Floor Statements

Madam Clerk, I rise to place in a nomination for election to the constitutional office of Speaker of the United States House of Representatives a man who has served as speaker of the statehouse, a man who respects this institution, a man who understands that power and principle cannot coexist without recognizing the sanctity of each Member's vote in this House of Representatives, a man who will restore this institution of the House of Representatives. I place in nomination the name of Daniel Webster, a Representative-elect from the great State of Florida.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the 20th anniversary of ProEnglish, a national grassroots organization based in Arlington, VA.

ProEnglish works on Capitol Hill, in the states, in the courts, and in the court of public opinion to defend English as our common language and to make it the official language at all levels of government.

ProEnglish is an effective and vigorous advocate for English language unity, and for the past 20 years, ProEnglish has worked hard to stop harmful, divisive policies such as bilingual education and multilingual ballots.

At the time of their founding, only 18 states had passed laws establishing English as the official language, yet thanks to ProEnglish along with other patriots, 31 states and countless towns, cities, and counties have official English laws today.

Originally founded in 1994 as English Language Advocates, it was renamed ProEnglish and helped defend Arizona's state official English law. This law was the subject of a 10-year long federal court challenge, Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona (1997). The case was eventually appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the ruling there was important in upholding official English laws in other states.

ProEnglish has filed amicus curiae briefs in a number of successful landmark English cases, including Home v. Flores (2009), where the U.S. Supreme Court found that bilingual education (where children are segregated by language and taught primarily in their native tongue) was not the most effective way of teaching children.

In Anderson v. Utah (2001), ProEnglish successfully argued in defense of a year 2000 official English ballot initiative that passed by 67% of the popular vote. This ballot initiative declared English as Utah's official language.

ProEnglish has even come to the aid of various small business owners, like Richard and Shauna Kidman in EEOC v. Kidmans (2002), who were bullied by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for implementing lawful English-language workplace policies.

The organization has testified before Congress and various local and state legislatures with the goal of restoring the Melting Pot principle inherent in having a common language. Our common English language has helped make the U.S. the most successful multi-ethnic and multi-racial nation on earth.

Over 90% of the world's nations have an established official language, but despite the high levels of public support, the United States is not one of them. Polls continue to show that immigrants--like all Americans--support official English in overwhelming numbers.

The vast majority of Americans agree that official English laws are necessary to prevent waste, protect freedom, and protect national unity. Official English laws are nondiscriminatory, because they treat all Americans, of whatever background, alike.

Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to recognize ProEnglish for its 20th anniversary. I ask all of my distinguished colleagues to join me in commending ProEnglish on its commitment to preserve English's role as the nation's unifying tongue.

I thank the gentleman from Idaho for yielding to the gentleman from Iowa. There are about four people on the floor right now that do know the difference.

I rise today, Madam Speaker, to give a great message of gratitude and thanks to Congressman Tom Latham. I want to tell a little bit of the narrative about how this unfolds from the perspective of Iowa, and that is this: we are all politics all the time. There is no off season for us. You are always on season. When the Iowa caucuses emerge, there is a big focus on Presidential politics.

If you are on the State Central Committee, you are in the middle of that arena. That is where I first met Tom Latham and first became aware of his commitment to the political arena and to conservatism. I would want to let the body know, Madam Speaker, that Tom Latham didn't come from a place that was a big magnificent megalopolis, unless you would want to describe Alexander, Iowa, with 160-some people, as a big megalopolis. 168 people would be the population of Alexander, Iowa, rooted in now a three-generation seed company, and rooted in the soil. I don't have to explain this to the people from either Idaho or Iowa, but all new wealth comes from the land, and it regenerates itself every year in the form of corn in our neighborhood and soybeans and potatoes in Mr. Simpson's neighborhood.

When you see where their origin of wealth comes every year, and you see the families that came across the prairie and turned the sod for the first time and maybe built their house out of it and put their roots down into that soil, and then took the family farm that raised the wealth and boiled that out of there and over from the farm to the town to the city, and you see a family business with multiple brothers engaged in it, and three generations now, you know that they are tied to the heart of the heartland and the good of what is good about Iowa and America.

That is what Tom Latham brought to the political arena from the State Central Committee to a primary and to the United States Congress in 1994, and then catching that wave, that 1994 wave and being elected to the United States Congress 20 years ago.

I take a look at him now, and I think he is no worse for wear. It is the same Tom Latham that came here 20 years ago that is going off into retirement today, or shortly here at the end of this Congress, and he hasn't lost his enthusiasm.

Here is what I see--this is a Steve King perspective, Madam Speaker-- and that is that everybody that comes to this place has their own style and their own way of getting things done.

But the people that have worked with Tom Latham for these years know that it isn't always an issue that is run up the flagpole. It doesn't come necessarily with lights and blaring horns, but it gets done. It gets done in a quiet way, it gets done, sometimes with just a slow persuasion. It gets done with building a network of people that want to help and want to get things done.

So when I was elected to come to this Congress in 2003 and inherited a lot of the real estate that had formerly been represented and the constituents that had formerly been represented by Tom Latham, I noticed that there were ribbon-cutting ceremonies taking place in my district, and I wasn't necessarily the lead guy when it came to the ribbon-cutting because Tom Latham had laid the groundwork for that for years, and they knew it, and they still know it.

The friends and the relationships that were built by doing a good job of representing constituents throughout those years are still there. They still exist. And it has been an easy thing for me to step into that neighborhood because they were well taken care of and well represented.

So, now, after moving from Agriculture over to the Appropriations Committee, I would just remind the body that Tom Latham, today, is the only Iowa member on the House Appropriations Committee. He has done a good number of things with projects, not only the transportation projects, but the Iowa National Guard, ag, economic development, small business development, and he is currently chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies, and he serves on the Appropriations Subcommittee for Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug, and also on Homeland Security.

That is an influential footprint in this Congress, and the people that arrive here as freshmen and sophomores recognize that.

But I recognize, also, this man that is rooted in Iowa soil, who is the continuation of the family farm and the family business that relies upon the very foundation of our economy, that all new wealth comes from the land, and that there is a core of family and faith and neighbors and neighborhood that Tom Latham has brought to this Congress.

