English Language Unity Act of 2017

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege and honor to address you here from the floor of the House of Representatives in this great deliberative body that has been deliberating all day long in the markup of the National Defense Authorization Act.

The work that is done, especially by the members of the Armed Services Committee, goes deeply into the destiny and the future of America. They have to look at the whole globe and the whole budget, and they have to look at the equipment that is out there and the technology that is developing, and it is a heavy responsibility to present this NDAA authorization bill to the floor.

Often, there are efforts that are made to turn it into a political bill, rather than the bill that can defend America, and ensure that we have the best military that the world has ever seen, and the best equipment for the best military the world has ever seen, and the best standards to uphold the best people, the nobility of the United States military.

So I want to compliment especially the members of the committee and the chairman for his work and the work that has been done here on this floor. They are going to take a deep breath and tomorrow will bring this thing back to the floor for a vote and a potential final passage.

I came to the floor to address a bit different topic, and I may revert back to the NDAA, and I actually intend to do that, Mr. Speaker. But I have wanted to come to this floor for some time to discuss the circumstances going on here in the United States of America and an issue that has been very important to me for a long time; and that is the issue of the United States of America getting to the point where we finally declare a language, our English language, as the official language of the United States.

I sat down once, and I went through the--when we had the World Book Encyclopedia, before the internet, more or less, eroded the ubiquitousness--that means everywhere--the World Book Encyclopedia was everywhere in the country and many places in the world.

I looked through--I took a 1979 almanac, and I looked at all the flags for all the countries in the world, and I looked up every single country to find out, do they have an official language, or don't they? And from that 1979 almanac, and some of the countries have changed since then, but every single country in the world had an official language, at least one of them, except for the United States of America.

As I studied this, and it comes to me, the more I look at history, the more I look at the forces that move the world and the people in it, often it is the culture; it is the cultural foundation that moves policy in America, and in every country in the world.

The culture lives in the hearts and minds of its people; and what is in the hearts and minds of its people is, if you are members of a nation state, what binds us together is having a common experience, a common cause, common enemies, perhaps, a common sense of history, a common sense of struggle, a common sense of economic ties, and also, a common language.

A common language is the most powerful unifying force anywhere in the world throughout all of history, even more powerful than religion, and religion is a very powerful unifying force, and sometimes it can be a dividing force.

But of those powerful unifying forces we have, it might be race, it might be ethnicity, it might be national origin, it can be those things. It could be religion, but all of these components go together to make your culture, and the binding force that we have proven in this country over and over and over again is the common language.

Some years ago, just one floor down, out that door, I sat down with several ambassadors to the United States from Israel, and I remarked to them that they had established Hebrew as their official language in 1954. The country was approved by the motion in the United Nations in 1948, and 6 years later, the Israelis established Hebrew as their official language.

I asked them: Why did you do that? Hebrew was a dead language. It was essentially a language only of prayer for 2,000 years. But they resurrected that language and decided we are going to make it the common form of communications currency in Israel in order to bind the Israelis together. And so they did.

They deployed the Hebrew language in the streets of Israel. In fact, there weren't any streets in Tel Aviv at the time. They created Tel Aviv also as a manufactured city to add to the glory of Israel. But as the people walked in the streets, they decided we are going to embrace this language of Hebrew. So it is today the language of the Israeli people, Hebrew.

Why did you do that? And their answer to me was: We looked at the United States. We knew we were going to be assimilating people from many countries in the world, maybe even all countries in the world, and they would come from all races, all ethnicities, all national origins, coming back because--primarily they were attracted back because they were of Jewish faith, many of them by Jewish blood and heritage; but they came into Israel, and they needed to be bound together as Israelis. And the best way to bind them together--these are smart people--was a common language.

And a common language that was unique was helpful, also. It gave them the distinction and the pride that they would have of the nationalism of being Israelis. And so Hebrew became the official language of the fresh new nation state Israel just 6 years after it was formed.

I was not astonished by that, but I was very impressed by the wisdom that they used to apply the necessity of a common language to bind them together so that they could be one people.

I went there, and I traveled, and I looked at what they were doing. They had brought in several hundred people from Ethiopia to come into the Israeli society, and they get 6 months to study Hebrew and to be assimilated into the broader Israeli economy.

Those who come to Israel that are not literate in their own language, they first had to teach them to read and write in the language that was native to them, their natural language, and then they taught them Hebrew and converted them into being able to read and write and speak in Hebrew. But they got 6 months to do that, and then out into the world they went. That is a pretty fast assimilation process.

But I don't know if there is a country since, other than the United States, that has done a better job of assimilating people from everywhere in the world into one society than has happened in Israel.

