husband was left stranded in Ciudad Juarez. Even married to an American citizen, he is barred from reentering the country for up to 10 years because of a law passed by Congress in the 1990s making it tougher for undocumented immigrants to acquire legal status through marriage. In the meantime, Maria has lost her house, was forced to do a short sale because she could not keep up with the mortgage payments without her husband's income. Her children wake up in the middle of the night crying for their daddy. To me that sounds like sufficient hardship.

These family separations are cruel and counterproductive to both legal immigrants and citizens. It is families that have historically helped immigrants assimilate into American life and helped prevent health and social problems. Family networks give individuals the support and resources they need to become successful, productive members of our society.

And if Congress doesn't act to fix our immigration system, States will do their own thing and we will be stuck with an unfair and impractical patchwork system. Just last week, the State of Arizona passed the broadest and strictest immigration measure in generations in any State. The law makes a failure to carry immigration documents a crime, and gives the police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally.

Now I don't walk around with my birth certificate or passport, which is expensive and out of financial reach of many. And neither does Abdon, a commercial truck driver living in Arizona. Last week on the heels of the Governor signing this new law, he was shackled by the police and detained by the Phoenix Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office. Abdon was born a citizen of the United States. He has a job. He pays taxes. He speaks English. His wife Jackie is a natural-born citizen of the United States. She too has a job and she also speaks English. She pays taxes. But he was pulled over and arrested. Why? Not because he was speeding, that's for sure.

When the officer demanded his papers, Abdon could only produce his driver's license and Social Security number. Not good enough. At a routine commercial weigh station on a regular workday, Abdon made the mistake of not carrying his birth certificate with him. That's right, his birth certificate.

Now why did the police really pull him over? It is apparently now the law of the State of Arizona you can arrest people, citizen or not, simply for appearing Hispanic.

This is a sadly familiar story, but one that was thought to be safely in the past. In the years following the Civil War, States began to implement a series of discriminatory laws designed to control former slaves and free blacks. Under the vagrancy laws, police could stop anyone anywhere and require you to show proof of employment on demand. If you didn't, you could be arrested and your labor sold to the highest bidder.

But what if you forgot to carry your employment records with you when you left the house that morning, what if you, like so many regular citizens, were unaware of the anti-vagrancy laws? What if you were simply unemployed? Well, it might be your last mistake as a free citizen of the United States.

Sound familiar? Well, it does to Abdon, and it is for Abdon and the thousands of other Arizonians that we need immigration reform this year. We cannot solve our immigration woes by simply creating new problems. Instead, we must pass a comprehensive bill that actually fixes our immigration system that penalizes employers who would hire undocumented workers and exploit their status for their own gain. We need a bill that protects the family and repairs a bureaucratic system that forces citizens and immigrants to live apart from their loved ones. We need a bill that secures our borders and provides a clear path to citizenship and employment for otherwise law-abiding immigrants, undocumented or not.

America would not be the great Nation it is without the passion, ingenuity and perseverance of the millions of immigrants who have come to our shores looking for a better life for themselves and their families.