Wherever he ends up in his retirement, we all want to congratulate him and say to Tom Latham, ``Congratulations, you have earned it. You have picked your time, you have done it your way.''

There are only about three ways to leave this Congress: one of them is to get beat, one of them is to die in office, and the other one is to choose your time to retire.

I am glad that you are fit and vigorous and prepared for a fit and vigorous retirement.

But it wouldn't be appropriate, Madam Speaker, for me to conclude my portion of this without saying into this Congressional Record a deep and heartfelt thank you to Kathy Latham. It is from me personally, as well as, for a lot of reasons, across this Hill that with the work that she has done, you got, oftentimes, two for the price of one with Tom and Kathy Latham.

She sacrificed a number of times and made my life easier and made things work better for Iowa, for the House of Representatives, and for this country, and I think that the best interests of all of us have always been what made the decisions in the Latham family, which, by the way, now ranks up in about the top three of Iowa political families.

So pay attention, Madam Speaker, to the Latham family going forward. They are not done yet, but they do have a patriarch that is going to ride off into retirement.

Thank you a lot, Tom Latham, for serving our country. God bless you.

I thank the gentleman for yielding and the privilege to address you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to address the underlying bill that we refer to around this Hill now as the Yoho bill, H.R. 5759. I appreciate the gentleman from Florida for drafting this bill. He and I are consistent in our philosophy, our constitutional understanding, and our approach.

I would say, though, that the bill moved a little bit from the time that it was first presented. It had the word ``amnesty'' in the title. It said, ``Preventing Executive Amnesty on Immigration Act.'' Now it says, ``Preventing Executive Overreach.'' This tones it down a little for me.

It also addresses the subject called prosecutorial discretion. And it says in the bill it ``ought to be applied on a case-by-case basis and not to whole categories of persons.'' Mr. Speaker, prosecutorial discretion can only be applied on a case-by-case basis. It cannot create whole classes or categories of persons and exempt them from the application of the law.

So I want to make sure this Congressional Record is clear that this bill doesn't endorse the idea that we are suggesting prosecutorial discretion is anything other than what it actually is, and that is on a case-by-case basis.

It says also:

No provision shall be interpreted or applied to authorize

the executive branch to exempt categories of persons

unlawfully present.

I agree with that. But:

Any action by the executive branch with the purpose of

circumventing the objectives of the preceding sentence shall

be null and void and without legal effect.

That is nice. This bill amounts to a resolution, a resolution of disagreement with the President. I don't think it makes it clear enough that the President has clearly violated the Constitution of the United States. I don't want this to be in the Record as something that is ambiguous.

I would also point out, Mr. Speaker, the President knows the law. He taught the Constitution for 10 years. For 22 times he said--at least that we know of--into the public record, into the videotape, that he didn't have the authority to do what he did. And so if the President has so little respect for his own opinions, my point would be, how would he have a lot of respect for this bill? And so I encourage the gentleman. I thank him for offering it.

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, and I always appreciate that opportunity to come here and voice some of the things that are expressions often of the voices of my district and also the voices of Iowans, the voices of the American people.

I happen to live in a place that is the best place in the world to live and raise a family. The anchor of the values that are there and the culture in the neighborhood are reflected in the people.

I rise today, and I come to the floor to express my sadness at the passing of a very, very good friend and a great man, Dwayne Alons. Dwayne Alons passed away Saturday night after a short but brutal illness with cancer.

His life meant so much to so many of us. He lived in Sioux County. Sioux County is that place where I would think, if I would go to sleep and wake up in the park in Sioux County, I would think I might have died and gone to heaven.

It has got the best balance of faith and churches and economics and education and families and culture and work ethic and neighborliness. It has got the best balance of anyplace I know, and Dwayne Alons contributed so much to that.

In almost all of my years that I was in the State legislature, I served in the senate while he served in the house of representatives. When I needed a partner on a cause over in the house, it was Representative Dwayne Alons that I called upon, and it was he that came over to talk to me when I needed some help on my side or if he needed help on the senate side where I served. We stood in the same philosophical and ideological square year after year after year.

The 6-year endeavor that I had embarked upon in 1996 and early 1997 to establish English as the official language of the State of Iowa, that effort came up short in the first general assembly. That was 1997 and 1998; then, in 1999 and 2000, that effort came up short again.

In the next general assembly, I talked to Dwayne Alons, and he agreed that he would be the individual carrying the bill in the house of representatives, and there, in that general assembly, after 6 years of trying, we were able to pass English as the official language over from the senate to the house, and there, Representative Dwayne Alons floor- managed the bill, and we were able to put that bill on then-Governor Tom Vilsack, a Democrat's desk, where he signed the bill that established English as the official language of the State of Iowa. That was a crowning achievement of much of the work that we had done together.

We also opposed the Iowa State Supreme Court's decision called Varnum v. Brien, when the supreme court, magically, unanimously decided that, somehow, in the ratification of our State constitution and their equivalent of the 14th Amendment of the Equal Protection Clause that they had magically written in there, that marriage didn't necessarily have to be between a man and a woman.

We were able to pass legislation earlier in 1998 that established that a marriage in Iowa would be between one male and one female. Representative Alons definitely supported that. When the judges unanimously decided that they could rewrite Iowa law without a legitimate legal and logical constitutional basis, it was Dwayne Alons that stepped up to defend marriage between a man and a woman.

He did so without apology. He did so without reservation. He did so because he always acted on his convictions. He carried deep convictions.

He had a style not at all similar to mine, Mr. Speaker, a quiet, understated, respectful style, a strong, faithful man who was also a prayer warrior. Whenever there was a Bible study group, you could look around and Dwayne Alons and his wife, Clarice, would be there.

I would like to just chronicle some of the milestones along in his life that he represented the Fourth and then I think, later on, the Fifth District in the State of Iowa.

He also joined the Air Force and became a fighter pilot, an F-16 pilot, and rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Iowa Air National Guard, the 185th--the beloved 185th. He raised a pilot, his son Kevin.

That example that was before his four children was one that they acted on. He had such an influence on their lives, on the lives of their four children and their 14 grandchildren--a quiet, respectful, staid, resolute voice that lived by example. When he spoke, you knew you wanted to hear what Dwayne Alons had to say.