Mr. Speaker, I would say that I never, ever hear anybody talk about divisions within Israelis. I don't hear them speaking, well, you are an African Israeli or a German Israeli or a Russian Israeli. There are a lot of them, but they see themselves as Israelis. They have a common language, common culture, and they are pulled together out of a need to have a common defense and a common cause.

That is the model that they created by looking at the model of the United States of America because we had been so successful in assimilating people into this country and binding us together by having a common language; that common language, a common form of communications currency that allows us to communicate with every American everywhere, to walk into any city council meeting, any county supervisor's meeting, any State legislature, any discussions that go on here in the House, in the Senate, any meetings that go on within the government buildings in the Federal and the State and the political subdivisions thereof. All of our meetings take place in English. Anybody that speaks English can walk in there and understand them.

That is the policy that brought us together as a people. That is the policy that was so admired by the Israelis that they emulated it. Yet we sit here still the only country in the world, by the measure that I described, of the World Book Encyclopedia and the 1979 almanac, at least, the only country in the world that doesn't have at least one official language.

We have a common language that is English. We need to make our official language English, and, of course, I have introduced legislation, Mr. Speaker, to do that. It is H.R. 997; it has been H.R. 997 since I came to this Congress, and one day we are going to see a President sign that bill, and it might very well be this President we have today, President Trump. He has spoken in favor of official English, and I certainly agree with him on this. But it is more than this.

When President Bill Clinton introduced the executive order, I believe it is 13166--and I am operating from a dusty memory here. Perhaps I have got it on a note. But let's go with 13166. That executive order directed that any government facility that is there needs to accommodate any language request that comes from anybody who walks into a Federal building or a State building or any government service. It just runs up the cost of our government in an unnecessary way.

The idea, I suppose, is, well, we are going to make it easy for people who have trouble understanding English; and so if we do that, eventually they will pick up and learn and understand English, and they will assimilate into society because, after all, every other generation, every other people that has come into America has assimilated into our society.

But when you change the rules and you change the format and you take away the incentive, then you can't expect to have the same result.

And how it was, was that people were brought into this country and they were immersed into the American culture and the American civilization.

For example, my grandmother came to the United States from Germany and she spoke only German. My father went to school, kindergarten--one of seven siblings altogether, number three in line--speaking German. He was quite confused on his first day of kindergarten, even though ``kindergarten'' is a German word. And when he came home from school that day, he walked into the house and said ``hello'' to his mother in German. My grandmother, his mother, Freda Catrina Johanna Harm King, said to her son: Emmett, speaking German in this household is for you from now on verboten. I came here to become an American. That means speaking English, and you will go to school and learn English, and you will bring it home and you will teach it to me.

So my father had spoken his last words of German in that household, and he went to school and learned English, and he brought it home and taught it to his mother, and she learned English from her son and her sons, but primarily my father. That was an expression of gratitude to the country that had embraced her and welcomed her, and she embraced this country, the United States of America. And of the six sons that she raised and a daughter, one of the sons was physically unable to serve, four of the remaining five went back to fight against the fatherland. And my father went to the South Pacific for 2\1/2\ years to fight the Japanese, and came home weighing 115 pounds on U.S. rations with a lot of stories that he never told. That was the way she thanked the host country, the United States of America. And there I sat growing up in a small town in Iowa being told: You hit the jackpot, Steve. You were born into the greatest country on the face of the Earth. You could not have been born anyplace better than this. The United States of America is the greatest country in the world, and you need to pay back this country that so welcomed the people that have come here.

Well, I want to continue to do that by tying together our society and our civilization, knitting us together, and English is the very best way to do that. We can eliminate the billions of dollars that we are unnecessarily spending by proliferating other languages within our government.

I think it is important that people learn multiple languages. It is important, especially in this world that we are in today where we have got so much foreign trade and so much foreign travel and so many foreign visitors into this country. I do a significant amount of travel myself. But to try to promote other languages to be spoken on the streets of America or confuse our students by catering to the language that is the language of their home rather than the language of the streets, then we end up with ethnic enclaves and people that really don't embrace the American culture and the American civilization.

I was quite struck by the book that was written by Winston Churchill called ``A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.'' I carefully read through that book forward and back. It took me quite a while to get through it carefully. I absorbed it and soaked it up. When I finished the book, I remember it was about 1:30 in the morning, and I looked up at the ceiling, and I thought: Huh. Wherever the English-speaking peoples have gone, by reading Churchill's book, freedom has accompanied the English language. How did that happen?

The concept of freedom is carried by the English language all over the world. And if you look where the British have gone, as far away as India where they taught English, and you look at the African continent where the English language has been established, you see that freedom is more likely to be found in the English-speaking peoples than of any other speaking peoples on the planet.

Is that some kind of coincidence? Or is there something about our language that carries freedom with it? Or is it about the people that carry the language that understand the concept of God-given liberty, and then they transport that God-given liberty and that freedom to the countries that they are settling, that they are contributing technology and science and medicine and literature and academics to and economy to?

