Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Virginia, Chairman Goodlatte, for yielding. There are a lot of people in this Congress that I appreciate a great deal tonight, but I have listened to the anger and the fury over on the other side, and I have never seen the Sergeant at Arms have to come and clear the floor like we have seen here tonight.

I am wondering what is this about? I would take this back to the State of the Union Address when I watched the President of the United States here on the rostrum speak, and he said, essentially, the summary of what he has delivered to America a number of times: Congress, I am going to tell you what to do, and if you don't do it, I am going to use either my cell phone or my ink pen, and I am going to do it. Here it goes again, Mr. Speaker.

What I saw was this, our Founding Fathers set up this balance in our Constitution between the three branches of government, articles I, II, and III, the legislative, the executive, and the judicial branch of government.

They drew as fine a line as they could between the three, but they always knew that there would be a gray area, and they anticipated that each branch of government would jealously protect the constitutional authority that is vested within it within the Constitution, the supreme law of the land.

When the President said, I am going to usurp your legislative authority, I am going to take over article I, and I am going to legislate if you don't do what I tell you, what happened? The people that are applauding now applauded then, and they said, Mr. President, take the power that is in the Constitution, take it from me, take article I, too, take your pen, take your cell phone. You run this country as if you were a king, rather than only the President of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, that is what this debate is about here. This is about the DACA language that the President has introduced 2-plus years ago, and I said then when we had Hill hearings before the Judiciary Committee and Janet Napolitano--I said that we will take you to court on this, this will be litigated.

It will be litigated because the President does not have legislative authority. He is only the President of the United States. If the President wants to somehow grant amnesty to one person, he has some prosecutorial discretion to do that, but they argued in the Morton Memos, and they argued in the DACA memos--seven times in the Morton Memos--on an individual basis only, on an individual basis only, prosecutorial discretion on an individual basis only.

They put it in there seven times because they knew they were wrong, and they knew it was going to be litigated. You don't do 700,000 people on an individual basis only. You don't suspend the law. If the President wants the law changed, he knows to come to Congress, ask us-- and ask us, and when you take an oath to uphold the Constitution, you had better believe that it means what it says.

Why would you just throw your authority over the side and say, Mr. President, take this from us? That is not what you pledged to your constituents. That is not the oath that you take.

So what this says is that the DACA language says this: Mr. President, stop violating the Constitution from this point forward. As the chairman said, it does not deport anybody. It just restores constitutional article I authority.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. Speaker, this just restores the constitutional authority of the United States Congress, and it says: President Obama, don't continue to violate this Constitution. President Obama, when you waved your ink pen at us a week and a half ago and you said you were going to legalize 5 to 6 million people, it is unconstitutional.

He knows it. He has many times given the lecture that he knows it. He gave his word, and he needs to keep it. I want to remind him, it won't go cheap if you try this, Mr. President. I urge the adoption of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be recognized to address you here on the United States floor of the House of Representatives in this most deliberative body that we have and are. I appreciate the comments and the position taken by the gentleman from Arizona ahead of me. He is one who has lived along the border for a lifetime. He deals with the issue every day, every week. He is one of the individuals that I look to to inform me, but also I have taken a real interest in it myself.

Even though I am from the heart of the heartland, from Iowa, Mr. Speaker, I have a great appreciation for the Constitution and the rule of law. Because of that, I have watched as the lawlessness has grown along our border.

I will say that certainly in all of the time that I have been in this Congress and in the years building up to it, and less so in the years prior to that, and I take myself back to 1986 when Ronald Reagan signed the Amnesty Act of 1986 due to the counsel that he had around him, I believed at the time that he would veto that bill because of his reverence for the rule of law would overcome all of the counsel that came from the House and the Senate and the people around him. Well, Reagan relented and signed the bill on the promise that we would legalize roughly a million people in exchange for the enforcement of the law thereafter and that there would never be another amnesty again so long as this country would live.

The 1 million became 3 million, and the amnesties that were added to that in smaller proportions added up to at least 6, perhaps 7, in addition to the 1986 amnesty. And here we are today, having fought off this amnesty these years for more than a decade that I have been directly involved in the immigration policy, and we are on the cusp of it again.

The President of the United States stood up there in front of you where you are, Mr. Speaker, and he gave his State of the Union address here on the floor of the House of Representatives and essentially, and figuratively, he waved his ink pen at us and he said: Congress, you do what I tell you on immigration. I want comprehensive immigration reform. I want you to pass the Senate Gang of Eight amnesty act.

Now I am speaking figuratively, of course, because that is not a direct quote of the President, but it is certainly the message that the President delivered: Do what I tell you to do, or I will use my, in one other setting, his cell phone, or his ink pen, to act in a unilateral-- he didn't say it, but he knows it--unconstitutional fashion.

I can think of another night during the State of the Union address when our President came here and he spoke right in front of you, Mr. Speaker, and he pointed down here to the Supreme Court and he lectured the Supreme Court on what they should do, as if somehow he were article III, somehow he was the man who commanded the Supreme Court of the United States. And the camera was looking over at the Justices as the President lectured them on the Constitution and the rule of law as if the Chief Justice and the Associate Justices of the United States Supreme Court needed to get a lesson from an adjunct professor of the University of Chicago School of Law who taught Constitution law for 10 years in Chicago. He should go to school with every one of those Justices, Mr. Speaker.

And one of them, the television cameras repeated it over and over again until they read the lips, and they interpreted his lips to say ``not true, not true.'' That seat that that camera was focused on has been empty ever since. It has been empty ever since because that Justice, and I suspect a number of other Justices, decided I am not going to listen to that again. I am not going to listen to a President that is out of bounds, a President who believes somehow he can lecture to the judicial branch of government, that he can lecture to the judicial branch of government, that he can stand here at this rostrum as a guest of the House of Representatives and wave his ink pen or finger at us and announce that we shall do in this Congress what he commands or he will do so in a unconstitutional fashion. Essentially, what did the President say? So sue me. The President says: I am going to do what I am going to do. I know it is lawless, it is unconstitutional, so sue me.

So today we passed here on the floor of the House of Representatives a resolution that declares that the House of Representatives has standing to go before the court to command the President to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

We have had multiple hearings before the Judiciary Committee in the House of Representatives. We have had excellent constitutional scholars come forward. There hasn't been one who can carry water for the President's position and hold his own under the scrutiny of the constitutional lawyers and other scholars that we have on the Judiciary Committee who take them apart one by one, argument by argument, piece by piece. And yet the President of the United States persists in asserting that he can be article I, the legislative branch of government, the United States Congress, and he can be article III, the judicial branch of government, and the sole commander of the executive branch, article II.

He is the Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces. He leads from behind. He stepped back and followed the French into Libya, and he waited for the British to go before the House of Commons and vote down David Cameron's initiative to go into Syria, and then the President of the United States, following--and leading from behind is the very definition of following--the President of the United States then offers to Congress, through trial balloons through the press, that he would like to have Congress endorse military action in Syria.

Where is our leader? Where is our Commander in Chief? Well, he is off in the never, never land of advancing administrative amnesty, calling together his smartest, leftist lawyers that he can find, Mr. Speaker, and saying to them: Put your think tanks together. You guys go grab the best brains you can find, attached to the leftist brains you are, and see if you can come up with a strategic plan that I can grant some administrative amnesty to the maximum number of people because, Lord knows, there aren't enough undocumented Democrats in America. We need more of them. We need an endless supply and endless stream of them. And where do they come from? Well, they come across our southern border primarily, although they come in other ways.

And Democrats in here, when the President says to Congress: Thou shall pass the bills that I tell you to pass or I am going to use my pen to unconstitutionally--that is in parentheses, Mr.

Speaker--enact executive edicts that will do what I want done, regardless of whether it has the support and the will of the people or not--we are the support and the will of the people--when the President said that he is going to enact those immigration unconstitutional executive edicts, when the President uttered that, I saw a little less than half of this Chamber rise in a spontaneous standing ovation, enthusiasm for the President's statement.

It reminds me of the one Democrat who said: I am marching for abortion rights because my mother didn't have that opportunity. Who would say that? If your mother didn't have the opportunity to have an abortion, but you want to march so that you wish she would have, that means you wish you had never been born. And this Congress with less than half of it, a bunch of Democrats over here, cheered the President when he said: I am going to usurp your article I legislative authority, and I am going to write legislative law with my pen the way I see fit. And they cheered.

These are the same people that stood here on the floor of the House a year ago last January and took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States so help them God. And they say: Well, we were glad when the President decides he is going to roll over Congress, roll over the House, roll over the Senate, roll over the judicial branch by intimidating them into, some say, a decision on ObamaCare that would not conform with the constitutional directives that they have.

We are in a mess, Mr. Speaker. We are in a mess, and we have the President of the United States poised during August, when this Congress has every year been out of session because our Founding Fathers and our early, early leaders recognized that Washington, D.C., gets to be a hot and humid place in the month of August, and you need a little break to get out of the circle of the Beltway that causes Potomac fever to go back to your districts so you can look real people in the eye and hear from them. That has been the tradition of this country.

Some people complain that Members of Congress actually go home. I would say on the other way around, if we didn't go home we would hear a lot of complaints. It is important that we go back to our districts and go out and hear from the people that we have the honor and privilege to represent, and we will do that, maybe as early as tomorrow, Mr. Speaker.

But the President is poised to follow through on his threat to issue the edict, not a lawful act, not a lawful executive order, an edict, that he would give a lawful status to 5 or 6 million illegal aliens, many of them, maybe most of them, probably not all of them, criminal aliens.

He has issued orders to the Department of Justice to examine how they can get an early release for people who are in our prisons who have been sentenced. That is hundreds of thousands, as many as 400,000 felons that the President would release on the streets of America. He has released criminals to the tune of 36,000-plus out onto the streets. That is in one category. There is another category of tens of thousands more.

And he has opened up our borders by signing the documents and the Morton Memos--not physically signed, he had his subordinates do that-- and the Morton Memos say we are not going to enforce a law against people who didn't commit a felony or aren't guilty of these three mysterious misdemeanors. And they said that if you came into the United States illegally, theoretically through no fault of your own, if you did so before your 18th birthday and you did so before December 31 of 2011, then you get to stay for the duration of this permit that he manufactures lawlessly out of thin air.

And then he manufactures a work permit so that these people can compete for jobs against naturalized and natural born American citizens and green card holders, who likely did it the legal way.

Because he gets a political kick out of this, a political bonus out of this, because he is bringing in undocumented Democrats, and they have a plan to document them so they can vote, we have a situation here where the constitutional underpinnings of America are in crisis mode. The employment in America is at great risk and under great threat, and the security of our border is very weak.

I went down, Mr. Speaker, last weekend, down to the southern tip of Texas, down to the mouth of the Rio Grande, planted a flag right there at the southern tip where the waters of the Rio Grande flow out into the sea, and then followed the river to Brownsville and went through the ports of entry at Brownsville, other facilities in Brownsville, on up into McAllen and to the ports of entry there, to the border patrol centers there, to a resettlement center there, and on up all the way to Laredo.

And from what I saw and what I heard, from our Border Patrol, from our Customs and Border Protection, from the Department of Public Safety in Texas, and others, they are good people, a lot of them with uniforms on, that are doing a good job, doing the best they can with what they have to work with.

We have a lawless order from the President, DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which is more accurately DACA, Deferred Action for Criminal Aliens. DACA has become the magnet that the coyotes have used to advertise throughout the Central American countries, in particular, El Salvador, Honduras, and also Guatemala. People that are already in the United States oftentimes will save up money, maybe borrow money, and send it down to Central America to the tune of, the lowest number that I pick up is $4,000 a head, on up to 5, 6, 7, 8, maybe even $9,000, for the coyotes to transport an illegal alien into the United States.

They are coming into America in the southern tip of Texas and the Rio Grande Valley sector of the border in numbers that work out this way. The unaccompanied alien children, UACs as they are known, and referred to sometimes as ``unaccompanied alien juveniles,'' number this way: this fiscal year, from October 1 to June 15, 57,000 UACs, unaccompanied alien children--57,000. That number has surely grown to over 60,000, probably over 70,000, predicted to go to 90,000 for this fiscal year.

The peak of this thing seems to have passed behind us. We are either in a temporary lull, or we have seen the peak behind us. But, in any case, when we think of numbers in the area of 60,000 unaccompanied alien children coming into the United States, that is only 20 percent of the overall population coming in. So we are at 300,000 or more. But of those roughly 60,000--the number that we surpassed--here is how they break down: 80 percent male, 20 percent female.

The 80 percent male and the 20 percent female also need to take into account that these are not kids that range from age 1 day to 1 day before their 18th birthday, Mr. Speaker. These are unaccompanied alien children that have a demographic breakdown that works like this: 80 percent male, 83 percent that are either the ages of 15, 16, or 17. Once they are 18, they are no longer qualified as UACs--83 percent.

So I do the simple math, Mr. Speaker, and I say: 0.8, 80 percent, times 0.83, 83 percent, 15, 16, or 17 years old--that means that 66.4 percent of these unaccompanied alien ``children'' are young men ages 15, 16, and 17 years old. They come from the most violent countries in the world. The six most violent countries in the world are south of Mexico. It is not Mexico, it is south of Mexico, Mr. Speaker. Eight of the 10 most violent countries in the world are also south of Mexico.

It is a fact, according to the United Nation's data, that of the most violent countries in the world, only Honduras is more violent than the city of Detroit. Yet, there are those in this Congress that are convinced, because the Central American countries have a high degree of violence, that the people are leaving those countries because of the violence, and they are scared and they are running off. Well, if that is so, then one would think they would be running out of Detroit at a pace similar to the pace they are running out of Guatemala and El Salvador and other violent countries down there--probably run a little faster out of Honduras than they are out of the other countries, than they are maybe out of Detroit.

But as I said in a Judiciary Committee hearing, in response to the witness' testimony that was there, I said: If we are going to bring these kids to

the United States because they are afraid where they are, we had better not take them to Detroit because they will be in more danger there, unless they came from Honduras. Those are the facts, and those are the data. Yes, they come from violent countries, and they come from countries that are controlled to a high degree by drug cartels.

But here is what is happening. The families that are sending people here usually have one or more members in the United States now. They may have left their kids back in their home country in Honduras. They will send money down there, they might borrow money. Then usually locally they will hire a coyote that is going to smuggle them up into the United States.