He was stricken by cancer in September and taken just right after Thanksgiving, but his wife, Clarice, they had 47-plus years and the four children that they raised and the 14 grandchildren, and their daughters-in-law and sons-in-law and a host of family and friends remember Dwayne, remember him as I did, grateful to God that we had him as a gift to us and had an opportunity to get to know him, an opportunity to call him a friend, to work with him, to pray with him.

On his last days, I had the privilege to stop and see him in the hospital where I think we all knew that he was in his last days, and I was able to go to his bedside and hold his hand and offer a deep prayer with and for him, and the strength that he had left after I said, ``Amen,'' he said, ``Now I am going to say a short prayer of my own,'' which I could hear--I could barely hear--but in that, there was a message to me, ``Don't let up, don't give up, keep up the fight, keep up the fight,'' as Dwayne did for his whole lifetime in a quiet and a polite and a respectful way, but as a leader.

He led by example, he led by conviction, he led with the moral authority of a man who knew who he was, a man who understood his faith, a man who understood the Constitution and the rule of law, the structure of government and his role in society as a father, as a grandfather, as a husband, as a friend, as a State representative, as a brigadier general in the Air Guard, and as a father of another officer in the Guard.

As I think about Dwayne Alons and think about having to say goodbye to such a good friend, I look at the back of the announcement here for the funeral, and it couldn't be more fitting. It is something that, of course, I think the language has been embedded into the hearts and the minds of the American people, and it is the poem ``High Flight.''

As an F-16 pilot, as a general, he always saw the clear blue skies, and ``High Flight'' says this:

Oh. I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of Sun-split clouds--and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of--wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew--

And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod.

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

That was the life of Dwayne Alons, my pheasant-hunting friend, my legislating friend, my Bible-studying friend, my air warrior friend, and my prayer warrior friend, General Representative Dwayne Alons, may he rest in peace, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate your attention to his life and the opportunity to place some of these memories into the Congressional Record here. His last ask of me and his last prayer, which was not for him but for me, tells you something about the sacrifice and the will of the man that we have lost as a servant to our country, but his inspiration lives beyond, keep it up, don't let up--understood the Constitution.

Here we sit today, Mr. Speaker, with a President who lectured on the Constitution for 10 years as an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago and many times lectured about the separation of powers.

Article I is the legislative body of the government, this Congress, comprised of a House and a Senate. Article II is the executive branch, the President and the people that he gets to command. Article III are the courts.

The separation of powers that was defined by our Founding Fathers, this was not three equal or coequal branches of government--not designed to be, Mr. Speaker; instead, the legislative branch was designed to be a preeminent branch of this government, article I, the branch closest to the people, most responsive to the people, and most accountable to the people.

Of the legislative branch, of the article I, the two bodies of the Senate and the House, it is the House of Representatives that is established to be the quick reaction force. Up for election every 2 years, so that if the people are dissatisfied with their Representatives in the United States Congress and the policies that we bring forth, then the people have an opportunity to change out those seats in this House of Representatives, all 435 of them, within each 2 years, we are all up for election or reelection.

If the people decided they wanted to throw out all 435 of us, they had their chance just about a month ago today, and if they decide 2 years from now, short a month, that they want to throw out everybody in the House of Representatives, that is what they do. Our Founding Fathers wanted that restraint on this House.

They wanted this House to have the most control. They wanted the House of Representatives to be where most ideas originated--not all of them, most of them. They wanted us to be the place where we fought out these ideas, and the genius of it is this: each of us represents 750,000 or so people here; each of us in the House of Representatives represents about that many people.

Out there in America, 316 or so million Americans, all of the good ideas that this government needs to consider are out there in the hearts and minds of our people.

And our job in this constitutional Republic is, go home, listen to the people whom you have the honor and the privilege to represent, listen to them, exchange ideas with them because we are not charged to be devoid of ideas and simply carrying their ideas here. We are charged in this Republic with having a responsibility to get informed, be informed, stay informed, do this full time, so that we are giving all of our heads, all of our hearts and all that we can to this job that we have.

We owe our constituents our best effort and our best judgment, and that includes go home and listen to them. Gather the best ideas that can come out of our districts. Bring them here. Each one of these seats in this place should have within it, within the mind and within the records and within the staff of each one of us and our staff, we should have the best ideas that come from our district. They should be incorporated with the best ideas that we can generate.

We should bring those ideas into this idea marketplace and test them; and while we are doing that, we are evaluating the best ideas that come from the other 434 Members of Congress that come here with the best ideas that they can gather. And throughout that all, with that competition of ideas, the competition of debate, the regular order that we ought to structure here and keep, to the extent that it is possible, then those ideas get written into bills and those bills need to go before subcommittees for hearings, and then they need to go before the subcommittee and the full committee for markup so that the people in the committee that presumably have the most expertise on the topic have an opportunity to perfect that legislation.

Then out of committee it needs to come to the floor where the Rules Committee should be allowing the maximum amount of input from the Members. There is not one single Member of this House of Representatives that has the market cornered on all the good ideas; and there is not one single Member here that represents enough more people within their district that they ought to have more leverage than anybody else.

There has to be a leadership structure, that is true, but that doesn't mean that there is only one or two or three places where the ideas can be approved. It needs to be the best ideas that can come from the people of the United States of America.

That is the structure in our constitutional Republic, and we should have the closest thing to regular order that we can maintain. If it means we work longer, if it means we work harder, we should do that. And we should send our best ideas over across the rotunda to the Senate. There in the Senate, they can generate some ideas, too, and bring those ideas from the States. But they are only up for election once every 6 years, which means, Mr. Speaker, that they have a little bit different attitude about what they can vote for, what they are willing to support, and where the leverage might be over there.

But in the end, this is about bringing the best ideas that exist in America, process them through this competition of ideas in this great debate forum that we have, and let those best ideas emerge to the top.

Mr. Speaker, sitting here in this place, we have a President that thinks that he does all of that. We have a President who thinks that, even though he lectured on the Constitution and the separation of powers and understands that all legislative power and authority exists in the Congress, not in the President of the United States. It exists in the Congress of the United States.