I think it is a couple of things.

One is the British had enough confidence in their culture and their civilization to export it to the rest of the world. And we as Americans, up until the last generation or so, have had enough confidence in our culture and civilization to export it to the rest of the world. And the rest of the world has embraced our values, and we have seen it happen over and over again.

I point out Ataturk in Turkey, who, for 40 years, moved Turkey to the West, and the prosperity in the nation-state of Turkey improved the closer they got to the West.

I recall seeing pictures recently in Afghanistan from the 1960s, when the women wore Western clothing and there was a lot more civility in Afghanistan and more prosperity in Afghanistan.

I sat with the son of the Shah of Iran just a couple of months ago, and we had an engaging conversation. We have met several times along the way throughout the years. His father, the Shah, was moving Iran to the West. The women were uncovered; they wore Western clothes, and their education was accelerated, and they were moving into the Western world, and they had significantly more prosperity than they have today. Part of that was English language, part of that was culture, part of it is the Western civilization that we are.

But we wouldn't have a Western civilization if we didn't have an English language that helps to tie that together. And the Western civilization itself is rooted in the real estate where

the very footprint of Christianity laid the foundation for civilization, and most times it is the English language that is part of that, that ties that together. And where it doesn't exist, they have more troubles than where it does exist.

So I tip my hat to Winston Churchill for the wisdom that came together in his book. I want to reiterate, Mr. Speaker, that he never wrote that the English language took freedom to the rest of the world. He just wrote about the history of what happened to the rest of the world when the English-speaking peoples engaged themselves with the rest of the world.

However, there is another intellect from the United Kingdom, Daniel Hannan. Daniel Hannan is a member of the European Parliament. He has written a book that goes even deeper and takes a bigger bite out of this. He says that, as a member of the European Parliament, he will put his earphones on to listen to the interpreted versions as they are using different language. By the way, English is the official language of the European Union, and he has an understanding and he is at least, I will say, at a minimum, marginally fluent in multiple languages. And as he listened to the interpreters interpret into other languages, he would take that earphone back away from him and he would listen to the language they were using, and then he would hear the interpretation in the other ear.

He said that what he learned was that other languages didn't have the utility to express the concept of freedom that the English language has. I believe he is right on that.

So our concept of freedom and liberty, at least theoretically and by the theory of Daniel Hannan and my own, cannot be carried in any other language. And the English language does carry freedom. It expresses it like it can't be expressed in any other language because our history goes back to the Magna Carta. By the way, the Romans, who laid the foundation for a republican form of government and the rule of law, had a significant imprint on what is the United Kingdom today, Old England, and the English language that emerged from that brought many of our values to us.

If America had been formed by any other culture or any other civilization, any other language, we wouldn't be the country we are today. We wouldn't have the Declaration of Independence that we have. We are very unlikely to have this concept of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And we are very unlikely--and I will say it would be almost impossible--to conceive of a Bill of Rights that would give us the pillars of American exceptionalism, almost all of them packaged up in the Bill of Rights.

This came from our history, our culture, the derivatives of Mosaic law, Greek age of reason, the Roman rule of law, the Roman republican form of government that flowed up into England and into other parts in Europe and came about over here to the United States of America at the dawn of the industrial revolution with unlimited natural resources, a concept of manifest destiny, a Judeo-Christian foundation of beliefs and morality.

America was a giant Petri dish that was formed by, I believe, the hand of God that shaped this Nation and the foundations of this Nation. I would defy anyone, challenge anyone to reverse engineer America and come up with a better product than we have today.

But our principles, our values that came to us are essential to the future of our country as well. It is not just enough to look at our history and think--well, here is what some of my colleagues believe in, and I have trouble with that. They believe that society evolves, and this evolution of society can't be reversed, it can't be changed. It is essentially the product that comes because of time and technology and the force of human nature. So they are often looking at this on both sides of the aisle, but I just take some blame over here on the Republican side of the aisle, too, and they are kind of looking over their shoulder thinking: I am their leader. So I better get in front of this society and see where it is going because it is not going to revert back. The fundamental principles can be changed, too.

Well, I disagree, Mr. Speaker. I think what was a sin 2,000 years ago is a sin today. Fundamental principles are fundamental principles. The pillars of American exceptionalism are the pillars of American exceptionalism; and if we mess with them, if we alter them, we better come up with a good and a strong argument about why we should change these pillars of American exceptionalism. We can't just simply dish it off and say: Well, society has moved away from a man and a woman joined together in holy matrimony, so the family doesn't matter anymore, or we can redefine it to be something else. We can't just say, even though technology has proven without a doubt to us that human life begins at the moment of conception, that we can ignore that scientific fact and set aside the immorality of abortion and somehow our Nation is going to be blessed.