Then the family most often, not 100 percent of the time, but most often, whoever is in custody of this young girl that might be 12 or 13 or 14, or on up to 17 or older, they go down to the local pharmacy, where a prescription is not required, and they buy a monthly supply of contraceptives, birth control bills, and they take it back and they start giving those birth control pills to that girl, and then send her across 2,000 to 2,500 miles of dangerous Central America and Mexico to get on the train of death--it is called ``The Beast,'' and ride that train up as near the Rio Grande as possible. Then that child has to get off of there and make their way to the Rio Grande River, then pay a coyote to get a ride across the river, and then submit themselves to the U.S. authorities.

We went to center after center, we talked to people after people that had been working with these unaccompanied alien children, and we asked them how many of them are sexually assaulted, how many of them are raped? And the answers came back a guess, but a range, a range between 30 percent and 70 percent.

Think of it, Mr. Speaker. Think of having a daughter and living in El Salvador and deciding, I want to send her to her mother in the United States or her aunt in the United States, or being an aunt in El Salvador and you want to send your niece to her mother in the United States. You get a wire that sends you down $5,000 or $6,000, and you go out into the neighborhood and you solicit a coyote, and then you say, I want to send this niece or my daughter up to America, but why don't you wait a few days because I have got to go down and buy some birth control pills and make sure she is ready for the trip, because I am pretty confident she is going to be raped along the way.

That is what is going on, Mr. Speaker. It is not going on now and then; it is going on from a third to 70 percent of the time for the girls, and they told us that the numbers of boys were equivalent to the numbers of girls who were sexually assaulted. That was a question that was repeated over and over again.

So this President has done real damage and destruction to the rule of law. The result of that is America is flooded with illiterate, unskilled people into the job categories where we have the highest available employment, the highest ratios of unemployment. The double- digit unemployment exists in the lowest-skilled jobs. There is no metric out there that suggests that we should be bringing more unskilled people in, more people who are illiterate in their own language into America, thinking somehow that that is work that Americans won't do.

Nuts. There is no work that Americans won't do. There has been no work that I won't do. I have done some of the toughest, nastiest, most difficulty, and some of the dangerous jobs that the country has to offer, and I haven't come close to doing the jobs that the United States Marine Corps does on a regular basis.

What is the most dangerous job that we ask an American to do? How about rooting terrorists out of places like Fallujah? How about taking on radical al Qaeda extremists in places like Afghanistan?

When the Marine Corps goes into Fallujah for the first or second battle, and we have seen what has happened since then, what do they get paid to put their lives on the line? If you figure it at 40 hours a week, something like $8.49 an hour, Mr. Speaker. That is back then when I calculated it, when we had operations going on then. If you can pay a United States marine $8.49 an hour to lock and load and go into a place like Fallujah, you can't convince me that there is work that Americans won't do, especially if it pays an appropriate wage and we respect the work that gets done.

So we have a President who has decided he is going to defy the rule of law, and he is going to manufacture law as he goes and create work permits out of thin air.

When we see this calamity of the huge hole in our southern border, primarily at McAllen, Texas, the House of Representatives decides it wants to overreact to the President of the United States, and since they are afraid that they will somehow get the blame if nothing gets done in the month of August, they decided to bring a piece of legislation here to the floor.

This piece of legislation was written by a staff person that was once that of John McCain, and we know what he has brought for immigration policy. It has been very troubling to me to deal with the legislation that he has supported, but I have this in my hand here on the floor, Mr. Speaker.

It doesn't do what it is advertised to do. It doesn't do what needs to be done, but it grants this. If there is an unaccompanied alien child, here are the consequences for failure to appear to a hearing:

Any alien who fails to appear at a proceeding required

under this section, shall be ordered removed in absentia if

the government establishes by a preponderance of the evidence

that the alien was at fault for their absence from the

proceedings.

No evidence can be admitted into that proceeding after the fact, and it can't be admitted if they don't anticipate that there is not going to be an appearance of the alien, so that means the government has to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that it was the alien's fault they didn't show up.

The only way I know that you can do that is if you have a video camera on them, and they are sitting on the couch, Mr. Speaker. This is a wide open hole that grants a pass under that provision. Then it says:

In General--at the conclusion of a proceeding under this

section, the immigration judge shall determine whether an

unaccompanied alien child is likely to be admissible to the

United States.

They get a new hearing under a new section created, which is 235, and if the preponderance of the evidence indicates that they might receive asylum and if they think they are likely to receive asylum in a separate category, then 50 percent plus 1 is preponderance--likely is 50 percent plus 1. Fifty percent of 50 percent is 25 percent, plus one, are the odds that they need to claim in order to receive a hearing for asylum.

So if you have got a one in four shot at it, Mr. Speaker, you are going to get a hearing for asylum. Then you are going to get an asylum hearing, and then if you are turned down at the asylum hearing, you get to go to a removal hearing. That is three bites at the apple. They are all renewable; times two, that is six different bites at the apple.

No such thing exists for Mexican unaccompanied alien children. The determination is made under the Wilberforce law of 2008 by the Border Patrol whether or not they go back to Mexico.

They purport that this bill treats the other than Mexican unaccompanied alien children the same as the existing law treats unaccompanied alien Mexican children. Mr. Speaker, if it does, there is language in here that then diminishes our ability to send the Mexican kids back. That is what we have. We have a bill that has been whipped to be something that it is not.

I offered an amendment to the Rules Committee tonight. There was a long discussion and debate over it, Mr. Speaker, but here is what we have: my amendment said that we have got to fix the 2008 William Wilberforce language.

By the way, no Republican voted for that, not one. It was introduced on December 9, 2008. It was taken up by a unanimous consent request after everybody left town on December 10, 2008. It was passed by voice in the House, sent to the Senate. The Senate caught the lateral and passed it by voice to the President.

We didn't see that bill. It became a component of what they have utilized as an open door; coupling the 2008 bill

with an expansive reading of the asylum language and the President's DACA language is what is bringing these tens of thousands of unaccompanied alien minors here, which are only 20 percent of the overall group that are coming.

There are also family units--usually, mothers with a child or children. There are individual males coming in, in significant numbers. I have said that we have imported at least 40,000 15-year-old, 16-year- old, and 17-year-old boys--prime gang recruitment age--and that doesn't give you the data on those that are 18, 19, 20, 25 to 31; and those are just the ones that are covered under DACA.

I offered an amendment that would have cut off all funding to DACA. It mirrors the Cruz-Blackburn language. It is good language, and it should be part of this bill. It is not, by the information I have, Mr. Speaker.

There is a 2008 fix that I wrote over a month ago that needs to be part of this bill. It is not, by the report I am getting from the Rules Committee, Mr. Speaker. I don't know that there was even a vote on it up in the Rules Committee.

There is asylum language that has been offered by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte, that fixes some of the expansive utilization of asylum that is allowing for people to be distributed all over the United States at taxpayers' expense. That is not part of this bill, Mr. Speaker.

We don't have a deliberative process in this Congress because they are not going to allow a legitimate vote, and the language that is out here is bad.

Mr. Speaker, I will vote ``no'' on this bill that has come before us, and I am going to have to consider what I do on the rule, but if this House sends a message to support cutting off all funding to enforce or implement DACA, that will be constructive because it will say to the President: these are the Republicans that have at least a chance of standing up against you if you decide that you are going to function in a lawless, unconstitutional manner in the month of August--or any other month--with regard to this granting any expansion of the lawlessness that we have seen today.

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

I thank the gentleman for yielding and for leading on this Special Order to have this discussion about the sovereignty and the safety and the protection of Israel, our strongest ally in the Middle East, the place where there is a rule of law, where there are property rights, where they are available to everyone that is an Israel citizen, whether they happen to be of Arabic descent, whether they happen to be of Jewish descent, or any other descent.

The allies that Israel have been deserve on our side that similar kind of support, in fact, a stronger support.

There have been so many messages that have been sent from this administration to the contrary, we need to be standing on the floor of the House of Representatives sending a message to Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the leaders that are there, the members of the Israel Defense Forces: We stand with you, Israel. Any Nation that is surrounded by enemies, that is infiltrated by tunnels that are dug through to be able to infiltrate and kill innocent people on the streets of Israel, kidnap them, celebrate that, any government that is formed for the purposes of eradicating Israel from the face of the Earth--and, Mr. Speaker, I would point out that this new government that was formed among the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian unity government, includes Hamas terrorist leaders in the cabinet.

Finally, the political arm of Hamas, which always was the Palestinian Authority, has openly now embraced Hamas itself. This Congress and the administration itself and the American people need to understand that there is a Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006 which prohibits the U.S. from sending foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority government. That includes Hamas terrorists. It says that we are not going to fund any terrorist organizations, and Hamas has been declared a terrorist organization.

We are watching now as the operations that were so utterly necessary, the Israel Defense Forces going into Gaza, losing Israeli soldiers, and, yes, they have to defend them since thousands of rockets have been fired into Israel. Living under that threat of a people that outside your borders would raise their children to carry suicide vests, to kill themselves to try to kill Israelis, to teach the things that they teach to the young people in that culture and in that climate, that hatred is on one side of that border of Gaza, it is not on both sides. It is on the Gaza side, it is in the West Bank, and it is all around Israel, it is not from within Israel out.

I am amazed at how forgiving they are, how patient they are, how tolerant they are, how they have suffered the way they have, and they waited until it absolutely had to be before the order was given to go in and eradicate the tunnels and to try to take out some of the rocket locations. These rockets are in schools around children. They are using human shields of the children. They are hoping--I guess I can't quite say hoping--but willing to accept the casualties of children, because that is a media message to the world.

This is an appalling set of neighbors that Israel has. They want to live in peace. They have a right to live in peace. We stand with Israel. Israel stands to defend itself. We need to make sure that they have the resources to do so and the moral support from the United States.

I would point out also the statement that was made by Ari Shavit in the newspaper in Israel. He said of Secretary Kerry's latest attempt for a cease-fire over the weekend that ``very senior officials in Jerusalem described the proposal that Kerry put on the table as a strategic terrorist attack.''

That is not a very strong message, I would say, Mr. Speaker. It is not a very strong message representing the policy of the United States coming from our Secretary of State. Our policy is we stand with the Israeli people. We stand for their self-defense.

I thank the gentleman for setting up this Special Order tonight.

Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, this great deliberative body that we are in. We have had a lot of debates and discussions here on the floor over the time that I have had the privilege to serve Americans and Iowans in the Fourth District of Iowa.

Coming into this year, early in the year--in late January--we held a conference in Cambridge, Maryland, a conference to get together and discuss our best legislative strategy for this calendar year, which is the balance of the 113th Congress that we are in, Mr. Speaker. The discussion, invariably, came around to the immigration issue. Now, the immigration issue is a political issue. It is, perhaps, the most complex issue that we have dealt with in the time that I have been here in Congress. It has implications and ramifications that go well beyond things that seem to be simplistic on their face.

In that discussion, it became very clear that House Republicans, at least, didn't want to move on anything that would give the opportunity by the majority leader in the Senate--Senator Harry Reid--and those who advocated for the Senate Gang of Eight bill to be able to attach any of that language on any bill that might emerge from the House. The consensus clearly--and it was 3 or 4-1, Mr. Speaker--was not to take up the immigration issue this year because the very sovereignty of the United States was put at risk, and there was no upside. The only beneficiaries out of it would be people who are unlawfully present in the United States, the people who are hiring cheap labor and profiting from that cheap labor, and the people who are on the other side of the aisle in the political party that recognizes that this country has 11 or more million people in it who are undocumented Democrats. They would like that number to be larger, and they would like to then document those Democrats so that they can be voting Democrats. I understand the motive, I believe, of the people on the other side of the aisle.

Without assigning a motive to the President of the United States, Mr. Speaker, it appears to me that the policies that he has advocated for bring in millions of people who are unlawful to the United States, who have an unlawful presence. I will say that his DACA policy--his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals is what he names it, and what I declare it to be is the Deferred Action for Criminal Aliens--has turned into a huge magnet. It is a magnet that has been attracting people from south of the border for a long time. The President issued the order in June of 2012.

It is an unconstitutional order, in my opinion. It is a considered constitutional opinion, Mr. Speaker, and I have put my own personal capital on the line to assert such points in the past and have prevailed. I do understand this ``separation of powers'' issue and this constitutional issue. When the Congress establishes immigration law, part of that law says that Federal immigration enforcement officers, when they encounter someone who is unlawfully present in the United States, have an obligation. The language is they ``shall'' place him in removal proceedings. Yet the President has issued an order that commands the Federal officers, including the ICE agents, to violate the law or to, say, ignore the law, which is the equivalent of violating the law, Mr. Speaker. This is what we are up against.

We have a President who taught constitutional law for 10 years at the University of Chicago's school of law as an adjunct professor--10 years of teaching the Constitution and all of these years to contemplate his oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, so help him God, and to take care--this is linked to the President's oath. It is not exactly the verbiage, but it is exactly the language in our Constitution that he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Instead, it appears that he has misinterpreted the words ``faithfully executed,'' and he has faithfully killed off the law. It didn't mean when written in the Constitution, ``faithfully executed,'' to kill off the law. What it meant was carry out the law, implement the law, enforce the law. That is what ``faithfully execute'' means. You would think that any adjunct professor, especially a constitutional law professor, would know that, Mr. Speaker, and I know that he does. Yet he still issued the DACA language. He still issued the Morton Memos.

When Janet Napolitano, then the Secretary of Homeland Security, came before the Judiciary Committee to testify on this DACA language and on the Morton Memos, she repeated many times in her testimony the language that is in the memo that came out, which is on an individual basis only. They created with the Morton Memos four different classes of people, Mr. Speaker, and if people came into the United States of America before their 18th birthdays--or successfully alleged that they did--and if they arrived here before December 31 of 2011, which conforms with the Senate Gang of Eight language, I might add, then they would be granted temporary legal status for 2 years in this country, and they were granted work permits--manufactured out of thin air. I say ``out of thin air'' because it is unconstitutional for the President to manufacture immigration law. The Constitution reserves immigration law for the United States Congress, not for the President of the United States.

In fact, there is a reason that we are article I. The Congress is article I because we are the most important of the three branches of government. They wanted the voice of the people to set the policy for America, and they wanted the President to carry it out. By the way, the President has lectured to that effect over here at a high school not very far from us. I believe the date was March 28 of 2011.

I know it was March 28 when they asked him: Why don't you pass the DREAM Act by executive order or executive edict?

The President said to them: You have been studying the Constitution. You are smart people. You know that Congress' job is to pass the laws, and my job is to enforce the laws, and the judiciary branch's job is to interpret the laws.