When you look at our Founding Fathers, they had a habit of putting things down in priority order. One of those examples that I would place into the Record here, Mr. Speaker, is in the Declaration of Independence. That is not an independent document from the Constitution. The Declaration is the promise; the Constitution is the fulfillment of the promise that is in the Declaration: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, in that order. They didn't say, pursuit of happiness, liberty, then life. They didn't say, liberty, pursuit of happiness, then life. It is life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. That is because they are prioritized rights.

Life is the paramount right. It takes precedence over any other right. The second that was established in the Declaration was liberty, God-given liberty. Our Founding Fathers are the ones that articulated that, put it on the parchment, and pledged their lives, their fortune, and their sacred honor to that cause.

Pursuit of happiness, by the way, is not just envisioned by our Founding Fathers to be what I think some people think it is, like this endless tailgate party in this pursuit of happiness. Pursuit of happiness is the development of the whole human being. Some pronounce the Greek term for that is ``eudemonia.'' That means the development of the whole human being--physically, mentally, spiritually, intellectually, knowledge-based, all of those things put together--as someone who, enjoying the rights of life and liberty, is contributing back to that society and civilization and to the government of, by, and for the people. That is what pursuit of happiness is.

But it still is trumped by liberty, and liberty is trumped by life. No one in the exercise of their liberty can take someone else's life, and no one in the exercise of their pursuit of happiness can take away someone else's liberty or life. That is the order; that is the priority.

So, with that in mind, Mr. Speaker, I would point out that our Founding Fathers envisioned--and they wrote it in the Constitution, to put it bluntly--article I. They didn't start out with article II or article III. If they declared article I to be the executive branch of government, one might be able to read into this that the President has a little more power than he does. They wanted to make sure the people had the power.

So they wrote in article I, the very first sentence, article I, section 1:

All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a

Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a

Senate and a House of Representatives.

That is an irrefutable first truth in the Constitution of the United States. That is what Barack Obama taught at the University of Chicago. That is the foundation of article I.

The President of the United States, he is the embodiment at the top of the executive branch of government. And it says in the beginning of article II:

The executive power shall be vested in a President of the

United States of America. He shall hold his office during the

term of 4 years, and, together with the vice president,

chosen for that same term, be elected, as follows.

It doesn't actually say that the President, in the first sentence, has this massive power. In fact, nowhere in article II does it say that the President has this massive power to legislate because it is exclusively reserved for the Congress of the United States in the very first sentence, article I, section 1.

So this little lecture that I have provided here, Mr. Speaker--and I know you know all of this to be fact--it is pretty similar to the lectures I imagine the President delivered at the University of Chicago, and it reflects the expressions that he has made of his constitutional understanding at least 22 times into the public record when he said: I don't have the authority to grant amnesty.

Now, I am summarizing this, of course. He wouldn't use that word himself.

He said he didn't have the authority on March 28, 2011, at the high school here in Washington, D.C. He said: I know you want me to pass the DREAM Act and establish it, but you are studying. You are smart students. You are studying the Constitution. You know that I don't have the authority to do that. The Congress writes the laws. The legislature writes the laws. I am head of the executive branch as President. My job is to enforce the laws, and the

judicial branch of government's job is to interpret the laws.

That is a pretty concise description of what this Constitution does, that statement, and at least 21 other statements by the President of the United States, in his declaration--his declaration--that he didn't have the authority to legislate.

Then, lo and behold, the President of the United States had a change of heart. He stopped saying he didn't have the authority for several months, didn't seem so curious because he was floating trial balloons about advancing an executive amnesty. Those trial balloons floated out June, July, August, September, October. He announced at some point--or leaked it out--that he wouldn't commit his executive amnesty until after the election for fear there would be consequences for such a thing, and so he held back.

Then a couple of weeks ago, on a Thursday night, he gave an address at 8 on a Thursday night to a national audience that more or less laid out his executive amnesty, which as many times has been characterized as ``unconstitutional.''

The President then decided he could write immigration law and he could waive the application of the law and the enforcement of the law for vast classes and groups of people that he defined in his executive edict. That number of people may be 5 million. We know historically whenever there has been an amnesty, there has been a massive amount of fraud and a significant amount of underestimation of the real numbers, whether it is 5 million or it is a multiplier of 5 million. I don't think anybody thinks it is going to end up being less than 5 million people.

Now we have a bunch of people that came into America that many of whom committed the crime of illegal border crossing. There are some who overstayed their visas, and they are not technically criminals. They have committed a serious misdemeanor overstaying their visa. In both cases, the law removes them from the United States. That is what the law is.

But the President has decided that he can create these classes of people, exempt them from the law, reward them with a permission slip to stay in the United States and a work permit. Some of it is going to turn into green cards.

So this has been a massive effort to usurp the authority of the United States Congress to pass laws. And for the President to give his oath of office and take that oath of office to take care that the laws be faithfully executed--preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help him God--he is obligated to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. Instead, he has taken the Constitution--figuratively speaking--separated out article I of the Constitution, torn it out, and said: I do the law, too. Folded it, put it in his shirt pocket, and walked away from the podium in the East Room that night.

Now here we are. We are a Nation thrown into a constitutional crisis, a Nation that was struggling to restore the respect for the rule of law as far back as Ronald Reagan's 1986 Amnesty Act. I remember what that was like. I remember what I thought. I am not Monday morning quarterbacking that. I believe Ronald Reagan would stand the principle and veto the '86 Amnesty Act, because anything less meant that there was an implicit promise that there would be another amnesty, another amnesty, and another amnesty; and when you reward lawbreakers, you get more lawbreakers.

I have been working since '86 to restore the respect for the rule of law, and I have watched it be eroded since, one might say by each succeeding President, Mr. Speaker, but no one has eroded the respect for the rule of law from the White House nearly to the extent as this President.

So as I see what is happening in America, I have been wanting to, working here in this Congress, to restore the pillars of American exceptionalism, those pillars, many of which you find in the Bill of Rights, the first ten Amendments to the Constitution, but just in the first one: freedom of speech, religion, press, the right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances. The Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms. It goes on and on.