We can't ignore the idea that even though Adam Smith wrote his book on ``The Wealth of Nations'' published in, what a glorious year, 1776, and he laid out the fundamental principles of free enterprise that inspired this country and a world. We can't just disregard those principles and decide that, well, we can have now college students that reject free enterprise and embrace socialism and managed economies on the basis of what? On the basis of some kind of belief that free enterprise and capitalism victimizes people because some people get rich and other people don't get so rich? You can be a socialist, you can be a Marxist, but you have to believe it is a zero sum game if you are one of those folks, and then you are about redistributing the wealth, but the wealth ends up in the hands of the elitists--the leftist elitists. And if you belive in free enterprise and a meritocracy, then you know that the pie gets bigger. The more people create, the bigger the pie gets. The bigger the pie gets, the more people are prosperous.

It is an axiom for the world that when technology is invented and deployed, on average, it improves the standard of living of everybody. Some marginally, some not even noticeably, many a lot. But it moves the world into a modern place.

How could we think that whatever we had for net assets, or let me say--well, that is fine. Whatever we had for net assets in the year 1900 are not the net assets that we had in the year 2000, and not the net assets we have in the year 2017. We didn't have a lot of inventions in the year 1900 in comparison to what we have today. It was a smelly place, it was a dirty place, it was a dangerous place. There was no modern medicine. People died of diseases and the garbage got dumped out the windows, and the sewage ran in the streets, and we had invented the steam engine, and we were on the cusp of an airplane and a locomotive-- well, we had locomotives by then. And we were on the cusp of airplanes and automobiles.

Modern medicine hadn't emerged. Pharmaceuticals hadn't emerged. Surely, the internet had not. All of the technology that has been developed in the last century has made our efforts far more efficient.

Back in the days when we were subsistence farmers and you had to spend 8, 10, 12 hours a day to try to raise a crop to feed you and your family and you had very little left to sell or to trade, our time was occupied with staying alive.

I have a cousin who spent 8 years in Honduras near Tegucigalpa in the Peace Corps. He was struggling to try to get them to raise 10 bushels of corn per acre, and we were raising 100 bushels at home at the time. I said: ``Jim, why don't you bring some seed corn down there? Why don't you bring some nitrogen fertilizer down there? What is the capability of that soil?''

He said: ``Oh, it is a 100-bushel soil and 100-bushel climate.''

``Cannot you bring them into the modern world? That is what you are doing down there.''

And his answer was: ``No, my biggest task is to keep them from having to eat their seed corn.''

Well, we moved along a lot faster in our society today. We have done genetic engineering, GMO products. We have gone from their 10 bushels an acre now to 300 bushels. We are on the way to 300-bushel corn. We can feed 7 billion people on the planet, and we will be prepared to feed 9 billion people on the planet as well, Mr. Speaker.

But technology has always moved us forward. It has always put us in a place where the standard of living for the world was improved, whether it was medicine, where not only our standard of living, our quality of life and the length of our life has been improved dramatically over the last couple of generations, or the technology that comes from this iPhone that is here, that has far more storage capacity and computer capacity in it than was in Apollo 13 that went to the Moon, and it saves us time. We communicate in real time. It has changed our lives.

When I started my construction business, we all had to go in to eat lunch at noon, and we had 12 until 1 when we sat by the telephone and ate our lunch because that is when we communicated and reset our afternoon. We didn't have any other way to communicate with each other other than to be by that landline phone. And when they rolled that landline phone out, maybe 40 years earlier or so, we were pretty happy to have that because we had to go talk to people face-to-face to communicate.

Now if you send out an email and it is one that needs an action on it, if you don't get an answer back in 15, 20 minutes or 30 minutes, you think, well, that person is not a very good businessman or -woman if they are not answering their email, they are not answering their texts.

So now we make decisions on the fly. It is real time. Our efficiency is far much better because the communications are far much better. That is what has happened with technology. That is what has happened to move us into the modern era of the world.

But we still have this thing that is culture and civilization. We still have this thing that is language. And I know that the argument has been made to me that one day we will just hold up our iPhone and someone who speaks another language, it will come back and it will be interpreted into our ears, and we will be able to understand what they say.

And I think that will happen. I think that will happen, but I don't think we should overvalue what that means. Because if we are going to walk around and listen to our iPhone even when we are looking at people face-to-face and eye-to-eye, and if there is a delay in the interpretation--and there will be that delay, that will last indefinitely--we still have those pieces of our culture and our civilization that are instantaneous.

When people speak to us, we need to be able to hear and understand their voice inflections. We need to watch the body language and timing with the voice inflections. We need to pick up the slang and the vernacular that is used within the communities that we are. A nation needs to be able to do that in real time, instantaneously. And when we can do that, we are bound together and suspicion dissipates and unity comes together.