It was a very clean and concise analysis of the three branches of government. The President delivered that in a lecture on March 28, 2011. By June of 2012--I think that is how those dates worked out--the President had already gone back on the lecture he had given to the high school students and had decided that he could, after all, manufacture immigration law out of thin air. It is lawless to do that. The law doesn't allow him to do that. The supreme law

of the land doesn't allow him to do that, but he pulled it off anyway.

What is the restraint, Mr. Speaker? What is the restraint that this Congress has?

These Members of Congress go home, and their constituents stand up in a town hall meeting, and they say: Restrain this President. Put the immigration law back in order. Enforce the law. Do not let this President defy the law or change the law.

They believe somehow that this Congress has the tools to restrain a President who has so little respect for the language that we have passed into law here in this Congress. Now, there is no way to get around certain pieces of language. There is no way to get around it. He will go around everything that there is a way around. He has checked the fences constantly--he has got minions of lawyers who are doing that--but he gets to a certain place where the law doesn't allow it any longer.

For example, the work component of welfare to work only existed within TANF, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The President decided he would manufacture waivers so that the people who were collecting TANF benefits didn't have to work. The work requirement was suspended even though that language was written so that then-President Clinton couldn't suspend the work component of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. That was a big part of welfare reform; yet President Obama simply granted waivers and suspended the work component, so now there is no longer a work component that is effective in TANF.

That is not lawful. That is not constitutional. You have to litigate this thing through the courts to no end, and to get an answer back out of the courts before the President goes off to his never-never land of perpetual golfing outings is very, very difficult to do. The longer that we are in court, the more Federal judges are appointed by this President who are selected to agree with him. That is just Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the work component.

Also, as to No Child Left Behind, waiver, waiver, waiver to the point where No Child Left Behind no longer has anything left. It has all been left behind, and the President has nullified it by executive edict even though it was a big piece of legislation that was passed in this Congress in a bipartisan way, negotiated and supported by then-Senator Teddy Kennedy and signed by President George Bush. This reflected at the time the will of the people.

Now, I am not taking any position, Mr. Speaker, that I support this, but I am suggesting this: the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. When Congress passes a law and a President signs the law, that is the law, and any subsequent President has an obligation to enforce that law and to carry it out unless and until the Congress should amend it. If the President should want to see the Congress repeal or amend a law, it is pretty easy for the President to find a Member of the House of Representatives to introduce a piece of legislation that reflects the wish and, perhaps, the will of the President. So there is a means to change it in the same way that there is a means to amend this Constitution that I carry in my jacket pocket each day.

This Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It guides us, and there is a provision to amend it. If we don't like the policy that results from this Constitution--the base document or the various amendments that are attached to it now after this course of history--we can amend the Constitution. We can bring it before the House and the Senate with a two-thirds vote, and we can message it to the States in its having been approved by the House and the Senate, and the States can set about ratifying an amendment to the Constitution.

Until then, I would say this, Mr. Speaker, to the President of the United States and to all who aspire to be President, to all who aspire to serve in the United States House, in the United States Senate, or in any capacity of trust with the people: understand that this is the supreme law of the land. You are bound by it until such time as it might be amended. You cannot redefine it, and you cannot wish it away, and you cannot ignore it. You cannot violate this supreme law of the land. It is the framework upon which all of our laws are written. It is an important, important document that sets about and defines the separation of powers--the legislative branch, the executive branch, and the judicial branch of government.

We have a President who has gone beyond the imagination of our Founding Fathers. He has gone beyond the fears that our Founding Fathers used when they drafted such a beautiful document, which has survived in pretty good health for these centuries that we have had it. The President has now gone to a place where he decides whether he is going to enforce a law or not, and he has the audacity to step up and just seek to change the law by press conference. He did this on ObamaCare. He stood out in the Rose Garden with the Great Seal of the United States, and he said he was now going to make an accommodation to the religious organizations in the country. Rather than requiring them to do what the rules of ObamaCare were written to require them to do, he was now going to require the insurance companies to do that with no charge--the insurance companies, no charge.

Now, I went back and checked, checked the law, ObamaCare. I checked all the rules that had been written. I checked to see if they had amended the rule in any way, if there had been a public comment period, if they followed the Administrative Procedures Act. Nothing. There is not an I dotted differently; there is not a T crossed differently.

The insurance companies stepped up to do what the President had commanded them to do by voice, verbally, in a press conference. That is not law. That is not a republic. That doesn't result even in a civilization.

Now we have this tragedy going on on the southern border that is a result of the President deciding that he could suspend law and decide not to enforce the law, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I would ask how much time I have remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I will try to conform my comments into that time period.

Mr. Speaker, the immigration issue has emerged now as the number one topic in front of the American people again. I had hoped that we had set it aside. I had hoped that we would go through this year and that we would be focusing on the things that are so important to us.

This is a topic that has emerged because of the human trafficking and the human suffering that is taking place, and I would like to deliver a report on what I have seen just over this past weekend and how it fits in with some of the other things I have been involved in, especially on our border.

As I listened to the dialogue emerge and I heard ideas emerging in our conference, it was important that I go down to the border and take a fresh look at the most porous component of our border, where they have the most illegal crossings along our 2,000-mile border with Mexico. This a was portion of the border that I had not traveled in the past.

When I add up the places that I have traveled for border inspection, it covers, I believe, every mile of California and Arizona and New Mexico in one fashion or another, whether it is by air or whether it is on the ground. Some of those times it is sitting down there at night listening and waiting for people to come across the border. I have been involved in the interdiction of illegal drugs. I have unloaded drugs out of the false beds of trucks and been there as part of the--I will say an observer in the team that is interdicting illegal aliens who are drug smugglers, who are MS-13.

That carries me on over into the Texas border where I have done several segments of it, but I had not been to the southern tip of Texas. I hadn't been to McAllen. I hadn't been to Brownsville and the region down there. So, since that is the most porous section now--or, I should say, the highest trafficking section now--I headed down that way last Friday night and arrived there relatively late Friday evening.

I got up early in the morning and went out to the mouth of the Rio Grande River. Of course the Rio Grande

River is the dividing line through there between the United States and Mexico, between Texas and Mexico. There is a road that leads out to the gulf, and once you get out to the gulf, you can take about a 3-mile drive down the beach to the south to get to the outlet of the Rio Grande River.

So we drove down that 3 miles of sandy beach and down to the mouth of the Rio Grande River to observe that location where I would say, once we are forced into and once this Congress concludes that we should build a fence, a wall, and a fence on our southern border, I wanted to go to the place where you would set the furthest, most easterly cornerpost in order to start building the fence, the wall, and the fence. That is near the mouth of the Rio Grande River.

I went there, looked at that, set a flag there to locate the perimeter of the United States of America, observed as people from Mexico were waiting around out around the outlet of the Rio Grande River and easily can wade across that into the United States, as they can in many places along the river up and down the Rio Grande.

From there, I traveled back again and into Brownsville, where we visited three ports of entry in Brownsville and also a not-for-profit entity that was working under the auspices of Health and Human Services that was in the business of housing unaccompanied alien children until such time as they were relocated someplace into the United States.

From there, we traveled then to McAllen, where we received a briefing at the sector center, the border patrol sector, McAllen sector center, in a conference room with good people at the table; then from there, out into the detention area where they are incarcerating individuals that they are interdicting along the border.

Those numbers have diminished substantially over the last 3 to 4 weeks, Mr. Speaker, into some number that I recognize to be a little bit less than half of the peak amount that were pouring through into the United States illegally.

Then from there, we went into the holding facilities. We were freely able to walk through and look at everything that was there. Then we went over to a location of a large building that the Border Patrol had retrofitted in a very fast and, looked to me, like a very efficient setup turnaround to be prepared to handle a lot of unaccompanied alien children who were in a huge building with dividing segments in there, all of it air-conditioned, with Health and Human Services workers there playing barefoot soccer indoors in air-conditioning, which I am sure was a new experience for those kids that were there.

From there, we went out for a briefing with the Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers to get a different perspective, a perspective from the State and the State officials, the law enforcement officers that are eyes-on, hands-on, and they are engaged and they are working hand-in-glove with the Border Patrol, Customs, Border Protection, and ICE.

I have been impressed with our professional officers all the way along the way. Everybody in a uniform that I encountered was a good, solid, squared-away, professional individual that input good information to us.

After the Texas Department of Public Safety and Texas Rangers gave us their briefing, which lasted nearly 2 hours, then we went on out and rode with a Department of Public Safety officer who took us out to observe the night operations of helicopter surveillance overhead and the spotlights from the helicopters and the other devices that they have that help them locate people that are sneaking into America, whether they are being trafficked as human or whether they are drug trafficking going in.

Then, the next morning, we picked up and began to poke our way upstream towards Laredo. Well, first I should mention that I went to church at Sacred Heart Church there in McAllen, Texas, a Spanish mass, and went over next door to the parish center and the church parking lot where they have converted that into a relief center where they are processing people through and giving them a shower if they need it, medication if they need it, a light meal, and a bag of goodies to travel with before they go to the bus station to be bused up into the United States.

From that location, then we went out to a park where it has been in the national news consistently. The name of the park starts with the letter A. I can't repeat it from memory, Mr. Speaker, but there we saw many, many enforcement officers. We saw Border Patrol. We saw county sheriffs, a constable, and we also saw unmarked undercover officers that were there. They had the park pretty well covered.

There were a lot of people, a lot of Mexicans on the other side of the river who were playing in the water in the river, and jet skis were going back and forth. We know those jets ski are often used to ferry people across to the United States. It was unlikely for that to happen there that day because there was so much cover from law enforcement, but they were posted so consistently along that they did provide a deterrent.

So from there, we poked our way up the river to a small town. ``Ramos'' is pretty close to the spelling of it. It is a small. It is a short-lettered town, a relatively small town and an old town.

There, as we pulled up to the port of entry and took a look across the bridge into Mexico, there was an officer there that gave us a piece of information which is: If you are here from the United States Congress, thank you. Thank you for coming to see what is going on. If you want to see illegals crossing into the United States, take a right down there and drive up along that ridge, and there will be a place there where you can look out over the river. And if you sit there and wait an hour or so, you will see people crossing the river into the United States.

So we did pull up there and met with a couple of police officers, and then the Border Patrol came along. While we were there waiting, we were able to watch on the other side of the river, where a team of two on the Mexico side inflated a relatively large inflatable raft, larger than I expected at least. About the size of a pool table would be my guess.

They loaded a female, it turned out to be a pregnant female, into this raft. And you could watch as they just, late afternoon, roughly 4 or 4:30, just brazenly started across the river and ran that raft right on over into the United States side where they go out of sight because of the brush. They came directly over across the river.

The Border Patrol knew where they were. They would watch them. The city police could watch them.

That illegal immigrant that came into America in that raft, was helped onto the shore by one of the two coyotes that were in the raft, and was handed the two bags of her personal items that she had with her. The coyote who got off on the shore got back in the raft, and they pulled away from the shore and went back to Mexico.

The Border Patrol didn't get there in time to interdict the raft. They didn't seem to be as animated as I thought they would, which told me that it is a regular experience, not an irregular experience.

They did interdict the illegal, who appeared to be pregnant, and likely came over to the United States to claim credible fear and asylum. And of course, if she has the baby here, that baby will be an American citizen. As soon as that baby is of age, that child can then start the reunification process to bring all of its family over here into the United States.

That is what is going on on the border. And the officers that we were with while that happened said that they believe that the distraction that was created by bringing her over was a distraction that likely gave them an opportunity to smuggle a significant amount of illegal drugs across the river, probably upstream a ways, just out of sight of where we were and at a place where you can't drive.

That was, I think, the most significant observation that we had, to see that brazen crossing of the river. They knew the Border Patrol was watching them. They knew the city police were watching them. They could see us up there, and that didn't deter them. They went across the river anyway and dropped her off and skedaddled back to the Mexican side.

We even have video of them deflating the raft and folding it up and putting it in their vehicle. So surveillance would put a license number on that vehicle,

and it should be traceable, and it should be easy enough to identify the people that are doing this. But we don't have the level of cooperation across the river in Mexico, according to the questions that I asked. We have a border that is not completely open, but it is a long, long ways from being closed, Mr. Speaker.

From there, we went on up the river and followed the border clear on into Laredo, where we took a tour from Customs and Border Protection in that very busy Laredo crossing there at Laredo, of the land freight, the semitrailers, as I took it, that are coming into the United States or leaving the United States. Forty-six percent of them in the southwest border come through Laredo. It is a huge crossing. The people there are professional. They use new technology to the extent that they can. There is just a lot of traffic.

As I look at this overall policy, we also visited with or were able to observe the processing of people who are, let's say, interdicted and apprehended for illegal entry into the United States. Here is what it comes down to, Mr. Speaker, along these lines:

The high number of unaccompanied alien children has been a problem that we have not encountered anywhere near to this magnitude before. There was a situation that about 10 to 11 percent used to be unaccompanied alien children. That number now has jumped up to 20 percent. At times, it runs substantially more than that.

When you have an unaccompanied alien child that comes into the United States, they are often smuggled across Mexico by a coyote.

So think of this, Mr. Speaker. A girl or a boy in a family--and the boys are 80 percent, and the girls are 20 percent of the overall universe that are coming into the United States--that little boy or that little girl, the family will come up with a number that is in the area of $6,000 each. The coyote often lives in the same neighborhood. He will gather together a group as large as he thinks he can manage, and they will pay him his $6,000 per child, and then they start about transporting these unaccompanied alien children who are accompanied by--actually accompanied by--a coyote. So they are accompanied.

It is 2,500 miles, they tell me, from El Salvador up to Brownsville. It is about 2,000 miles of Mexico altogether and about 500 miles through the jungle of El Salvador into Mexico.

So let's just say 2,000 miles. They will get on the train, called The Train of Death, The Beast, and ride on top of the train. They will perhaps get in the cars of the train, hang on to the sides of the train, and ride that train on up towards the United States.

We have been advised here in this Congress by people who have been on the ground before I arrived there that as many as 100 percent of the girls that are being transported are given birth control because the anticipation that they will be subjected to rape is so high that they want to be as sure as they can that even though they think that she will be raped, they don't want her pregnant with the product of rape. So they will go to the local pharmacy, where it doesn't require a prescription in those countries, and buy birth control pills and start their daughter on this--their 12-year-old daughter, their 13-year-old daughter their 14-, 15-, 16- or 17-year-old daughter, put her on birth control pills and put her on the train, all the while having an understanding that there was a high risk that she would be raped.