The Bill of Rights is replete of pillars of American exceptionalism, any one of which, if you pulled it out, this giant shining city on a hill that is built upon those beautiful marble pillars of American exceptionalism, that are drilled down to bedrock, that seek this country and its greatness and the greatness of people that are here, you pull any one of them out, we don't become the great country that we are today.

But the rule of law, Mr. Speaker, the rule of law, the essential pillar of American exceptionalism, that idea that no man--meaning also in this world, no woman either--is above the law. We get equal protection under the law, and we are all treated equally before the law. That rule of law is an essential pillar of American exceptionalism without which we could not have become this great Nation, neither can we sustain ourselves as a great Nation.

But I am watching as it is torn asunder by a willful act of an individual that knows better. We know he knows better because he lectured for 10 years better. And he gave us 22 speeches across the country that told us that he knew better, and then flipped and did this to throw this America into a constitutional crisis.

Then what are our alternatives here in the House of Representatives and in the United States Senate? We have a majority in the Republicans coming into the United States Senate. It will soon be nine freshman Republicans that will arrive on the floor of the United States Senate to take their oath of office in January of 2015, not that long from now.

Here in the House, we are going to end up with 247 Republicans, which is a pretty good-sized majority here in the House of Representatives-- the largest majority we have had since sometime back in the Roaring Twenties. That is 15 new Republicans seated in the House of Representatives.

Some say: Well, why don't we just wait and we'll pick up better ground to fight on. We can fight better maybe in January. So let's do a continuing resolution. Maybe we'll just kick the whole omnibus can all the way down the road until September 30.

But we surely can't do this. We surely can't let the President shut the government down. So we'll say there won't be a government shutdown, which is a promise that we're not going to defund the President's lawless act.

Now, if we announce that we are not willing to use the tools that are here in this Constitution in my jacket pocket, carefully given to the House of Representatives especially, but also the Senate, that gives the power of the purse to the Congress, in the Federalist Papers it is very clear that our Founding Fathers intended for this Congress to have the power of the purse because with the power of the purse comes the authority to control everything the executive branch does, if we so choose.

We can write language that is limiting language. We can write language that says: Here's all the money you want, Mr. President. You've already soared through $17 trillion in national debt--and now, $18 trillion in national debt. We'll scoop you up a few hundred more billion dollars. In fact, we'll scoop you trillions of dollars over there. And you can spend whatever it is that we have agreed in the discussions with Senator Reid and the President of the United States. We are going to provide for money because we don't want to fight. We don't want to fight.

Yes, we do. We have an obligation. And we have to. Money can be compromised if money is not a principle. The Constitution of the United States cannot be compromised; it is a principle. And we take an oath to uphold the Constitution here, 435 of us standing in this same place next January, again. It doesn't mean you get this caveat that says I don't like the politics of defending the Constitution. It doesn't mean that this is too painful for me so I am not going to do it. It doesn't even mean I disagree with the policy so I am not going to defend the Constitution.

What it means is you take an oath to uphold the Constitution, come what may, without regard to political consequences, without regard to policy implications, with complete regard to the oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That is our oath. And if the President doesn't keep his, we are ever more obligated to keep ours. That is what we

must do. And the most reasonable tool that we have is the tool that defunds the President's lawless executive edicts.

That is what must be done, and it must be done on appropriation bills that are must-pass, that the President wants, which means now, given an understanding that they continued to issue permits throughout the government shutdown 14 months ago. That is under USCIS. They functioned during a government shutdown, issuing DACA permits--the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals--and they continued to exercise these nonprosecutorial discretion Morton memos. They were doing those things, Mr. Speaker, during a government shutdown. So they declared it, apparently, to be an essential service, or they went off on the loop of it being fee-based.

We can write language into the next appropriation bill--and it should be a very short CR that gets us into next year--and that language must shut off the funding to the President's lawless act that he committed and knew what he was doing.

We need to do it now. It is a matter of principle. When you are called upon to keep your oath of office, you don't get to decide that there is going to be another time, a better time. If we vote to fund the President's lawlessness, Mr. Speaker, we don't get our virtue back in January, February, and March of next year. We must uphold the Constitution now.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 5 o'clock and 34 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, December 8, 2014, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, on roll call no. 530 had I been present, I would have voted ``no''.

Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to be recognized by you to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives in this great deliberative body that we are.

I come to the floor at a time when America is anxiously awaiting to see the specific language that will be delivered presumably tonight at 8 o'clock in the President's press conference. He has announced as of yesterday that he is going to do a national message to the Nation at 8 o'clock eastern time tonight. And that message will be, as they have long dangled this threat out here, that the President is prepared to grant some type of executive amnesty to a number of people that are estimated by the trial balloons that float out to be somewhere between maybe 3.5 million and 5 million people. It is probably not as many as 9 million people, as has been part of the trial balloons that have been floated out here over the last few months.

First, Mr. Speaker, I will assert that if the President could have found a constitutional way to grant executive amnesty, he would have done so by now. He has had 6 years to comb through this Constitution--6 years, with an almost unlimited amount of staff and lawyers that can comb through history and case law and statute--and I would like to think they would actually read the Constitution first as the supreme law of the land and try to find a way to do what he wanted to do policywise.

But what has happened here is that the people have spoken. The people of the United States go to the polls. And the President has famously said, ``I won the election,'' so elections have consequences. Mr. Speaker, I would remind the President, were I addressing him, elections have consequences. Yes, they do, and they have benefits as well.

After actions in 2009 and into early 2010, ObamaCare was pushed to the President's desk where, about March 22 or so, the President signed the ObamaCare legislation. It came through this floor and it passed through in two different versions in the Senate; one on rescission, one not. But it was. And I said in this Record a number of times that they passed ObamaCare on to the American people by hook, by crook, and by legislative shenanigan. And they did it in a partisan way, without a single Republican vote.

It was Thomas Jefferson that said:

Large initiatives should not be advanced on slender

majorities.

What would be the slenderest of majorities would be barely squeaking by with enough votes to pass it in two different versions in the Senate, packaged together, and this version in the House--I guess two different versions in the House, too--with people's arms being verbally twisted up behind their backs, Democrats that wanted the President to succeed but had reservations about the imprudence of a takeover of our health.