That is why America needs to establish English as the official language, because it is our common language. We are extraordinarily blessed to have English as our common language, and we can eliminate, then, the billions of dollars that we spend as we hire interpreters, and we slow down our process. And if we establish English as the official language, we will accelerate the learning of our language all across this land.

I mean, I don't know why in the world Spanish is in the airport in LaGuardia, for example. That is a long ways away from any country that speaks Spanish, but that is up there in dual signs, in English and in Spanish as you walk through the LaGuardia Airport.

As I am in a foreign country, I sometimes try to learn the language; and if they have got dual signs up there, I will try to read the sign to learn that other language while I am there. But I also know this: my eyes always revert to the language that I know and that I am comfortable with, and for me it is English.

When we put multiple languages on our signs in this country, it just helps facilitate for people--it takes away their desire to learn a foreign language. And so I am a strong supporter of English as the official language, H.R. 997, and I urge its movement here--and cosponsorship is necessary, of course--to finally get a vote on English as the official language here in the floor of the House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, I spent 6 years on this project in the State of Iowa, and I brought it three different ways in three different general assemblies. And finally, in the last term that I was there, I was able to--well, I didn't get to see the bill signed into law because the Governor wasn't thrilled about the bill-signing ceremony, but he signed it nonetheless, and it is the situation in Iowa and in nearly 30 States in this country that have adopted English as their official language.

The bill that I have introduced here is a mirror of the bill that is now law in Iowa. We did have to sue once on it and litigate, but it was because the secretary of state was determined to violate the law. He got pulled back in order. Otherwise, there would have been no litigation on the legislation itself. It has happened smoothly, and it has been a useful utility.

It saved money in the State of Iowa. It saved money in every State where English is the official language, and it is time for this Congress to adopt that a majority of the States have established English as the official language. I intend to continue beating this drum until such time as it becomes law, and at that point, then I will begin the celebration myself, Mr. Speaker.

I was about to change subjects, but I will carry on for just a moment.

I should also say that English is the language of success. Those who have developed proficiency in the English language do better than those who don't. We are seeing people who are sometimes three generations into America without learning the official language.

I recognize my friend from Tennessee has arrived and I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Jim Cooper.

Reclaiming my time, I am always happy to yield to the gentleman from Tennessee, and I appreciate his contribution to the United States Congress while I have served here, and each year that he has been here as well.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to shift gears a little bit now and address the circumstances of the NDAA debate that has taken place.

I want to express my disappointment with some of the decisions that were made, some of the votes on the amendments, and also decisions that came from the Rules Committee.

Last year, in the authorization of the National Defense Authorization Act, I offered a number of amendments that were made in order, and I brought them here to the floor. We had a legitimate debate on those amendments, and I appreciate the ability to do that. But I also want to reiterate that this is a deliberative Congress, and Members have a right to be on this floor and to debate and to vote.

The Rules Committee's job is to make sure that that is in an orderly fashion, and I recognize that when you have well over 100 amendments that are offered, we could be here a long time if everyone debated those.

I would also point out that there was a unanimous consent agreement that was negotiated here a little bit ago, and the chairman, Mr. Thornberry, made the unanimous consent request that the balance of the amendments that weren't debated today would be approved en bloc. I supported that, and I verbally voted in support of it. That is a process that we do here.

But the amendments that I offered before the Rules Committee, all four of them, every single one of them was turned down, even a couple of them that I offered last year that were debated here on the floor.

The first one was an amendment, and it is this: ensuring that no funds under

the NDAA would be used to enlist DACA aliens--Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals was how President Obama listed it--to ensure that no funds will be used to enlist illegal aliens into our military, including our DACA personnel, into the United States military when they only consider them through the MAVNI program, which is to try to find special skill sets that aren't available in the United States. That is what the MAVNI program is about.

But President Obama, I will say, distorted that program, Mr. Speaker, and he began to push the DACA recipients through there. Well, DACA is unconstitutional. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, as he named it, is unconstitutional. President Obama, 22 times, told the world that he didn't have the constitutional authority to grant amnesty to people who came into America, at least allegedly, before they were 18 years old--22 times.

The last time that I recall was at a high school here in Washington, D.C., which was only 2 or 3 weeks before he issued this policy, which was in September of 2014, to grant a quasi--and I will say an unconstitutional legal status to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

Now, it has been my position, conviction, and belief that if we reward lawbreakers, we get more lawbreakers. And it was the conviction of President Obama that he didn't have the constitutional authority to reward these lawbreakers. In his lecture to the high school students shortly before he implemented this policy, President Obama said: No, you are smart students. You know that there are three branches of government.