And the data that we got, the judgment that we got from the people that are taking care of these unaccompanied alien children, gave us these numbers: The lowest number they gave us on those that were raped on the way up was one-third. The highest number they gave was 70 percent. In one place, they told us that it makes no difference, boys or girls; they are victimized in the same proportion. Boys are victimized in the same proportion as the girls. I am not convinced that that is a reliable response, but it was repeated several times back to us. But I am convinced that it is a reliable response on the girls.

What kind of compassion is it, Mr. Speaker, that supports a policy, that is attracted by DACA, that would cause a family member--whether it is a mother and a father in, say, Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras, or an aunt and uncle, a grandparent, to go down to the pharmacy and buy birth control pills and bring them back and start the prescription of the birth control pills to your 12-year-old daughter, your 12-year-old granddaughter, your 12-year-old niece--13, 14, 15--and then hand her over to a coyote who is, by definition, a human trafficker and put her out there in the custody of the coyote. And she ends up on a bus. She ends up on a truck. She ends up on a train. She ends up raped. And if she gets to the United States alive, traumatized, she has still got to get across the river. She still has to get into the United States. And maybe she goes across on a boat. Maybe she goes across on a jet ski. Maybe the water is low and she is able to get across. Right now, it is too deep in that area for that to happen.

Swimming is a chance, but sometimes they drown. Sometimes they pick up sexually transmitted diseases. Sometimes they are killed along the way. Many, many, many times they are raped.

This is the product of DACA. This is the product of a feckless policy that is also a lawless policy, a policy that violates the existing law that says, you shall place them into removal proceedings. But the President has ordered, you shall not do so. He has ordered ICE to violate the law. And the result of that is, an advertisement, a magnet that goes down into Central America, that reminds them, if you can get to the United States, you get to stay. And especially if you send your children up, and they are unaccompanied by a family member or an adult. But there are also a good number of children who come with adults.

And they told us that often, it is a mother with one, two, or three children who has come all the way across Mexico through drug cartel land on the train of death, on the beast, or riding in some other form of transportation to arrive at the United States.

So here is what happens: if they live, if they get here, even though they are traumatized and they may have disease--although I didn't find evidence of the magnitude of the incidence of the disease that I had been advised that there was--if they get here, and they are turning themselves over to the Border Patrol or surrendering to the first person they find--you might be walking along, watching birds along the Rio Grande river and have one or multiple illegals come out of the brush and surrender to you. They want to turn themselves over to the United States, especially the women and especially the children, but not so much the men.

And then what happens is, they are picked up by the Border Patrol. They are taken down to the station. They are identified as much as they can. A lot of them do have birth certificates on them. A lot of them have a phone number of them of some family member, some friend, some destination they want to go to in America. They are processed. They are put into a holding cell, along with--sometimes it is a whole mix of different ages, men and women, nursing mothers, little kids. They might all be put in there together while they identify them, before they sort them. And then they will be sorted out in these holding cells with young girls there, older girls here, mothers with babies here, and mothers with babies and kids here, adult males here, young males here. That mix is there.

Here is what this also comes to: If you look at the unaccompanied alien children that come into the United States, this number that is roughly 20 percent of the population of those that are interdicted now, here is the data from the Health and Human Services Web site, Office of Refugee Resettlement: it is 80 percent male. These are the unaccompanied alien children. So they are under the age of 18, up to and including 17. They are 80 percent male, and they are 83 percent older than 14, younger than 18. That means they are 15, 16, and 17 years old, Mr. Speaker. That is a high percentage in that range.

So here is how you calculate this. And that is, if you take 0.8, the 80 percent for male, and you multiply it by the percentage that are older teenagers--that is 83 percent that are 15, 16, and 17--multiply those two together, and you get 64 percent, which is right in that two- thirds category.

We have already crossed the line of more than 57,000 unaccompanied alien

children who are interdicted down on the southern border, and that happened on June 15. So now we have got another month and a couple of weeks that have been racked up. We are easily over 60,000.

But here is a number to think about, Mr. Speaker: 60,000 unaccompanied alien children. And out of that 60,000, two-thirds of them are males of prime gang recruitment age. So that means that of the 60,000, 40,000 are right there for MS-13 to recruit or right there for the Gulf Cartel to recruit, right there to be part of those who go into the crime syndicates, as opposed to those who might have had an opportunity and might have had a different approach if they were not exposed to this kind of life.

You can go to any country in the world and identify the most dangerous demographic in any population and it is going to be young males. Young males cause the most trouble. They are the most violent. They commit the most crimes, whether they are sexual assault crimes or whether it is homicide, whether it is assault, whether it is theft, that comes out of that universe of young males.

You could go to a place where I think there is a low crime rate--and I haven't looked this up. I just don't hear of anything coming out of Iceland. So you could go to Iceland and pick the Icelandic boys that are 15, 16, and 17 years old. They are going to be the prime age where they are committing crimes--that and older, the 18 to 25 to 30 to 32, and then it starts to taper off again.

This is the universe that is coming out of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, the high gang recruitment age from some of the most violent countries in the world. As a matter of fact, the six most violent countries in the world with the highest homicide rates are south of Mexico. Eight of the top 10 countries with the highest homicide rates in the world are south of Mexico. We are bringing in young males to the tune of two-thirds of those that are coming across as unaccompanied alien children, two-thirds of them--40,000 of 60,000 at least since the beginning of this fiscal year, 15, 16, and 17 years old.

Now, there is one side of this that says, have compassion. They are only kids. There is another side that says, we should have some compassion for the American people. The American people are paying a price. They will pay a price in blood for these acts of this President. And the policy that they have is, they are just scattering them across the country. They will put them in a holding place until they can process them. Health and Human Services takes them into their custody. If they have a phone number in their pocket, they will call that phone number and say, can you send us a bus ticket? If you send us a bus ticket, we will put this person on the bus and send them to where you want them to go.

There is not a very reliable method of identifying any background checks on the people that are--let's say they are the recipients of the unaccompanied alien children that are here, those 17-year-old potential gang recruits. They could be crack houses. They could be meth houses. They could be cat houses. They could be stash houses. It could be an MS-13 headquarters. They get delivered there. They get put on a bus to get sent there. Sometimes they get escorted there. Sometimes Customs and Border Protection puts them in a car and drives them across the State of Texas to another location.

And when they do that, they have got two officers there. Sometimes those two officers are flying as few as one--they like to get a few more but as few as one of these individuals--to a place like Los Angeles from Laredo.

Laredo to Los Angeles, two Federal officers escorting a 14-, 15-, 16- , 17-year-old to Los Angeles. We are ending up with two round-trip plane tickets--often three round-trip plane tickets--and tie in a couple of hotel rooms to deliver and complete the crime.

And what has happened is--I read a case that was decided in December of 2013. So, December of last year, Mr. Speaker, and it was a Federal judge who had to rule on a case of human trafficking, human smuggling prosecution. And what had happened was, there was a mother in Virginia, an illegal alien mother who had unlawfully entered the United States and was living illegally in Virginia, who had collected some money and sent that off to a coyote in El Salvador. It might have been Guatemala, but I believe it was El Salvador. And she paid the human smuggler to smuggle her 10-year-old daughter from El Salvador to Virginia.

And so as the human smuggler, the coyote, smuggled the 10-year-old girl across the southern border to the United States, they were interdicted by the Border Patrol. And they have brought charges against the coyote, the human smuggler. And those were the Federal charges that the judge wrote his opinion on.

As he wrote in this opinion, and I will summarize, he said: This is the fourth case I have had in as many weeks of ICE--this child was turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE had taken this child and delivered her to the illegal household of her biological mother in Virginia. That was the objective of the crime in the first place, to get her daughter illegally delivered into the illegal mother's household in the illegal household in Virginia. And as the coyote was interdicted with the 10-year-old at the border, and the Border Patrol caught them up and processed them over into ICE, and they filed charges for human trafficking, when the smuggler came across in front of the judge, he said: This is the fourth case that I have had in as many weeks, and it is appalling that the Federal Government--in this case, ICE--would complete the crime. Take the 10-year-old daughter and deliver her another 1,000 miles across America into the arms of her illegal mother, into an illegal household.

Now, that sounds like there are four cases that are an anomaly, Mr. Speaker. But those four cases, I wish they were an anomaly. They are not. That is the standard today. And it is happening--not four times, not 40 times, not 400 times--thousands and thousands of times, this Federal Government is completing the crime of unlawful entry into the United States.

So if you are under 18--or you say you are under 18--and you come into America with your birth certificate and a phone number of where you would like to be delivered, the process becomes, you get processed. If you are under 14, they don't even take your fingerprints. Neither do they take a photograph that is attached to your identification to identify you by. So we don't know who these kids are.

If they have a phone number, Border Patrol will process them. They try to get them turned over to Health and Human Services within 72 hours, and when there is a backlog, it took longer. They were doing the best they could to comply with the law.

Health and Human Services hired nongovernment contractors to house, process, deliver, and distribute, and so this unaccompanied alien child then--no fingerprints, no pictures, but a shower, food, and a fresh set of clothes, and they will send that unaccompanied alien child then anywhere in America that they request to go.

Sometimes, they will get a bus ticket that is sent--that is paid for by the recipient household, and sometimes, they don't. They tell us they try not to have to buy those tickets out of your tax dollars, Mr. Speaker, but we know that is going on.

It is a welcome mat--it is a welcoming party for people that come into America, and by the way, if they have a birth certificate, Border Patrol then will take their identifying documents, stick them in a file, and give them a piece of paper that is printed off on a Border Patrol printer, the size of this piece of typing paper and the same texture.

It is a permission slip, or permiso, as they are calling it, that allows that illegal alien to stay in the United States, and they are supposed to promise that they are going to appear for a hearing.

Well, we know that not very many of them do appear for hearings, but if they do, they have already been coached to say that they have a credible fear of being persecuted in their home country for whatever reason. They make the argument that they have this credible fear, and then they are allowed to stay in America, essentially, as asylees.

This happens in a very, very high percentage of them, whether they are

unaccompanied alien children--that is the highest percent that gets to stay. Mothers with children is the next highest percent that gets to stay.

When people are leaving the countries in Central America, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras in massive numbers by the thousands and nobody shows up having been deported to those countries, then what happens is they understand that the promises are true, your odds of being deported are now down to this--now, it is well less than 1 percent, and the promise of America will take care of you, America will give you your heat subsidy, your rent subsidy, your housing, your food stamps, your Obama phone, your ObamaCare, and now, the President wants to give you your lawyer.

All of that is part of the promise. Until we send people back, they are going to keep coming. The common denominator message that we received over and over again, Mr. Speaker, was that unless you send them back, that is the only way you can send the message ``don't come,'' is for people to lose their $5,000, $6,000, $7,000, $8,000 that they have invested in paying a coyote and being back in their home country, trying to save up some more money to come into America. That is a big chunk of money for people that are averaging less than $3,000 a year, on average, for their income.

We have a government policy that is a complete mess and a calamity. I believe that each of the law enforcement there are doing the job as best they can, and the rules of engagement prevent them from having a cohesive strategy that can actually secure the border.

We need to build a fence and a wall and a fence on the southern border to keep them on the other side of it, so they can't get in, and we need to call upon the border State Governors, in particular the Governor of Texas, to continue to do what he is doing--that is call up forces to secure the border, that is call up his National Guard--the Texas National Guard--to secure the border.

This Congress has an obligation to pass a resolution that calls upon the border State Governors to call up their National Guard to circumvent the Commander in Chief of the United States-- constitutionally, I might add. It is the only way to secure the border. This President will not. He will not secure the border. The border State Governors can do this, I believe they will do this, and Congress has an obligation to fund them.

So I put a message out, Mr. Speaker, that we first need to pass a resolution in this Congress, and the resolution needs to say the President's DACA language, coupled with mostly the excuse of the 2008 legislation, his refusal to enforce immigration law, and his advertisement that we are not going to enforce the law that has penetrated deeply into Mexico and Central America has got to stop. The President has to reverse it. He has to start enforcing the law. That is job one.

The second one is--it is not going to happen, I don't believe he is going to do it, I don't think it is in his head or his heart, he has got another agenda, and so we call upon the border State Governors to call up their National Guard and enforce the border and commit the House at least to funding the border State Governors, so they can keep them on the line, and they can go to the other States for reinforcements, especially with sympathetic Governors.

Pass the little fix of the 2008 law, set it as a stand-alone bill, and send it over to the Senate because they are hiding behind it now and using that as an excuse not to enforce the law.

Another one, do not let these illegal aliens go north of the border any more than 50 miles. Keep them contained. Put them in housing that, if it is good enough for the United States military, it is good enough for those who have come into the United States illegally--yes, even if it is canvas, even if it is a tent city, we cannot be rewarding them with air-conditioned buildings and opulent digs scattered across the countryside.

Mr. Speaker, there are solutions to this. They are in the hands of the President. We need to call upon him to enforce the law.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Arizona for that outstanding transition that he made here. I actually came down to chide him just a little bit.

I was listening very closely to what he had to say, and it was very valuable, the comments on energy that we need and the direction this economy needs to go. I am going to restrain the chiding because of his outstanding transition that he made and, let you know, Mr. Speaker, that I came down here to address you and to talk with you a little bit about the things that are ahead for us in this Congress, the things that are ahead for us in this country.

When our Founding Fathers shaped this country and wrote our declaration and filed our Constitution and got it ratified, it was an extraordinarily accomplishment, and those documents will live for the duration of civilization, and they will be in our memory, they will be in our heads, they will be in our hearts for the full duration of the time of civilization, whether it is succeeding civilizations thousands of years from now, they will look back on what happened here.

When our Founding Fathers put together this republican form of government, which is guaranteed to us in article IV, section 4 of the Constitution, it also guaranteed protection from invasion.

They set up the House of Representatives to have elections every 2 years, so that we could be the quick-reaction shock force. When the public could see that this country was going in the wrong direction, they wanted to make sure that the House could be restored and filled with people that came from all across the country--the Thirteen Original Colonies or the 50 States that we are now and the territories that send representatives here--and that we could reverse an erroneous course that could be taken by a Congress going in the wrong direction.

That is the reason for 2 years--elections every 2 years. The Senate was set up with elections every 6 years, so they didn't have to worry about reelection for a longer period of time, and they could take the longer view.

Now, that was the theory or a philosophy that was generally untested, at least within the culture and the civilization of the time, and it has proven to be a fairly effective approach.

We saw what happened here in 2010, when I will say an overexuberant, very liberal Democrat majority in the House and in the Senate, essentially a veto-proof majority in the Senate, by hook, crook, and legislative shenanigans, crammed ObamaCare down the throats of the American people.