Mr. Speaker, ObamaCare itself is a takeover of the second most sovereign thing we have and are. The most sovereign thing we have is our soul. And they haven't figured out how to nationalize our soul yet, but the Federal Government stepped in with ObamaCare and nationalized our health, our skin, and everything inside it. It is a usurpation of God-given liberty. It tramples on our constitutional rights. It was a huge initiative, and it was passed on the slenderest of majorities, directly against Thomas Jefferson's advice.

And look at what happened. In the fall of 2010, there was a wave election and we welcomed 87 new freshmen Republicans into the House of Representatives, every one of whom ran on the pledge to come here and repeal ObamaCare, every one of whom has voted for the full, 100 percent, rip-it-out-by-the-roots repeal of ObamaCare. And every Republican seated in the United States Senate has done the

same. That was the wave election of 2010.

Then the President was up for reelection in 2012. The lines were not as distinct. The debate was, I will say, less easy to draw those lines between President Obama's position and those of Mitt Romney, but the election was decided. The President was reelected. I think that is on the American people. They made that decision. Of course, elections have consequences.

And so we were not able to repeal ObamaCare in 2013 or 2014 as we so eagerly anticipated that we might. But elections have consequences. We abide by the inability to repeal ObamaCare, knowing that we didn't have the votes in the Senate and we didn't have a President that would sign the full repeal.

So a lot of us stood up about 14 or 15 months ago and said, ``I'm not going to vote to fund ObamaCare.'' That was our pledge, Mr. Speaker. And we held our ground. That message came out about a year ago. It was late last June or July. We are going to hold our ground and we are not going to fund ObamaCare.

We went to this floor time after time after time, Mr. Speaker. We appropriated the funds to keep the government open--actually, to dollar figures we had agreed to between the House and Senate--and sent those appropriations bills over to the Senate, but not with the funding to fund ObamaCare. We were elected to repeal it. We were elected to rip it out by the roots.

We made a valiant effort to cut off the funding to ObamaCare, but the President insisted he would have his namesake piece of legislation and policy in the form that he wanted it. And if he couldn't get that from this Congress, then he would shut the government down. And that is what happened, Mr. Speaker.

Time after time after time here in the House we voted to fund the government, and we funded the government without funding ObamaCare in every configuration that we could come up with that we thought could effectively keep those functions of the government open. The President resisted and Harry Reid in the Senate resisted, and it brought about that time when there was a shut down for 17 days.

During that time there is a shutdown, all essential services continue and nonessential services cease. That is the simplest definition. When you run out of money, there is a shutdown. So we now have a definition of what essential services are. About 87 percent of the government was essential services and about 13 percent were nonessential services.

We had a new essential service that had never been defined before that was delivered to us courtesy of, I think, a petulant Barack Obama, Mr. Speaker, and that was that since there had been a shutdown in 1998, the people in this country put their money together, pooled their money--private money--to build the World War II Memorial. That World War II Memorial is a glorious memorial that sits on The Mall. It had never been closed down in its history. There was no reason to. It, like many of the other memorials, is an open-air memorial: the World War II Memorial; of course, the outside of the Washington Monument--not so much the inside; the Lincoln Memorial, wide open at all times; the Vietnam Wall, wide open at all times; the Korean Memorial, wide open at all times.

But the President decided that there was a new essential service, and that essential service was to call people off of furlough and rent barricades with money, theoretically borrowed from the Chinese, to barricade the public, including our World War II veterans coming in on Honor Flights, out of their Memorial, the World War II Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Wall, and the Korean Memorial. They were all barricaded out by rented barricades, with Park officers who were called off of furlough.

A new essential service. We surely couldn't have American citizens and tourists walking through these memorials if 80 percent of the government is shut down. We would have to have a new service created. That is how spiteful our President was.

But in that period of time, in that process, now we have identified what is essential and what is not--and the 87 percent essential services, the 13 percent that are not, we can go back and look through the records and put that list together--we presume, and I think rightly so, if we should be forced into that situation and if the President were to shut the government down again, we would be in a similar circumstance and we can pretty well predict.

So I want to fund all of those appropriations bills and departments save those that he is likely to direct to violate the law or the Constitution in his press conference tonight, his statement to the American people.

And by the way, we are not going to see the language of this I don't believe, either, tonight. I think what we will hear is a very carefully crafted speech with lots of ambiguities in it, lots of nuances in it. There will be very little information in it, and we will have to divine what it is that the President has said. And some time after they have their meeting in the school with Harry Reid in Nevada, then I think there will be a document that will be released or noted that will more precisely define what the President is preparing to do. Then we can actually weigh in on the constitutionality, or lack thereof, that we anticipate is going to be the case tonight.

Mr. Speaker, if this were a constitutional act, he would have done it by now. If he were prepared to abide by the Constitution some time in the last year or so, he would have repeated the things that he has said in the previous 5 years of his Presidency and probably many times in the classroom as he was teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago, a stellar law school in this country.

I think I would be wanting some of my money back if I had had any one of my kids that were learning Con. law from our President.

But many times he said, and I can think of a date, March 28, 2011, out here at a high school in Washington, D.C., wherein he said, You want me to pass the DREAM Act by executive order. I don't have the authority to do that because, he said, my job, as President, is to take care that we enforce and execute the laws; and the judicial branch's job is to interpret them, and it is the legislature's job to write them.

Congress writes the laws; the executive branch enforces the laws; the judicial branch interprets them. Pretty simple, pretty compact, pretty concise, pretty accurate.

There is no question the President understands this. On multiple occasions he has made remarks that would seek to restore the separation of powers, but they have been missing from his dialogue for a long time now; and that is just about how long it is that he has been planning, made his decision that he is going to go forward and now try to rationalize, he will try to justify and he will try to rationalize an unconstitutional act that, put it in quotes, ``legalizes'' 3\1/2\ million, 5 million, 7 million, maybe as many as 9 million people.

This Congress has, we have the enumerated power to set naturalization, and by a good number of case law, also immigration policy. No one else sets the immigration policy. The United States Congress does.

There is a statute that exists that directs that when immigration enforcement encounters someone who is unlawfully present in the United States, it says they shall place them in removal proceedings.

The President has already ordered that they not place them in removal proceedings. He has created four classes of people and said, under his prosecutorial discretion on an individual basis, only he has the authority to decide to waive the law against people who have broken our laws, most of whom are criminals by the definition of the laws that they have broken. That is the President of the United States.