Article I is the legislative branch; they pass the laws. Article II is the executive branch, which he headed at the time. They enforce the laws. Article III are the courts, and they interpret the laws. That is about as clear and concise as it gets. And President Obama was an adjunct professor who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago.

I would take issue with some of his constitutional interpretations, but I would not take issue with that one. He was right. He had no constitutional authority to award a de facto amnesty to people who attested that they were brought into this country maybe against their will, without their knowledge, or too young to be held accountable, to reward them with a path to citizenship.

But that is what this NDAA legislation fails to do is to strike out this language that was implemented by President Obama in September of 2014 that rewards people who attest that they came into America illegally, committed the crime of unlawful entry into the United States, criminals who then stepped up into the military and applied to go into the military and took an oath to support and defend our Constitution after they broke our laws.

They had to lie to get into the military, so they committed the crime of unlawful entry. They lied to get into the military, and then they took an oath to support and defend the Constitution.

Well, two of those three things are wrong at least. But did they mean it when they took the oath to support and defend the Constitution? Can you trust them if they violated our immigration laws and then lied about that in order to get into the military?

This President set about rewarding those kind of lawbreakers, those criminals, by granting them a path to citizenship because they signed up in the military.

I simply offered an amendment at the Rules Committee to be able to debate this on the floor of the House of Representatives so Congress could bring its considered judgment.

Now, I have an oath that I have taken, and that is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, too, Mr. Speaker. When I see a bill come before me that, on its face, rewards lawbreakers under a policy that is a constitutional violation, one that Secretary Kelly said as recently as this morning he doesn't believe that the constitutionality of this can be upheld, and he doesn't expect that the Justice Department is going to defend it, and he anticipates that there will be a suit that will be filed--and I will tell you the specific date is September 5--that I believe will successfully litigate and put an end to this DACA program.

This Congress, every Member of this United States Congress has taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States-- every one. And I don't think there is a single one that stood there and had their fingers crossed behind their back as they took their oath and said: ``Oh, unless I don't like it, it makes me politically uncomfortable, or unless I have some sympathy for the people that might be facing the enforcement of this supreme law of the land, the Constitution of the United States.''

They don't get to cross their fingers behind their back and make an oath that they don't mean. So when we take this oath--all 435 of us in the House and 100 of us in the Senate--we better mean it. We better believe what we say because we tell our constituents: You send me to Washington, D.C., send me to represent you in the United States Congress, and I will uphold the Constitution. That is the number one duty, to uphold the Constitution.

Well, in this Constitution, to support and defend it, I tell you it requires the President to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and, under the Take Care Clause, take care that the laws are faithfully executed. That doesn't mean kill off the law. It means enforce the law.

The President has violated the Constitution. Now the Rules Committee denied the ability of the House of Representatives to strike this out of the policy that exists under the authorization now of the National Defense Authorization Act. They are asking me to vote for this bill even though it violates a principle that was encompassed in our oath and a principle that was encompassed in everyone's oath.

Not only did we not get to put these Members of Congress up on a vote and challenge them afterwards as to whether their conscience is clear and whether they meant it when they took an oath to support and defend the Constitution, we don't get to have the debate. We don't get to have the vote.

So here is the National Defense Authorization Act all ready for a final passage to come to the floor tomorrow with unconstitutional components encompassed within it, that being something that Barack Obama 22 times said was unconstitutional, and we don't even get a debate or a vote here on the floor of the House of Representatives. That is amendment No. 1, Mr. Speaker. That troubles me a lot.

Second, a simple amendment that I brought last year ensuring that funds are not used to house UACs on military installations-- unaccompanied alien children. When unaccompanied alien minors come into the United States illegally, they are violating Federal law. They are committing the crime of unlawful entry into the United States. They are facing up to 1 year in prison if we convict them and sentence them to the maximum of the law for one unlawful entry into the United States. We had a policy that existed under the Barack Obama administration to start to house them on our military bases.

Our military bases are for our national security. They are not there to be babysitting for children who are under 18--so they say--to house them on those bases to weaken our defense capability and interrupt the process of our military. We need that amendment to clean up another mistake of the Obama administration, and it was denied by the Rules Committee.

So we don't get to have a debate. We could very well have an administration that just continues the old process going of housing unaccompanied alien minors--illegal aliens--on the bases in America consuming our military resources for something like that. I disagree. I don't think they should be housed on our bases.

By the way, we ought to be picking them up at the border and sending them back to the country they came from. That is what every other nation does or should do. Those that don't are making colossal mistakes. I will try to stay out of what I think is going on in Europe today, but they are being subsumed by idiotic immigration policies.

The next amendment that was denied by the Rules Committee was the Obama-era Executive Order 13672 that prohibits Federal contractors and subcontractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender

identity. It is just an unnecessary executive order, common decency, common courtesy.