I remember those dramatic times. Tens of thousands of Americans came to Washington, D.C., from every single State, including Hawaii and Alaska, to protest what was happening to our God-given liberty and our right, our God-given right to manage our health, our skin, and everything inside it.

Well, it was still crammed down the throats of the American people, that policy called ObamaCare. The real name for it is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

I know. If I would say that about six times and you are having trouble going to sleep, Mr. Speaker, that would put you to sleep. It is a substitute for Ambien, to say Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Democrats finally recognized that, and they changed the name and their verbiage that they use. They said, oh, it is offensive to say ObamaCare; and then they realized that the President is the one that coined the term ``ObamaCare.''

He did so on February 25 of 2009 at the Blair House, in that big square seating when they had a conference on health care, and he acted like a professor and interrupted Republicans 72 times that day, but he used the phrase ``ObamaCare.''

Now, when we use it, they said that is pejorative. Don't use that because it identifies what it really is, it is a health care system that is socialized medicine. It is a government takeover of our bodies, our skin, and everything inside it; yet when the President used ObamaCare, then some of the Democrats decided: we will embrace the word ``ObamaCare.''

They did for a while, and they realized that they were adding fuel to the fire of the rejection of ObamaCare, and they decided, well, let's find another way we can name this thing.

So then they insisted that you weren't nice and you weren't polite and it was inappropriate if we didn't use its official name, which they would liked to have changed to the Affordable Care Act, not the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but the Affordable Care Act.

Now, I get to this because I am thinking about our Founding Fathers and George Washington, who could not tell a lie. So I asked myself the question--this policy that is going to cost over $1 trillion extra for ObamaCare that was promised it was going to cut our premiums, per household, by $2,500 a year, and if you like your doctor, you could keep your doctor, if you like your policy, you get to keep your policy, those promises weren't true.

The big promises of ObamaCare weren't true, and many things that were not advertised as highly as that didn't come true either.

So now they want to say Affordable Care Act. George Washington could not utter those words, Mr. Speaker, because George Washington could not tell a lie. That is why he confessed to chopping down the cherry tree.

I am not certain that the stump exists out there at Mount Vernon yet, but I am convinced that George Washington couldn't say the term ``affordable care act'' in reference to ObamaCare because it is not an accurate term. It is a dishonest term. It is not affordable, and it is less care.

Maybe it is an act, Mr. Speaker, so that is my commentary on going down that path with our Founding Fathers.

They also had this vision and they hoped that--and they had a long- term vision. It was a wonderful long-term vision of what kind of a country you could build if you just laid down God-given liberties, timeless principles, and laid out the pillars of American exceptionalism, articulate them, sell them to the American people, get them to support your Declaration of Independence, get them committed to doing what they knew they had to do, fight a war against King George.

They had to go through the winter at Valley Forge, and they had to a march up and down the coastline and in the interior part of the United States, at least the Thirteen Colonies, and take on the redcoats wherever they where. They won that Revolutionary War, learned some lessons from that about how you field the Continental Army.

You have to have a Commander in Chief, and you have to have a centralized government if you are going to defend yourself against the global powers of the world. They set up a Constitution to do that.

They envisioned and anticipated a lot of things in this Constitution, one of them was a means to amend it, and they believed that the President of the United States would be a man of honor who would give his oath of office, and they wrote his oath of office into the Constitution, to ensure that the nobility, the integrity, the statesmanship,

the character that was part of the culture at the time would flow forth forever, or as long as the United States might exist, through our Presidents.

I noted the 210th anniversary of the duel that took place between three-time Vice President Aaron Burr and the Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. It was just last week--about a week ago.

They met on an island, and they shot it out. They fought to the death. It turned out to be the death of Alexander Hamilton because Hamilton had insulted the integrity of Aaron Burr.

Aaron Burr would defend his integrity, and Alexander Hamilton would not retract his allegations, so the two of them met in a duel. Think of that, that their word was so important, their integrity was so important that the two of them faced each other with dueling pistols, knowing that one of them was likely to die in that duel, all over their word.

They had already by then written into the Constitution for the oath of the President of the United States and ratified. I do solemnly swear to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United, States--later on added--and to protect against all enemies foreign and domestic--and later on added--so help me God.

In the Constitution is--they call it the Take Care Clause in the Constitution, and the President shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. It is not actually the oath, but it is a component of the oath.

I don't want to say the word ``implied.'' It is specific in the Constitution that the President shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, Mr. Speaker.

So we had men of honor, statesmen, men of dignity, men of an attitude, that their word and their integrity was more important to them than their very life itself.

When they wrote the oath for the President to take into the Constitution and when they wrote in the Constitution that the President shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, they never imagined that we would have a President who didn't have that same sense, didn't have that same sense of nobility, that sense of integrity, that sense of statesmanship.

They never imagined that we would have a President that didn't think his word was worth more than his life itself.

We come to this place in time and history, Mr. Speaker, Alexander Hamilton went to his grave over a principle like that, and Aaron Burr lost his political career because he sent Alexander Hamilton to his grave over that principle of your word is your bond, and when you get to a challenge like that, your word is more important than your life itself.

Now, we are at a place where a President gives his oath of office to take care that the laws be faithfully executed and, instead, simply executes the law itself, wipes it out, ignores it, immigration law, in particular, Mr. Speaker, where the President, with his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the DACA program--DACA, which really stands for deferred action for criminal aliens, that policy and a number of other policies where the President has announced that he is going to ignore the law--and he constantly hides behind this phrase: prosecutorial discretion.

He says he has prosecutorial discretion to decide not to enforce the law against people that are breaking it.

Now, he has a prosecutorial discretion, Mr. Speaker, but it is on an individual basis only, and his lawyers knew that. That is why when they wrote the DACA memos--well, we call them the Morton Memos--when they were written, and we had Janet Napolitano, then the Secretary of Homeland Security, testifying before the Judiciary Committee, and I announced to her, if you go forward with this, you will be in court, and you will be sued because the President of the United States' job is to stick with his article II authority, and that is to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

He is the Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces, and he is to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. This is a limited government, but all legislative powers belong here in this Congress. That is article I, all legislative powers.

The President doesn't get to write the laws. He is compelled to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. That is his constitutional obligation.

Instead, the President has said, well, I don't like these immigration laws. If a law requires our immigration authorities, ICE--Immigration and Customs Enforcement--when they encounter someone who is unlawfully present in the United States, the law requires that they place them into removal proceedings. That is the law.

The President has issued an order that says to ICE, thou shalt break that law and never apply the law to remove people from the United States who are here unlawfully, unless they have committed a felony or three mysterious misdemeanors that are vaguely identified.

I don't know that they actually have ever executed that particular provision, although I would say it is likely that they have, Mr. Speaker, in all fairness.

So the President has created four different classes of people with his Morton Memos and his DACA language, and by grouping people into classes of people, he has got a number of those who he has exempted from the law, some number approaching 600,000 people who came into the United States or were in the United States illegally, who are exempted from the very application of the law that requires our law enforcement officers, particularly ICE, to place them into removal proceedings. That is what the President has done.

So he sent the message out, as far as back as 3 years ago, in midsummer--actually, June--sent the message out to everybody in the world, if you can get into America, and you don't commit a felony--and that is a little bit of a shorthand for the technicalities--then you get to stay.

He has acted upon that. He has executed that all right. He has executed his executive edict, but he hasn't taken care that the law itself be faithfully executed. He has defied the law, and his oath is to uphold the law, to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

Now, I have to put into the list the pillars of American exceptionalism, so we are thinking about it, Mr. Speaker. What makes America the unchallenged greatest nation in the world, and it is the composition of the pillars of American exceptionalism, and you find most of them in the Bill of Rights, freedom of speech, religion and assembly, and the right to keep and bear arms, and no double jeopardy, the property rights in the Fifth Amendment. You get to face a jury of your peers, quick and speedy trial.

The Ninth and 10th Amendments devolve the powers not granted specifically in the enumeration in the Constitution to the Federal Government devolve to the States or, respectively, to the people.

Those are many of the pillars of American exceptionalism, but there are others. We have a free enterprise economy, the ability to invest capital and sweat equity, and buy, sell, trade, make gain and get rich if you can, and we like to cheer you when you do because it helps all of us when that happens.

Free enterprise economy is another pillar of American exceptionalism, along with the root of this culture and civilization being in Judeo- Christianity, the work ethic that came from it, the values system that allowed that work to be prosperous and profitable and trustworthy, so that we could do business with people in a way that we didn't have to always be checking up on them because we knew that God is looking over our shoulder.

That is shorthand for one of the reasons why this is such a great country.

Another one would be when the Statue of Liberty went up. The image and the inspiration of that statue said to the world that if you can come here, to America legally, you can achieve all that you are capable of achieving. All of the things that you might imagine that you are capable of achieving anywhere in the world, you can achieve in America because you have all of these other rights. And these rights aren't rights that the government confers upon you.

As in every other country in the world, the government confers any rights you might have. These are God-given rights, and God has given them to us. And our Founding Fathers articulated that and put that down on

the parchment, and we have fought and defended it all of our years.

So if our rights came from government, government could take them away. The reason that they can't take them away is because they are God-given. And the inspiration comes from all of these pillars of American exceptionalism, which send that message and beam it across the world in National Geographic magazines that show up everywhere around the world or in encyclopedias or through cyberspace today--that picture of the Statue of Liberty, of the Washington Monument, of the Lincoln Memorial, of the United States Capitol, the White House itself. American success across the world and all of the places where it has been, this record of achievement, this record of sacrifice of Americans to expand the nobility of the human race everywhere around the world has inspired people in every country.

And the people that came here, Mr. Speaker, were inspired by that image and those ideas and those ideals. So we didn't just get a random selection of people that came to America legally. We got the cream of the crop. We got the vigor of the planet.

If there were 10 siblings in a family and only one of them had enough inspiration to find a way to come legally to the United States of America, we got the superachiever. We got the can-do. We got the cream of the crop. We got the vigor of the planet from every donor nation on the planet to come to America because they were attracted to the God- given liberty that was established here. They came here, they achieved, and they embraced those principles. And America embraced them.

And in each generation from that, we taught our children the same thing. So it has descended down through the generations, and it has brought in more, and America has gotten stronger.

But we are not a stronger nation if we erode those pillars of American exceptionalism. We are not a stronger nation if we lose faith with those things that have been the core of the success of this country. And we can't be sacrificing the pillars of American exceptionalism for the sake of having our hearts overrule our heads.

Our Founding Fathers didn't let that happen. The principles that came through from the work that they did, the God-given rights and liberties that are there, they are timeless. And they index into human nature, all of human nature, but they are embodied here.

And, by the way, one of the other things I left out of that, another reason for American exceptionalism is that all of that settlement arrived here. And a lot of it, it arrived here on a continent with--at the time, at least, unlimited natural resources. And at the dawn of the industrial revolution, we settled this continent from sea to shining sea.

And here we are today, Mr. Speaker, with a President who wouldn't agree with what I have just said. I mean, if he had the time or took the time, he would seek to rebut the principles that I have laid out. And he would say, instead, well, let's see. We really don't need to have borders in America. We don't have to have that. There is no reason for America to be as successful as we are. We are using a disproportionate share of the planet's resources. We are pumping CO2 into our atmosphere. That is turning the Earth's thermostat up, even though for 17 years there is not any evidence of that happening.

And we have watched as he has diminished America. He has diminished it in foreign policy. He has diminished it economically. He has diminished it socially and culturally. And today we are watching as he has established this policy of amnesty. He is pushing hard for the Senate Gang of Eight bill.

The Senate Gang of Eight bill is a matter of record, Mr. Speaker. It is instantaneous amnesty for the people that are here illegally, whether they overstayed their visas 40 percent or whether they came across the border illegally 60 percent. Or it is instantaneous amnesty for them.

For anyone that would come into America in the future, it is silent, which means it is an unspoken promise that if you can get here--we haven't demonstrated the will to enforce the law if you came here. So if you come here, why would anybody think that we enforce a law on anybody that would come here after a Senate Gang of Eight bill might potentially become law?

And, to add insult to injury, they sent an invitation out to the people that have been sent back to their home country. It is what I call the ``well, we really didn't mean it'' clause. And that means that anybody that has been deported in the past is sent an invitation saying reapply; we really didn't mean it. That is how bad this is.

And this gaping hole that we have in our border in the McAllen sector of the Texas border, where we now have 57,000 unaccompanied children who have come into the United States--many of them hustled across 2,500 miles or more from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala through Mexico, and there is a significant number yet from Mexico coming into the United States--these unaccompanied minors are hauled up here by coyotes who may live in those communities and recruit these kids.

All of this is going on. And we have a President who says: I need $3.7 billion to expand the bureaucracy to maybe buy a hotel to put them in and move them across the country and infuse them into our communities.

People that are unlawfully present in the United States simply say: I am an unaccompanied minor, and I have been promised that if I can get into America, I get to stay in America. 57,000 of them, Mr. Speaker. And what percentage of the unaccompanied minors have been sent back to their home country? 0.1 percent. One-tenth of 1 percent.

They sent Joe Biden down to Guatemala. He landed in Panama and then went to Guatemala. He said that he went down there to send a message which is that we are going to send your kids back. Don't send them here. Well, if there is no record of that, then they know it is not happening.

So think of the difference. If we would take a military airplane and put a couple hundred unaccompanied Guatemalan minors on it, for example, send that plane down the runway and up into the air, if the President picked up the phone and called the President of Guatemala and said: Be on the tarmac in 2 hours; you are going to have 200 of your kids that are going to arrive there, and you should greet them--that is what a leader does, sends them back. If you do that and do that and do that, eventually they will stop coming because they will know they are actually coming back, and they will know that their money is wasted. It is not happening.

But this President is not going to secure this border, Mr. Speaker. He has demonstrated that. We have got 2\1/2\ more years of this President. And whatever we do in this Congress, we can't make him secure the border. We can't make him do it. The Congress doesn't have the authority to do that. There are only two constitutional provisions that can force the President to do anything, and we have tried them both within the last 15 years or so, and neither one of them have proven to be effective.

Public opinion might push back hard enough. Well, they kind of are. But we cannot allow our border--especially right now, the Texas border--to be under invasion in the fashion that it is by the tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors who are, by the way, only 20 percent of the illegals coming in in that sector. And they are maybe stopping, at best, 25 percent of those that are trying to come across. So we have got a number that is up there over 1 million people that are attempting to cross into the United States, and 57,000 of those that we pick up on that are unaccompanied minor kids.