Seven times in the document that was actually signed by Janet Napolitano, then the Secretary of Homeland Security, they reference on an individual basis only--on an individual basis only--because they know that the executive branch has prosecutorial discretion.

That is the term for how you decide which resources, how you prioritize your resources, where you apply those resources--and it is reasonable to do. If you don't have the resources to enforce

all of the laws, it is reasonable to apply them where the greatest danger to the American citizens are. I agree with that. But when you send out a memo that says, if you have not committed a felony and if you have not committed any one of these three mysterious misdemeanors-- or these three serious misdemeanors, as they would say--then we are not going to enforce immigration law against you.

That says that you can break into this country and you can live in America as long as you want if you don't become a felon or if we don't catch you at it, and as long as you avoid these three serious misdemeanors, then you can stay in America the rest of your life and we are not going to bother you.

That is directly contrary to the law, the statute that requires immigration enforcement officers, ICE, in particular, to place them in removal proceedings.

Congress has written the laws, and that is what we do. That is article I. That is the opening sentence in article I of the United States Constitution. And yet the President believes, apparently, that he can write and rewrite law at will.

This will come tonight. We will look at the language. And when we look at the language, there will be constitutional scholars all over America, most of the judges will read the statement and reflect upon the application of the Constitution, the restraint of it. Most of the lawyers will, too.

A lot of Americans that understand this document--you don't have to wear a black robe to understand what this means. Our Constitution, Mr. Speaker, is written in plain English. It is real clear, and there is a lot of the language of the Constitution that comes out in the language on the streets of America, because it is very, very close to our heart.

But article I of the Constitution grants the legislative power to the United States Congress, not the President of the United States.

I do know a little bit about this. In a similar circumstance, at the State level, we had a Governor who believed that he could just simply, by executive order, it happened to be Executive Order No. 7, write law and insert language into 19(b)(2) of the civil rights section of the Iowa code. I read that executive order, and the smart lawyers all told me, No, you don't understand. This is nuanced, and its deft and it is carefully drafted, so it is going to be constitutional, and the Governor can do this.

So I took the language and I put it into the code with strike- throughs and underlines like we do when we write legislation to see how it changes, and it read clearly to me that the Governor was inserting language into the code. So I filed a lawsuit. I was the lead plaintiff, and I spent some money out of my kids' inheritance to pay the lawyers and came out of that on top. I have been through these arguments.

Article I, section 1, says, ``All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.''

That is here, Mr. Speaker, and it is down through the rotunda to the United States Senate. We join together and write legislation. The President signs it, then that goes into law. That is the Federal code.

It is the executive branch's job to enforce it. He has no authority to waive it, not carte blanche, not huge chunks of people. He has prosecutorial discretion, but that is not what he is talking about.

What he is likely to do is to take the DACA group, the deferred action for childhood arrivals, which is another constitutional violation, those several hundred thousand that he has issued work permits to in another unconstitutional way, and say--and remember, they have our sympathy because they were brought here, according to a lot of people--and I agree, at least some of them--due to no fault of their own, little babies that are carried across the border by their mother or their father. They are not aware of where the border is or what is right and what is wrong at age 1 day. So they arrive here in the United States not citizens, unlawfully present in the United States. It wasn't their fault--that is the argument that has been made over here time and again--and so we shouldn't enforce the law, even the letter of the law, against people that were not aware that their parents were causing them to break it.

Now, that is an argument that I will take some time at another time, Mr. Speaker, to rebut. But there has always been, then, what about the people that caused the DACA kids to break the law? Their parents, presumably. Weren't they aware when they snuck across the border with their children, age 1 day or 15 years and 364 days, weren't they aware that they were breaking the law? Of course they were. And the President is prepared now to reward the family members of DACA recipients.

Why? Because he doesn't want to break up families is my presumption. But these are the people that are breaking up their own families. They put themselves in that condition. They are leaving a lawless land and bringing lawlessness to this land. And we have a lawless President who won't enforce the law, and he won't abide by his oaths to the Constitution.

So we are put in this fix, Mr. Speaker. It is a fix of this Congress is now hopefully recessed--not adjourned--at the call of the Chair, I hope, expecting to go home for Thanksgiving on a calendar that we publish early enough that the President and his minions at the White House can look at the--I suppose they can look and see who owns a plane ticket to go where. But all you have to do is look at the flight schedules flying out of Dulles and out of Reagan, and you look at the schedule here in Congress and you will know when it is likely that almost everybody is gone from town and gone home for Thanksgiving. Well, 95 percent of us are going to be out of town tonight by the time the President has his conference and speaks to the American people.

We shouldn't think that it is timed that way by accident. It is strategically timed, Mr. Speaker, so that Members of Congress have just left town, anxious to embrace our families and celebrate Thanksgiving.

And so he drops this bomb in the middle of us that will be; it will tear asunder this Constitution. The President is prepared to do this, Mr. Speaker, take this Constitution--and I can't bring myself to actually do this. So, take this Constitution. Separate out article I of the Constitution, the legislative authority. Tear that out. That is what he will do tonight at 8. He will tear article I of this Constitution out of this document. He will probably fold it one time, tuck it into his shirt pocket and say, I am also the legislative branch of government, and don't interfere with me because I am the President.

That is what you are going to hear at 8 tonight, Mr. Speaker. And I would like to tear that out and show you what it looks like, but I can't bring myself to do that to my Constitution.

Also, our choices that we have, alternatives to deal with this, I would make this point. Not only have I said the President takes an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, take care that the laws be faithfully executed, Mr. Speaker, we also here in the House of Representatives and in the Senate take an oath to the Constitution as well; 535 oaths to the Constitution, between the seated Members in the House and Senate that have a vote, that represent the people in this constitutional Republic--535 oaths. We have an oath to keep and protect this Constitution, as the President does.

I expect he will violate his oath again tonight, Mr. Speaker. We have an obligation then, under our oath to restrain the President's extra- constitutional activity.