How do you discriminate against someone if you don't know what their sexual orientation is and gender identity is?

That has not been a problem out in this society. That executive order needed to be rescinded. We don't get a debate or a vote on that executive order either. This is the amendment that I introduced.

Vicky Hartzler from Missouri, thankfully--I appreciate her bringing an amendment that was very similar to mine. My amendment ensured that no funds are used by the Department of Defense to force servicemen and -women to undergo any kind of transgender sensitivity courses or to screen servicemembers regarding gender reassignment surgery.

I will just couple it with discussion and debate on the Hartzler amendment. And that is this: that the United States military should not be used as an experiment. It shouldn't be used to do a social experiment agenda. Yet, under the Obama administration, not only did they decide to put an end to Don't Ask, Don't Tell, they set up an affirmative action program to promote people through the ranks who would assert their orientation to be different from heterosexual.

Then we got into this national fixation on transgenderism. And the orders came down in to the Department of Defense through our Secretary of Defense that the American taxpayer--well, let's just say we borrow money from China and Saudi Arabia to do sex reassignment surgery on people in our military?

It is something that has never happened before without a vote or a debate here on the floor of the House of Representatives or in the Senate for that matter. It is not a policy that has been approved by America or Americans, but a policy that was more or less shoehorned into this by the former President of the United States and the former Commander in Chief Barack Obama.

I can't believe that President Trump thinks it is a good idea to spend one-quarter or more billion dollars doing sex reassignment surgery, taking people out of the service of the military for the better part of a year while they recover from this surgery and thinking that somehow they are going to make our Nation stronger by using those resources when we have military members who are on food stamps today.

So we would divert resources for sex reassignment surgery, thinking that it would somehow enhance our national security? Sex reassignment surgery enhances our national security?

I can't say that with a straight face and expect anybody in this country is going to believe this.

So here we are, an America that is the unchallenged greatest nation in the world, significantly more powerful militarily than any other country in the world, but also with responsibilities that expand beyond that of any other country in the world, and we would obsess ourselves with the idea that we are going to send an advertisement out to people all over America, which is--well, maybe even outside of America--if you are contemplating sex reassignment surgery, come into the military and declare yourself a transgender, and then we will pay for that surgery. And we will have a whole lineup of people over at Walter Reed for their sex reassignment surgery laying in hospital beds next to our noble wounded who have lost an arm or a leg, or maybe both arms and both legs, maybe that have sacrificed a great deal, and we are going to divert the resources--the considerable resources--and medical skill and capabilities of our military medicine system that we have to sex reassignment surgery? Who would have thought?

I can't believe that the pundits haven't unloaded already on this all over the world. We are going to be the laughingstock of the world if this comes out that the Hartzler amendment failed on the floor of the House of Representatives by a handful of votes, but it failed. So that says to those who want to enter into the military and are contemplating sex reassignment surgery--by the way, I am not using the language that they are using. They are saying this is gender reassignment surgery-- gender reassignment surgery.

Well, gender cannot be reassigned. That is in one's head. Sex is south of the border. Gender is in the head. It is not gender reassignment, it is sex reassignment surgery.

We would take those resources that we need to be using to take our combat-wounded and those who are ill and sick and serving in our military and get them well with the best care that we can provide for them, the battles we have had here on the floor to try to get the VA up to speed and they would divert those resources for sex reassignment surgery and for pharmaceuticals and the kind of medication that would make them physically more like they say they are in their head?

That is not a problem for the military to solve, Mr. Speaker.

I am greatly troubled by the arrangement of the amendments, those that were allowed and those that were denied. This amendment was the Hartzler amendment that failed.

I can only think of the MASH unit, and I will probably stop with that, Mr. Speaker, and not go any further into what images that brings to mind for me. But I saw that there were 24 Republicans that voted against the Hartzler amendment. That is greatly troubling to me, Mr. Speaker, to see that. By the way, Mr. Speaker, every single Democrat voted against the Hartzler amendment.

In the course here of about 18 to 24 months, this Congress thinks that they are reflecting the will of the American people, and now we have not only a social experiment but a medical experiment, a transgender medical sex reassignment surgery experiment going on in our military while we need to maintain ourselves as the strongest and most capable military in the world.

Our focus needs to be singular. We have people who can't get into the United States military for one reason or another. Maybe they aren't a strong enough physical specimen. Maybe they can't pass that physical test.

Former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates testified before Congress some years ago. He said that obesity is a national security problem in the United States, that too many of our young people sit in front of the television or in front of their Xbox. They eat junk food, they get fat, and they are too heavy to meet the standards to qualify to be recruited into our military in any branch of the service.

He said that if we don't do something to control the diets of young people so that they are not too fat to get into the military, he said it is a national security issue. Obesity in our young people is a threat to our national security.