The President will not secure the border. We should come to that conclusion. We have got 2\1/2\ years of open borders. Or we find a way to secure it, maybe even against the will of the President of the United States, because I don't know if he has got the will to block it if we do this.

But who has the authority? I look around the whole country, and the people who have the authority to do so are the Governors of the border States.

I have a resolution, Mr. Speaker, that I would like to introduce into the Record that says so. It calls upon the border Governors to call out their National Guard to secure the border, and it says that this House of Representatives will support the funding to do so. I call for that, Mr. Speaker. I urge us to pick this up and sign it. I am going to introduce it tomorrow. I would like to take it up real soon and send that resolution to the world, and I would appreciate your indulgence in doing so.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, this is the amendment that strikes the funds that might be used to enforce the Davis-Bacon wage scale. That is a piece of legislation that passed here in this Congress sometime about 1931. It was designed to keep African Americans out of the labor force in New York as they were building Federal buildings. It is a remnant of the Jim Crow law. In fact, it is the only remnant that remains, as near as I believe, of the Jim Crow law.

So it comes down to this. When you have a relationship between two people and they agree to a wage scale, that is all that should be required here. Instead, this Federal minimum wage scale sets a union scale. It is not prevailing wage; it is union scale.

I have dealt with Davis-Bacon wage scales all of my business life. I started a construction company in 1975. We almost immediately had to deal with the Federal Government coming in and saying, on this side of the road you shall pay your shovel operator this, and on the other side of the road you shall pay him something that might be half again more than that, and the guy that runs the grease gun gets this, and the one that runs the excavator gets that. The Federal Government micromanaging and disrupting the efficiencies in our construction companies results in far higher costs for our construction projects.

We have maintained a series of records over the years what it costs additional when we are doing Davis-Bacon federally mandated union scale jobs, and it runs between 8 and 35 percent in our company over these years. There is other data out there that is done--Beacon Hill has some--that shows a range, but in the end it boils down to a net effect of a 20 percent additional cost for a Davis-Bacon wage scale.

Here we are bleeding red ink in the Federal Government. CBO made a recommendation, if we wanted to move towards balance, the repeal of the Davis-Bacon Act would be one of those things that would help us move in that direction. But on this bill itself, it appropriates $5.493 million for Civil Works programs. All of that would fall under the Davis-Bacon- mandated wage scale. And in title II, the Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation appropriates $1.014 billion. So the total in this bill is $6.507 billion. If my amendment is enacted into law, we are going to see a savings in this bill of $1.3 billion.

Mr. Chairman, no one can claim to be a fiscal conservative if they think the Federal Government needs to inflate the cost of wages. Supply and demand sets the cost of those wages. A reasonable pay scale is arrived at.

I am hearing people say we must bring in tens of millions of people to do the work Americans won't do and pay them a mandated union scale. This is not settled by the prevailing wage. Somebody will get up and say, no, it is a prevailing wage. They take a survey from contractors and find out what the prevailing wage is; then they work that out, and a board makes a determination on what is actually the prevailing wage.

It is simply not true in practice, Mr. Chairman. it is not true in practice. In practice, some advisers sit down and they decide whether people in different categories ought to have more money next year or not. It is an arbitrary, subjective decision. It is not prevailing wage.

I know this law. I have been with this for a long time. I know that it costs taxpayers a lot of money. I don't think that there is any way to actually find out how hard this number is. I tell you, it is 8 to 35 percent. Beacon Hill has a different number of around 5 to 38. Mine is 8 to 35. I think theirs is 5 to 38 percent. But it averages out to about 20 percent, and that does not include the inefficiencies that are wired into this.

The inefficiencies come when you have labor that is competing for the highest paying jobs and doing sometimes the most inefficient thing with the most inefficient machine because it pays the most money. It is a Jim Crow law. It needs to be eradicated. It was designed to lock African Americans out of the construction trades, particularly in New York, and now it is a Holy Grail for union wages.

I used to say for the gentleman in Massachusetts who was here at the time, when he would say any time there is a relationship between two or more consenting adults the Federal Government should not stick their nose into it, I would say I agree with that. There is no reason why I shouldn't be able to climb into my son's excavator and let him pay me $10 an hour, whatever we agree to, or $15 or $20, not the mandated wage scale.

So I urge adoption of my amendment that would eliminate the enforcement of the Davis-Bacon wage scale on this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives and to take up these topics that I appreciate your attention to.

As the other Members disperse across this Hill and over to their offices and as their staffs are tuned in on television and for those who are here in person, we have got some serious issues to discuss. This country has been led down a path that has been, I think, in the end, destructive to our Republic, and it is important that we focus on these issues that are getting out of hand.

We are a great country. For the Fourth of July, I sent out a tweet that morning to celebrate the Fourth of July: ``Happy Independence Day.''

The United States of America is the unchallenged greatest nation in the world, and we derive our strength from Western civilization, Judeo Christianity, and free enterprise capitalism. There are many other components to those three parts that I mentioned. Of course, as I send out that message, there are those who disagree.

First, they don't think of America as an exceptional nation. They don't believe in American exceptionalism. Our President makes the statement that: oh, yes, I believe in American exceptionalism in the way the British believe in British exceptionalism and

the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.

That is an entirely different concept. There are many countries out there that are proud of who they are, and they should be. They are proud of their nationalities. They are proud of the history of who they are. Borders, culture, and language are what tie a country together.

The other countries that see themselves as such and are proud to be so, as the British and as the Greeks are, are not like the United States of America. They do have borders, they do have culture, they do have language, but none of them were formed around an ideal, an ideal of God-given liberty.

None of them were formed around the idea of the rule of law. None of them have a bill of rights like we have a Bill of Rights, where you can look at the pillars of American exceptionalism and read most of them as you read down through the first 10 amendments, our Bill of Rights.

Pillars of American exceptionalism: freedom of speech, religion, the press, and the right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for the redress of grievances--there are four pillars in one, in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

The right to keep and bear arms is another pillar of American exceptionalism. Whatever our pain is as the result of people who are dying due to gun violence--and if I counted the casualties right, in Chicago, over the Fourth of July weekend, it was 14 murdered and 82 wounded in gun violence. It is a product of lawless people who are violating gun laws.

They don't respect their gun laws, but we have the right to keep and bear arms because it is an obligation to keep our society in a position where we can defend against tyranny; yet some don't understand that. They think, somehow, the Second Amendment is about having the right to defend ourselves or the right to hunt or the right to collect or the right to target shoot.

All of those things are ancillary benefits that come along with the Second Amendment, and they are necessary so that we continue the culture of respect for arms and gun safety, but the real reason that we have the right to keep and bear arms is to defend against tyranny.

So far, we haven't seen a tyrant emerge in America who has brought about the need to utilize our Second Amendment, to defend ourselves from a tyrant who would lord over us and our God-given liberty.

Now, history moves on, and different personalities emerge, so I couldn't rule that out for the future, and I couldn't rule it out, actually, for the current either, Mr. Speaker.

With all of these pillars of American exceptionalism--the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, the property rights that used to exist with utter clarity in the Fifth Amendment, but, because of the Kelo decision, have been somewhat eroded--and along through our protection against double jeopardy and a quick and speedy trial and a right to face a jury of our peers and the powers of the Federal Government that devolve down to the States or the people respectively in the Ninth and 10th Amendments--we couldn't have built a country without these.

We couldn't have built a great country, Mr. Speaker, if we didn't have that foundation that I mentioned in the beginning--if we didn't have the core of Western civilization that emerged here on this continent at the dawn of the industrial revolution, if we didn't have the age of reason that accompanied old English common law, which is a descendant of Roman law, which is a descendant of Mosaic law--if we hadn't had those pieces, America would have never been, just as if we were not a Judeo-Christian nation, with a sense of morality and a sense of justice, a sense of forgiveness, a sense of redemption--yes, and a sense of confession.

If we hadn't had those pieces that are part and parcel of our culture and our civilization, America would have never been. We wouldn't have held together, and we wouldn't have been formed in the first place, so we wouldn't have sustained ourselves through all of these trials and tribulations of the centuries in the 238 years since the founding of our Republic.

That is how important this country is; yet we have many who don't understand this, many who refuse to believe the reality of history that has brought us to this point, many who don't respect this reality of history.

When I say that our Founding Fathers were almost universally of a solid faith--in fact, of a solid Christian faith--I hear from the other side of the aisle over here that: no, they were deists, they really had a different way of looking at this.

Thomas Jefferson a deist? Go look at the memorial. You will find more references to God in the Jefferson Memorial than you will see as typos in there, and there are two typos.

Thomas Jefferson was a moral and a religious man, and it anchored much of what he did as was true for all of our Founders. They were not atheists, they were not agnostics, they were not deists. They were rooted in a strong faith and a deep understanding of history, and they understood the flow of history.

On one of my trips out here to Washington--before I came here, Mr. Speaker, to serve in this Congress--I went to the National Archives. There was a long line waiting to see the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, which are on display underneath glass at the Archives today--8 inches of glass in between there and 8 inches of.

It is that Declaration of Independence in which our Founding Fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. As I waited to walk through there to see the original documents--for me, it was the first time--I read through the display that was at the National Archives. This was a display of artifacts from the Greek city-state era.

There, I learned with the real examples before me of how the Greek city-states had the purist form of democracy, at least at the time, and that men of age had an opportunity to speak and to have their voices heard with their votes in the Greek city-states, but they had a problem with this pure form of democracy, and our Founding Fathers understood this.

They learned that, if it is just the masses, if the majority can rule over the minority and if there are no foundational or fundamental rights, then it is the tyranny of the majority that rules over the minority.

There was also the tyranny of the demagogues, the demagogues that had perfected their artful oratory in such a way that they could move the masses in an emotional way, often against the best interests of the Greek city-states.

When a demagogue emerged who drove the city-state in a direction that wasn't prudent, but was emotional and put the city-state at risk, then they had the Greek blackball system. The blackball system was that they would all line up to vote. There would be a gourd here or a piece of pottery here that had a little neck in it and enough room to contain all of the marbles, and there was a discard pottery as well.

When the Greeks decided they were going to see if they were going to banish a demagogue from the city-state, each one of those in the city- state who could vote--each one of these adult males--got a white marble and a black marble in his hand.

As they walked through--one of these potteries was the voting one, and the other one was a discard, and no one could tell whether they voted to keep this demagogue in our city-state by voting white or to banish this demagogue from our city-state by voting black.

It was maybe 100, maybe 1,000, or however many were there to vote in the Greek city-state--maybe several thousand. As they walked through, if three of them voted a blackball in the voting pottery--in that voting container--and discarded their marbles in the other one, if only three of them said banish this demagogue from the city-state, they would banish him for 7 years because he was a poisonous influence on their civilization, on their culture, and on their society.

That was one of the ways they held in check this raw, pure democracy that existed back during the Greek era, and our Founding Fathers understood that.

They understood also that these pure democracies had a way of essentially imploding and expiring. They understood that they had a limited lifespan--they thought, perhaps, a couple hundred years, so they didn't devise a democracy, Mr. Speaker. America was not devised to be a democracy.

As a matter of fact, you can take a look here in this Constitution and read in here that it guarantees a republican form of government. That is a representative form of government. It is not that everybody goes to the city center--to the coliseum--and votes on national policy.

We had that proposal, by the way. Let's see. We had a Presidential candidate from Texas who pledged that we should actually go on the Internet and all vote these policies, so America could become close to a pure democracy. I didn't like that. I thought that that was a bad idea.

Our Founding Fathers had a bright idea. It was a good, solid, principled idea: give us a republican form of government.

When Benjamin Franklin walked out of the Constitutional Convention, a lady there asked him: What have you given us? His answer was: A republic, ma'am, if you can keep it.

The Republic is a representative form of government where you elect Representatives to come to the House and be reelected or not every 2 years and go to the United States Senate for 6-year terms, with the idea that we would be a quick reaction force here in the House and of a longer-term view, maybe a little cooling effect, over in the Senate, with the balance of these two bodies.

In article I of our Constitution, the most powerful and influential component of our three branches of government is Congress--the United States Congress. That is why it is article I. All legislative power exists here between the House and the Senate.

In article I, the legislative powers of the United States Government are here--here, Mr. Speaker, in this House and over at the other end of the Capitol building, which is through the rotunda--over to the United States Senate--all legislative powers, article I.

Our Founding Fathers started, when they drafted the Constitution, with article I because our power comes from God, and it is granted to those of us who represent this government from the people--of, by, and for the people of the United States.

Their powers that they derived from God are transferred here into this Congress, so that we can express their will and bring forth the policies that they believe are the best and most prudent for the United States of America. It isn't just our being a reactionary force--a barometer, a taking of the temperature of our constituents--and somehow come here and reflect that in national policy. That is not exactly the definition of our job, Mr. Speaker.

Here is what I owe my constituents--and I would entreat all of my colleagues to adopt this policy and philosophy--I owe everyone whom I have the honor and privilege to represent my best effort and my best judgment.

My best judgment includes be home; be among the people whom I have the privilege to represent; listen, listen, listen; take into account their concerns, their dreams, their aspirations, their grievances; and bring that back here with the best ideas that have emerged from that and couple with that the things that I am able to have the time to pay attention to on policy to analyze because I have the privilege to represent a lot of constituents who work for a living.

They are busy. They turn in 50, 60, 70, 80, or more hours a week. They do that to take care of their families. They do that to build a nest egg. They do that to prepare for their futures and, perhaps, for their retirements. They do that to build the capital so that they can reinvest, which creates jobs and increases the standard of living.

The people I have the privilege to represent are busy. They don't have time to spend 60, 70, 80 hours a week paying attention to public policy, but they do have time to pay attention to whether I am paying attention to public policy.

That is my pledge: my best effort and my best judgment, including incorporating all of their best judgments into the things that I can do and all of the other things that I have the opportunity to learn.

If I find myself at odds with the constituents in my district, it is time to have an eye-to-eye, heart-to-heart conversation. I should do what is right for God and country and State and district--in that order.

I have never found a conflict between that order of priority. When my mother was alive, I had told her: Mom, if there is a policy that is not so great for you, but that is right for America, sorry, but we are going to do what is right for America, and we are going to find another way to take care of you, Mom.

That is the way we need to do business in this country. We need to look to the long-term best interests of the United States of America.

We need to look back in our rearview mirror and say: How did we get here? What made us this great Nation? What were the principles that our predecessors adhered to that became such a foundational rock that we could be this unchallenged, greatest nation in the world? What were they? What are they? What are they that exist today? What are those principles that are being eroded, so that America isn't as strong in some of these areas as we used to be?