I think it is prudent for us to do the minimum necessary to restrain the President. I think it is prudent. And so the limitations on that, they go from one end to the other. It is a pretty broad list of things that we have the opportunity to do. But the easiest and the most gentle would be a resolution that would, I believe, with some level of comfort, pass here in the House of Representatives, that would be a resolution of disapproval for the President's actions.

Now, if we bring that resolution of disapproval, we do so in language that, let's say, doesn't start a big debate, that it just simply lays out the facts. We have done that when we disagreed with the Supreme Court. A resolution of disapproval comes to mind on the Kelo decision as one of them. So we

could disapprove as a House. We could perhaps do a concurrent resolution or joint resolution--doubtful that Harry Reid would allow it to the come to the floor of the Senate, and doubtful that it would pass. But in any case, the House can act on its own with a resolution of disapproval.

That may not be strong enough to cause the President to come to his constitutional senses, so the next step would be, in my judgment then, a resolution of censure for the President.

Now, again, I will reserve the language in that and not define it more precisely until we get an opportunity to actually see what it is that he does, but nobody in this country can paint the picture on how the President can expand amnesty and still be restrained by the Constitution because of the statutes that exist and the restraints that he has that are built into the separation of powers.

So a resolution of disapproval, number one; a resolution of censure, number two; and if, perhaps, that resolution of censure will bring the President to his senses and the President could look at the outrage of the American people, which I believe will boil over, by tomorrow morning I believe it will boil over, that outrage, perhaps he will realize that he has got to rescind his order.

Now, here is one of those examples.

When we were all promised under ObamaCare that we would have conscience protection, a right of conscience that ObamaCare wouldn't compel us to fund abortions and sterilizations and abortifacients, of course, we found out that it did. After 2 weeks of the religious community's being critical of the President, the President finally stepped up to the podium at noon on a Friday--another finely calculated time of the week--and he said there have been some complaints from the religious communities. I am going to make an accommodation to them. Now I am going to require the insurance companies to provide these services for free.

That is the President also legislating by press conference. It is not the United States Congress. I stand in the middle of the United States Congress right now, and I am hearing some of my colleagues say we don't have the tools to restrain this President. Well, after a resolution of disapproval, after a resolution of censure, the next tool then is to cut off the funding to implement or to enforce his unconstitutional executive amnesty edict. We can do that in this Congress. We will be forced to do so in this Congress if the President doesn't restrain himself. That is how we must restrain him.

I don't want to go down that path, but if we do, let's appropriate the funds into the departments that are not relevant to this subject matter and send those appropriations bills down the hallway--to the Senate--and get them to the President's desk one at a time if we can. Let him pick and choose. They can all sit there on his desk, all but Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. Those two pieces of legislation will be necessary for us to pass by exempting from funding those components of the President's edict.

Some have said that we could always claw that money back in a recisions bill. The simple answer to that is, no, we would not be able to do that because, even if we got a recisions bill to the President's desk, he would veto it. Some have said that we can't cut the funding off to implement what we anticipate to be the President's act because it is fee-based under USCIS, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. So that is fees, fee for service, and that would be authorizing on an appropriations bill. I would remind people that this Congress has multiple times done just that.

They used the rule when I wanted to cut off the funding to ObamaCare, and I brought it before the Rules Committee--anybody can look it up--on February 14, 2011. I was advised that I shouldn't have put them in that position. They were going to have to say ``no'' to me even though they agreed with me on the policy because we couldn't effect policy in an appropriations bill. Of course, the answer is, yes, we can. We can do anything we choose to do. I would start with this.

In the Constitution, it says:

Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings.

We set the rules here. In the Rules resolution, we waive continually the provisions. Here is one:

All points of order against consideration of the bill are

waived . . . All points of order against provisions in the

bill, as amended, are waived . . . The previous question

shall be considered ordered and the bill, as amended, and on

any further amendment thereto to final passage without

intervening motion.

That is an example of a rule. The rule, itself, waives points of order here on the floor. We can write what we choose to write into legislation that would cut off the funding to implement or enforce a lawless and unconstitutional act. To those who say we can't do so with fees, I will read you the language that does so:

None of the funds made available in this Act or any user

fees and other revenue may be used to finalize, implement,

administer, or enforce the documents described--and we

describe the documents.

This is not rocket science.

Are we going to allow a President to violate the Constitution and say our rules in the House won't let us restrain the President?

I call that another red herring, red herring number two. There will likely be another one or two.

This Congress, Mr. Speaker, must do its constitutional duty. It must adhere to our oath to the Constitution. We will be called to do that at 8 o'clock tonight. I will be prepared and so will millions of Americans.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Is the adjournment resolution more broad than this? The reason I am asking is because, if we have an emergency, are we able to return at the call of the Chair?

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the order of the House of today, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 1 o'clock and 5 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, December 1, 2014, at 2 p.m., unless it sooner has received a message from the Senate transmitting its adoption of House Concurrent Resolution 119, in which case the House shall stand adjourned pursuant to that concurrent resolution.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 494, I was not present to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no''.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall Nos. 495 and 496, I was not present to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes'' on both.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 485, I was not present to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

On rollcall Nos. 486, 487, and 488, I was not present to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no'' on all three.

On rollcall No. 489, I was not present to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall Nos. 481, 482, and 483 I was not present to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes,'' ``yes,'' and ``yes.''

Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 484, I was not present to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. Speaker, I want to first thank all the people that worked so hard to put this language together, and it makes me feel good to see the team that has done so. But I also think there is a misunderstanding as to what happened with how we got to this OTM language, the Wilberforce language, that is current law that we are seeking to amend here.

There was a bill that was introduced in December of 2007 which was called Wilberforce. It had two provisions. One of them was that if you violated Federal law, you were exempt from the provisions that would have been beneficial to an unaccompanied alien child, and the other one was if you were a threat to national security.

Those provisions were taken out of it. A new bill was introduced on December 9, 2008. The next day was the last day of this session. We all put up our last votes, left the Capitol, and headed for the airport. There was a unanimous consent request that called the bill up.

They asked unanimous consent to discharge it from committee, called the bill up, passed it by voice in the House, sent it over to the Senate, where they took the lateral. They passed it by voice to the President of the United States. No Republican voted for this bill.

This is a bill that is the foundational excuse for the President, and this is what we are trying to fix here tonight.