Yet, rather than focusing resources on getting these young people in shape, we would get out the scalpel and do sexual reassignment surgery on somebody from the same generation who went to the same school and probably sat next to some of those other youth in the high school classes, and we would take a man and physically turn him into a woman or take a woman and physically turn her into a man at their request because she says: up here that is where I am.

Don't they know that when they sign up for the military? Can't they make that decision beforehand and can't the military screen for that?

If they can screen for obesity, if they can screen for intellect and for IQ, if they can screen for medical records and medical history, if they can screen for criminal activity or violations of the law, if they can say you can't get into our military because you don't meet our standards in any of these, if you are too short, if you are physically unable like my uncle who was physically unable to serve in the military, all of those things, from obesity to too short, to having flatfeet, to being cross-eyed, whatever it might be, they can say: no, you don't fit our standards.

But if you walk up there and you say, ``Well, I think here I am a woman and I am not a woman here,'' then we will bring you in because you meet all other standards and we have got these specialists up at Walter Reed and other facilities around America, we will surgically make you into whatever you want to be. And somehow that strengthens America's security and helps us to fight our enemies?

This is so utterly ludicrous for the United States military to be engaged in such a diversion from defending our country. Yet this Congress turned down the Hartzler amendment. At least

the Rules Committee allowed it to be offered. They didn't allow mine. They allowed that one to be offered. This is what we get? This kind of answer?

Every Democrat says: oh, this is okay. We want to do this. It is important to us.

And 24 Republicans agreed with them? Where is our country going? Can't we focus on the things that are important? Can't we focus on these constitutional principles?

Vote down this DACA thing that rewards lawbreakers, and support the Hartzler amendment and end this idea that we are going to do great medical and social experiments in the United States military and somehow out of that we are going to--there is no way in the world that makes us stronger.

So somehow do we even maintain our power when we become the laughingstock of the world?

There was also an initiative that I had to fight here a while back about meatless Mondays in our military. I recall a picture of the Norwegian military. They are vegans on Monday. Meatless military in the Norwegian military, and they are sitting there eating their vegan sandwiches and on their shoulder patch is a reindeer. I suppose that is their national animal, and that is good over there.

For us, we want a strong military. We want to maintain a noble military. We want to focus these resources on those things that matter. They are all going to take an oath to support and defend the Constitution when they sign up and commit themselves to the military.

God bless them for doing that. I take it, too. There are 435 of us here who did, and 100 down the Rotunda in the Senate did.

How many of us mean it? How many of us will take that stand and say: I will not vote for a piece of legislation that is unconstitutional because it violates my oath of office; and I am not going to commit the resources of the taxpayers of the United States of America to do social, medical, and pharmaceutical experiments on people who now would be attracted to come into the military for that purpose and then be discharged out onto the streets of America, having been reconstructed into a different kind of human being with a different hair cut?

That can happen on their own. That can happen in civilian life. That is each person's cross to bear or each person's choice, but it is not the duty of the United States military.

It is a national security issue, according to former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, because too many of our youth are too overweight to meet the standards to get into boot camp. My answer to that was: if it is a military national security issue, sign them up. Put them in there. They can just stay in basics until they make weight. Maybe you add another 2 weeks, 4 weeks, or 6 weeks to their training. You will get them down to weight, if you work them hard enough, if you watch their diet. It will be a good thing for them.

It is not a national security issue, in my opinion, for too many young people to be overweight and they can't qualify for the military. If you work them hard enough, feed them right, keep them long enough, they will make weight.

But it is far wiser to do that than it is to do sex reassignment surgery and take somebody out of operations for 200-some days out of a year in order to recover from this reconstructive surgery.

It is a ridiculous thing that has happened today in the United States Congress. It is disgraceful that a vote like that could take place and that a majority of the people voting on the Hartzler amendment would turn it down when we have a country to save, a country to protect.

So I suggest this, Mr. Speaker. If this NDAA bill fails tomorrow, it will come back again. It will come back again with the Hartzler language in it, under a rule that will allow it to pass here on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Democrats are not going to help us pass this bill. Only a handful of them will do that. So Republicans have to do the right thing. We should stop dividing ourselves. We should stop letting America be embarrassed in front of the word for a ridiculous decision that was made today.

So I urge a correction to the NDAA, and I urge English to be adopted as the official language of the United States of America, because it unifies us and helps us communicate with each other.

A common form of communications currency is the most powerful unifying force throughout the entire history of the world. We need to employ it here and protect it in law here in the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman from Iowa for yielding.

Permission to Revise Remarks on Amendment No. 15

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that I may be permitted to revise my remarks, made during consideration of amendment No. 15 in the Committee of the Whole earlier today, beyond technical, grammatical, and typographical corrections.

I thank my friend from Iowa for yielding.