Do we still have this freedom of speech?

Well, maybe not quite, Mr. Speaker. And I say maybe not quite because this freedom of speech that used to compel us to utter the things that we believed to be true is now restrained by the political correctness, the political correctness where a CEO of a major corporation donated $1,000 to support a man or woman joined together in, hopefully, holy matrimony, and loses his job as a CEO because there are people that believe that marriage is something other than between a man and a woman.

That is not what you call a free speech. That erodes us all when you see that happen.

When you see the attacks that come--and I see them come primarily from the left. There will be people that will take issue with the tone of remarks or the word choices of remarks, but they aren't so much aggrieved by the actual function of what we are describing.

For example, there are people that don't like the way some of us talk about abortion. They don't like to be reminded that I and millions of Americans believe that human life is sacred in all of its forms, that it begins at a moment, and that is the moment of conception, and it needs to be protected with that great reverence for that sacred unique human life created in God's image from every moment of its conception until natural death. They don't like that kind of dialogue. You will never see a video of an actual abortion performed because the very sight of it is so appalling that the other side would object to the freedom of speech to demonstrate such a thing.

They don't like the idea that we call illegal immigrants ``illegal immigrants.'' They don't like the idea that they get labeled as ``illegal aliens'' or ``criminal aliens,'' but never mind that this is actually the legal term for those who are breaking our immigration laws.

Mr. Speaker, you will know that one of the top topics that we are faced with, as we went back to the Fourth of July, as we go across this country, is the immigration issue. It is in front of us now again.

It is not a new experience for a lot of us. We were at this topic at this time last year. We went through this debate in 2005, 2006, and 2007 before it finally died away and we bought a little bit more time to come back and revere and respect the rule of law again. But it has been so eroded.

Wherever I go, the immigration topic comes up, Mr. Speaker. And we are watching the video now of the images of people coming across the border, many of them at McAllen, Texas.

Now, I would take people back to what we have experienced in the past in that intense immigration debate that took place, started when President George W. Bush gave his amnesty speech, his comprehensive immigration reform speech.

My memory says that it was January 5, 2004. It was the launch of his reelection campaign. It was a calculation that he needed to reach out to the Hispanic community and, therefore, calculated that if he would grant some form of amnesty and start the process of legalizing people that are here illegally, that somehow they would embrace him as a Presidential candidate.

I think it was an overreaction to what they saw happen in the year 2000

when George W. Bush and Al Gore ran against each other, and when they got down to the recount in Florida, with 537 votes being the deciding difference between who would be the President of the United States and who would drift off into history, that election, I believe, they looked at the county-by-county election returns on which counties went for George Bush and which counties went for Al Gore and saw, I believe, what I know I saw, Mr. Speaker. It was the blue, southern tip of Texas. South Texas went for Al Gore.

Now, how could it be that a Presidential candidate of the stature of George W. Bush, a favorite son of Texas, a Governor of Texas, could lose such a big chunk of Texas on a county-by-county basis to Al Gore? I think they drew a conclusion that it was the Hispanic vote that he had not done very well with in Texas and decided this is how we are going to do better with the Hispanic vote, and so they turned it up.

They announced, after George W. Bush was reelected in 2004, that George W. Bush had carried 44 percent of the Hispanic electorate. But, upon further analysis, by the time you slice and dice and take that formula apart and put it back together, it comes down to an objective analysis that it couldn't have been 44 percent. It had to have fallen between 38 and 40 percent. Whatever that real number is, I am convinced, Mr. Speaker, it wasn't 44.

But we then saw John McCain, who was long known as an ``open borders'' John McCain, run for President, and he picked up 31 percent of the Hispanic vote. So 7 percent--or 8 or maybe as much as 9 percent--of the Hispanic vote was lost between George W. Bush and John McCain. It never was 44. If it was, it was even a lot more. Then it was 13. But I am going to say instead that I will pick that number at 39 and say that John McCain watched an 8 percent drop in the Hispanic vote from George W. Bush's high watermark, where he reached out in a very positive and proactive way, down to John McCain at 31 percent.

Four years later, for the reelect of Barack Obama, Presidential candidate Mitt Romney came forward and he garnered 27 percent of the Hispanic vote. That is really not disputed. So he dropped 4 percent from the 31 percent of John McCain, the ``open borders'' John McCain, to 27 percent for Mitt Romney.

What happened, Mr. Speaker?

We ended up with an autopsy report that said that somehow it was a calamity, a free fall, a loss of a big chunk of the Hispanic vote because Mitt Romney had said a couple of words that seemingly allegedly had offended people, those two words being ``self-deport.''

Now, if the language is so sensitive that you can't use a term like ``self-deport'' without losing the Presidency, how in the world, Mr. Speaker, are we going to enforce the law? How are we going to reinforce the respect for the rule of law if we can't, in a delicate way, say, you know, if we really do enforce the law, a lot of people will decide that they don't have a legal presence here and they might decide they are happier if they would wake up in their home country. Somehow that is offensive to people?

Instead, I would say there has been a loss in the Hispanic vote, certainly not from 44 percent for George W. Bush but from, say, 39 percent down to John McCain. That is an 8 percent loss--31 percent for John McCain, 8 percent loss. Only a 4 percent drop from that down to Mitt Romney. Who knows which direction that is going to go, but it completely disregards, Mr. Speaker, the tens of millions of dollars that Democrats spent calling Republicans racists and getting a return on their investment by watching that be an effective, however sinful tactic it is.

I have watched this for a number of election cycles. I have watched it in my own race.

When you pit people against each other, Mr. Speaker, when you identify people and say you are in one class here, you are in another class here, you are in a group here, you are in a group over here--and the Democrats know. They will sort you out. They will say, well, your hair is blonde and your eyes are blue, so you belong here; and yours is dark and your eyes are brown, you belong over here; and you have a melanin content in your skin, and I am going to put you there.

We are all created in God's image, every one of us, and He has given us the distinction so we can tell each other apart. For us to identify those distinctions that are God-given identifying characteristics and use those to categorize people as something different than other people for political gain, Mr. Speaker, I believe is a sin. It is against the interests of this country, and we have fallen prey to those kind of tactics, and we have a President who falls prey to those kind of tactics.

I would remind you, when you had Officer Crowley and Professor Gates and that instance in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when the President jumped in on what looked like was a home burglary circumstance, upon review, Officer Crowley conducted himself just fine; Professor Gates got a little bit out of control. The President jumped in on something he never should have weighed in on and concluded that, because the professor was of one skin color and the officer was of Irish descent, that somehow there had to be some kind of racism involved rather than the humanity of an officer who puts his life on the line to bring our safety to us and to protect and preserve the rule of law. So the President, to get out of that deal, had to have a beer summit at the White House.

Well, that lasted a little while, until Arizona passed its S.B. 1070 law, which is their immigration law that was designed to exactly mirror Federal law--not exceed it, not go beyond it, but exactly mirror Federal law. And what happened? The President weighs in and says, well, you know, if are you a mother, a Hispanic mother taking your daughter out for ice cream, you could potentially be pulled over and checked for your papers. That was a statement that brought a focus on to race and ethnicity, and the law specifically prohibits such a thing, but he brought race into this equation again.

Now we have a President who has two of his family members who have received some form of amnesty, his Auntie Onyango and Uncle Omar. Auntie Onyango has now passed away, but she lived in public housing for a long time on the government dole. She was adjudicated for deportation at least once, perhaps more times than that. The President's presence in this country and hers in this country got her an amnesty.

So did drunken Omar, President Obama's uncle, who nearly ran over a police officer up in that same neighborhood and received his form of amnesty, too, because, after all, if you send him back to Kenya and he happens to be related to the President, somebody will kidnap him and maybe he becomes held hostage for profit. So we surely couldn't send somebody back, no matter how many times they had been adjudicated for deportation, no matter how much they were on the government dole, no matter what kind of an unexemplary citizen--well, a resident of the United States. I have to retract that citizen piece. A resident of the United States.

Illegal immigrants, the President's uncle, the President's aunt, they get asylum. They get amnesty. And the President reaches out and says, essentially to the world, we are not going to enforce immigration law. It is a progression on his part.

It was Bill Clinton that did the most deportations. In the year 2000, he had more deportations than anybody in history, before or since, more than George W. Bush, more than Ronald Reagan, more than George H.W. Bush. But those high deportations that took place under Bill Clinton diminished substantially under this President. They diminished under George W. Bush. They diminished again substantially under this President.

Mr. Speaker, this President has put the welcome mat out. He has essentially advertised to people in foreign countries: if you can get into America, you get to stay in America. That has been his policy. While they will announce that he has more deportations than anybody else, it wasn't true the moment they uttered that. It is not true today. The President has confessed that they count differently than any other administration.

We have a circumstance on the southern border that adopts involuntary return. If someone sneaks into America and they are caught at the border, they are offered a couple of options.

One of them is, well, today, we will take your prints and your picture. But if you will voluntarily return to your home country, then you will not be barred from coming back into the United States on either a 3- or a 10-year bar. That is the deal. So a lot of them take that voluntary return and go back to Mexico and try again.

In fact, we checked the records down at Nogales at the border station, and this was several years ago. They had a single individual that had attempted to come into the United States and had been caught 27 times. No penalty. Here are your prints. We will take your picture. We will send you back to Mexico. You can go. Sometimes they come back in the same day and they are caught again the same day.

We had testimony before the Judiciary Committee in the Immigration Subcommittee where the Border Patrol came before us, and I asked them: What percentage of illegal immigrants do you interdict, do you stop at the border? Their testimony said, well, perhaps 25 percent. Well, 25 percent is an abysmally low number, Mr. Speaker. Only 25 percent interdiction at the border.

Now, I go down to the border and I ask them down there, the Border Patrol, Customs, Border Patrol and ICE: What percentage are you interdicting here at the border? Are you getting--are you stopping 25 percent? They would laugh and say 10 percent has to come first. Ten percent was the most consistent number that I heard, sector after sector, agent after agent. They think they are stopping about 10 percent. One of the ICE supervisors said: I think it is 2 to 3 percent.

So this 25 percent number, even if we accept it, then you have to multiply it times four to come up with the number of people that are coming across our border. If we stop 25 percent, that means 25 people come across, there is really 100 of them. When you do the math, at the peak of our interdictions, which was during the Bush administration, that came to about 11,000 a night, 11,000 illegal aliens, criminal aliens coming into the United States across our southern border every night.

That traffic has slowed down a little bit because there are fewer economic opportunities. So that 11,000 was about twice the size of Santa Anna's army. Now the nightly border traffic is about exactly the size of Santa Anna's army.

Now, of course, they aren't all armed. In fact, very few of them are. But we are watching what is going on in McAllen as we are watching tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors come into the United States.

And that number was predicted more than 6 months ago by Chris Crane, the president of the ICE union, who has said, we are going to see more than 50,000--I believe the number he gave was actually 60,000-- unaccompanied minors coming into the United States in the next year. Well, we have already crossed over 50,000. And for this full year, we are going to see that number--July, August, September--and that number is increasing. We think in the next fiscal year, it is predicted that it will be 120,000, not this 50,000 that we have crossed so far.

And, by the way, these unaccompanied minors, these are kids under the age of 18. These unaccompanied minors represent about 20 percent of the illegal aliens that are coming into America. And those are the ones that we catch.

So that is 100,000. Perhaps that number, approaching 120,000 illegal aliens that they catch, it is a number bigger than that. We have got a number that goes to some 300,000 criminal aliens to be interdicted in this fiscal year, and I think that number will go higher. That is one of those snapshot estimates. I am going to predict that it is going to be closer to 600,000.

But still, this President has refused to send people back. If you come into the United States, if you are able to set a foot in the United States, get into America, if you get into the interior, you are almost home-free. If you are not caught at the border, you are almost home free.

But something less than 2 percent of those who come into the United States who are interdicted, who get caught, are actually sent back home. And now, when you slice and dice that number down, you see the trend: that is going down to something like 0.1 percent that are faced with the enforcement of the law against them.

This is the wholesale destruction of the rule of law, Mr. Speaker. The wholesale destruction of the rule of law. This is a President who has rolled out the welcome mat and has sent the message across the continent, across the hemisphere and, actually, the world: if you can get into America, we aren't going to bother to remove you from America.

He has prohibited local law enforcement from enforcing Federal immigration law. He has gone to court to enforce such a thing. They have canceled 287(g) agreements, which are cooperative agreements between political subdivisions and the Federal Government so that local government could help enforce immigration law. He has sent his Attorney General hither and yon to file lawsuits against political subdivisions that simply want to enforce the rule of law and reflect Federal immigration law.

There is no other law that I know in this country that doesn't ask for, receive, and appreciate the full cooperation of all levels of law enforcement, whether they are city police, county sheriffs, whether they are State officers, criminal investigation personnel, or Federal officers of any kind. All levels cooperate at all levels, with the exception of immigration law, which has been carved out to be separate by this President.

And now we have a President that a year ago last summer, in the middle of the summer, some time in July, introduced what we call the DACA language, or the Morton Memos. And those memos are written in a bit of a--let's say a deft, convoluted, legalistic way, signed by John Morton, presented by Janet Napolitano. I promised her that she would be sued over them, and she is.

But these Morton Memos create four different classes of people. They grant an effective de facto. That is, they grant an amnesty to people that are in the United States. And it is the idea that if you came into America, and you were under the age of 18, you weren't responsible for your actions.

Some people on my side of the aisle will argue that you can't form intent if you are young. If you are too young to form an intent, then you can't be held accountable for breaking the law. I would point out, how young is that? Because a 2-year-old who reaches their hand in the cookie jar in my house knows that is wrong. And if you holler at them and say, Johnny, they will hide that cookie behind them and act like they didn't do anything wrong. You can't convince me that a 17-year-old can't form an intent when a 2-year-old can at the cookie jar and know it is wrong.

But this President somehow believes that if you came into this country before you were 18 years old, or at least say you did, that it was through no fault of your own that somehow your parents brought you in. And now, we have 50,000 kids from countries other than Mexico-- Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras--who are being pushed up into the United States of America, who are attracted to come here. Why? Because of the powerful magnet of no enforcement of the law, no effective enforcement of the law here in the United States. The magnet of family members that have already been beneficiaries of no enforcement of the law.

We had a case that was decided in December of 2013. I introduced it into the Congressional Record in the Judiciary Committee a couple of weeks ago. An illegal alien mother in Virginia had abandoned her 10- year-old daughter in Guatemala. She had hired a human smuggling coyote to smuggle her 10-year-old daughter across Mexico into the United States. They were supposed to deliver this child to this illegal home in Virginia. They were caught at the border. The human smuggler had charges brought against her. She had been in trouble for this same kind of activity in the past. So they brought charges for trafficking and human smuggling against the coyote, the human coyote. But the 10-year- old girl, what did she do with her? They loaded her up--she is an illegal alien, too--and delivered her up to Virginia, to her illegal alien mother into a household full of illegal aliens. ICE completed the crime. Immigration and Customs Enforcement completed the crime.

And when the judge rendered his decision on the prosecution of the human trafficker, he wrote that he had had a case like that in each preceding week in the previous month, at least four of those similar cases where ICE had completed the crime of human trafficking and had delivered this child--which may or may not be the daughter of the resident of the illegal household in Virginia--delivered this child into that household.

Now, that message went out, Mr. Speaker, all over Central America: If you are from somewhere other than Mexico, send your children to America. And they are coming across. They are climbing up on trains. They are riding that dangerous track. Some of them are walking. All of them are subject to being victims of the drug cartels and the violence. And yes, they are leaving violent countries.

The violent death rate in Guatemala, according to a Web site that tracks that, is 74.9 violent deaths per 100,000. The U.S. violent death rate is 6.5 per 100,000. That will tell you about the ratio of how much more dangerous it is in a place like Guatemala. Honduras, according to the United Nations report that just came out a few months ago, has the highest murder rate in the world, with 92 homicides per 100,000. But their numbers have grown in the last couple of years. They don't show the violent deaths rates as being that high.

But we do know by the U.N. records that eight of the 10 most violent countries in the world are in the Western Hemisphere. They are in Central America or northern South America, not Mexico.

America's violent death rate is 6.5 per 100,000. Mexico's violent death rate is 18.2 per 100,000. It is not quite three times that of the United States. But still, if you think of a country that has triple the violent death rate, and you send a lot of their young men here, there are going to be people in this country that die as a result of those decisions. And I am not picking on Mexico because it is far more violent south of Mexico, multiple times more violent south of Mexico.

In Honduras, there are 92 homicides per 100,000, compared to Mexico's 18.2. In Guatemala, the rate is 74.9 in violent deaths, not homicides. And in El Salvador, some years you don't get records because it is so violent there.

However, when you look at those countries and the homicide rates that they have, only Honduras has a higher violent death rate than Detroit. We should put this in perspective, Mr. Speaker. If we are going to move kids out of Central America to the United States of America because they live in a violent society, we dare not send them to Detroit because we would be putting them in an environment that is more dangerous than the one they left. But if you look at the universe of unaccompanied minors, let alone those who are accompanied coming into America that are getting this Presidential de facto asylum, you will see a reflection of what showed up in the Guatemala newspaper here a couple of weeks ago, a Spanish language newspaper, interpreted to say thus: 80 percent of the unaccompanied minors are male; 83 percent of the unaccompanied minors are the ages of 15, 16, or 17. When they turn 18, they are no longer an unaccompanied minor--15, 16, or 17.

Mr. Speaker, I would challenge anyone to go anywhere in the world and identify a demographic group of people that are more likely to become gangbangers, to be violent, to perpetrate and prey upon innocence, than those that come from the most violent societies in the world. Eight of the 10 most violent societies in the world are south of Mexico, and they are coming here as OTMs, ``other than Mexicans.''

If you pick 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds from the most violent societies in the world and you drop them into another society by the tens of thousands and perhaps substantially more than that, there isn't any rational person that would think that there aren't going to be victims in the United States as a result of this policy.

And yet, the policy that I talked about, that had ICE completing the crime of hauling the 10-year-old illegal alien to Virginia to be rejoined with her illegal alien mother in Virginia, completing the crime, that has happened dozens or scores of times until now.

So now the President has his administration that is doing this thousands of times. They are taking these unaccompanied minors, housing them, coming through McAllen, in particular, but a lot of other places as well, putting them in temporary warehouses, loading them on buses and hauling them to places where they can process them. And then picking them up and, if they have a phone number in their pocket, some of them have a phone number memorized, wherever they say a relative or an extended family lives, ICE, or now Health and Human Services, delivers them there.

They pull up in front of a household. It might be a crack house. It might be a meth house. It might be a gangbanger's house. This is the address. They slide the door of the van open. Boom, out you go, you 17- year-old unaccompanied minor that we don't have a provision where we can deport you back to your home country. Let's see if we can get you to be a productive member of society by dropping you in this environment.

There are no checks and balances on this. There is no prudence to this. And, in fact, the ones younger than 14, they are not even printed. They don't have their fingerprints taken. They don't have their pictures taken. We don't know who they are. And about 50 percent of them were not born in a hospital so they don't have a birth certificate. They don't have a legal existence in their home country. There is not a way to track them. We don't know who we are handing them over to. We don't know who they are. We don't know if we pick them up next week or next year or 10 years from now if they actually were somebody that was processed through a warehouse in McAllen. These kids cannot be spread across this society in this fashion and infused across the illegal households in America. You grow more lawlessness, more lawlessness.

We are not relieving the pain and suffering. It is the parents that have abandoned their children. It is the parents that have endangered their children.

There was a little child in my district about 3 years old, a little girl who walked out of her house during the day. Her mother was working in the packing plant at night, and she needed to sleep during the day.

Yes, I trusted her mother was an immigrant--legal or illegal, I don't know. But this little girl wandered down the street several blocks. And somebody found this little girl and picked her up. And they looked around and asked questions and finally found out that, well, she came from this house where this mother was sleeping. So our Department of Human Services, our Iowa HHS, sat this mother down and said, this can't continue. You have got to care for this child. You can't let this child wander off on the street. Even while you are sleeping during the day-- she needed to because she was working at night. But the child could not be left to wander because it is child endangerment. It is child abandonment. And they told this mother, you take care of your child, or we will take your child and put your child into foster care. And if you don't shape up, we will put this child into adoption so this child has a real chance in life.

We do not tolerate people who abandon or endanger their children in Iowa, and I don't believe we do that in any other State in this Union.

But the people who send their children across 1,000 miles of Mexico on the death train, exposed to drug cartels and human trafficking and the kind of slavery and exploitation that takes place on the victims that are coming up here, the parents who sent them along that path, they have abandoned their children. They have endangered their children. Over 1,000 miles of Mexico, not a few blocks down the street in a little safe Iowa town; 1,000 miles in Mexico.

And we, this great, benevolent Obama administration, will pick these children up and deliver them anywhere in America that they want to go because they have a phone number in their pocket, or an address that they memorized, and pull the van up in front of the crack house, open the sliding door and say, okay, here you are, fend for yourself? We should never put those children back in a household, an illegal household, never back into a law-violating environment.

These kids need to go home. There is another solution if we can't send them home. But putting them in these illegal households is not the right thing to do.

The President can solve this problem. Mr. Speaker, this is all in the President's head. The President sent out the advertisement that we are not going to enforce immigration law against you. He sent out the advertising that this government will take care of you, that we will make sure that you are living in a house where you have heat subsidy, rent subsidy, where you have food stamps, where you get an education, where you have health care, all paid for by somebody else, the sweat of somebody else's brow. And, by the way, now he wants $3.7 billion from Congress so he can hire every one of them a lawyer. Give them ObamaCare and hire them a lawyer, and now they will have everything that is the dream of every American--your own lawyer, your own government-issued health insurance policy, a rent subsidy, a heat subsidy, oh, and an Obama phone. Who wouldn't come to America if they believe all that is true? That is what this President is doing.

If he needed a place to put these kids back to their home countries, we have a bill. In fact, I have a bill here, and I will include it for the Record, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the title of the bill is the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, an amendment to it, and it addresses this topic. The topic is how we reach an agreement with the countries that are noncontiguous like Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras; just to be able to get an agreement to send their children back to their home country.

We can maybe direct this out of Congress if you get Harry Reid to go along with it, Mr. Speaker, but the President can do this on his own. All he needs to do is call up the president of any one of those three countries and say that you need to be on the tarmac in, say, Guatemala City airport; I am sending a planeload of your unaccompanied minors back. You repatriate them back into your country and your society. If you don't do that, we are going to freeze up the foreign aid, and we are going to freeze up the trade. We are not going to be subsidizing a country that won't cooperate and sends their children up here for us to put on the public dole.

The President can solve this thing. It wouldn't take one day to solve this. It has taken him 5\1/2\ years to create this problem. It is the President's problem. The President refuses to solve it. He just wants more money to expand government and hire more lawyers and more judges, but he has no intention of resolving this.

He is going to infuse tens of thousands--in the end hundreds of thousands--of people into America in an effort to turn Texas blue, to do what the Bush administration feared would happen if they didn't do that outreach in the first place.

I don't believe we should do identity politics. I think we should reach out to everybody and say that you are created in God's image, that is good enough for me. You are one of us if you want to work and earn your way, if you want to pay some taxes and carry your share of the load, because when you shoulder that harness, you make the load lighter for everyone else, and you increase the average per capita GDP of our people. When that happens, we all live better. But there are 104.1 million Americans of working age who are simply not in the workforce.

That is going in the wrong direction. And the last thing we need to do is have tens of millions of unskilled and especially illiterate people who are going to compete for the lowest skills jobs. This country is going exactly in the wrong direction. We need a President who will move this country in the right direction. The President can fix this problem he created. He can fix it. This Congress probably can't force the President to fix the problem, but the bill that I have just filed into the Record takes us a ways along that, Mr. Speaker, and judging from the time, I appreciate your attention.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives, and I appreciate the opportunity to do so.

There are a number of topics that are on my mind, and generally for me, Mr. Speaker, it flows from the previous debate.

As I listened to the deliberation and the dialogue and I will say the cooperative nature that came between the chairman and the ranking member of the Select Committee on Intelligence here this evening, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that kind of dialogue, and I think our Founding Fathers would be very pleased if they could see that this work that is being done, a lot of it behind closed doors in the Select Committee on Intelligence, is being done in a deliberative process, sometimes in a classified setting, but often in a nonpartisan environment.

It seems as though, when the television cameras come on, the partisan nature of this United States Congress is amplified by the media's coverage of the events that take place, and when the doors get closed, we get serious about policy in a different kind of a way.

We are no longer messaging to America or simply having that kind of debate and dialogue that our Founding Fathers envisioned, and I don't know that it is particularly a phenomenon that is unique to the United States Congress.

At the time of our Founding Fathers, we didn't have instantaneous media communications that went out across the District of Columbia or into the States or across the country, for that matter, or the world.

As technology developed, they had the printing press. The printing press allowed for newspaper to be printed in a limited form, in a compressed and compact form. And as that message went out across the country, sometimes it took weeks for the actions here in Congress to penetrate into the public. And by then, there was another wave of action and another wave of action, an entirely different rhythm here in Congress as compared to the rhythm that we have here. I think the pace of what we do in this Congress is related to the ability to translate a message out to the American people and out to the world.

And so now going from an era when information traveled at its fastest pace, as our Founding Fathers helped shape this Nation, information traveled at its fastest pace about as fast as a horse could gallop. That was the closest thing they had to lightning speed of communications back in 1776. Today, information travels at the speed of light, and it is not only that there is a single piece of information that goes

out of here at the speed of light, but all kinds of pieces of information can go out simultaneously everywhere, not just to the District of Columbia, not to the surrounding States alone, not to the 50 States that we have and the U.S. territories across the reaches of the globe and the Pacific, for example, but everywhere in the world it can go at the speed light, which is as close to instantaneously as possible. And it can be transmitted out of an iPhone. It used to be a BlackBerry and they got a little bit too slow for us. Now, we can send video around the world in real time from a device that hangs from our belt. That has changed the posture of the politics in the United States Congress. It has changed the messaging. It has changed the civilization, and it changed the culture in different ways.

So now, we have people sitting in their living rooms all over America who for a long time now have been able to sit down from that desk and do email. That is a methodology that is now more than 20 years old, the ability to transfer instantaneously a letter that we might write on an electronic page and click the ``send'' button and it can go anywhere around the world at roughly the speed of light. But now there are millions of people sitting there who have practiced with email extensively and set up their email trees. And now a faster way to do that is on Facebook, and a more compressed way is to send it out by Twitter. There are a number of different social media that people are exercising, and there will be more that will be developed.

While that happens, the American people are projecting their opinions and their observations instantaneously to their families and to their friends, to the people who are part of their distribution list, those who are their followers on their friend list. This has changed the way we do business in this country, and it has brought about public opinions that are accelerated in a faster way; a far, far faster way than how public opinions were formed in, say, the era of our founding.

Because of this, it has been an expansion of our economy, the expansion of our efficiency. We are far more productive than we were before because we can communicate more quickly than before. But at the same time, it has opened us up for the kind of attacks that come from people who, in the era of our founding, in that era of say 235 years ago or so, they had no capability of reaching Americans, no capability of getting to our shores, and no capability of penetrating into the domestic life of Americans. We were safe enough then from the Barbary pirates. We had to go there before they would attack us.

Yet, at that era of time, 20 percent of the Federal budget that was appropriated in this city was committed to paying tribute, which was bribes, you might say ``mordida'' in today's terms, to the Barbary pirates. Now we find ourselves still fighting the same kind of ideology, of people who would use cyberspace to attack us, who would use airplanes to attack us, both of which were not envisioned by our Founding Fathers, both of which can get here far faster than a Barbary pirate corsair could be rowed across the Atlantic Ocean. That has changed the rhythm of what we do.

The Select Committee on Intelligence sees a lot of this. They see the most immediate intel that we have. They try to address this appropriately. And some of the things that we need to do is intel on our enemies.

So I am hopeful that this bill which has just been passed will contribute to making it safer for Americans, and make our enemies, whose simple design is that they would want to kill us because we are not their culture, not their religion, not their--and when I refer to them as ``civilization,'' I have to put that in quotes, Mr. Speaker. But that is the situation that is in front of us.

As the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence delivers a bill to the floor about which most of us don't have inside knowledge of, we have to keep in mind what has happened with the intelligence community and the results of the attacks that have taken place around the world. That takes me to what we saw, heard, and learned and thought we knew, to a greater degree than most Americans would agree did know, with regard to Iraq.

We went in there to liberate them in March of 2003. I was here in this Congress then. I remember the intelligence that was delivered. I remember the rhythm that was taking place, the message delivered by the President and the Vice President, the agreement on what they had for intelligence that went from U.S. intelligence, Israeli intelligence, French intelligence, everybody in the intelligence community for the world agreed essentially on the same thing, and Saddam was removed from power. American and coalition forces went in to do that, and in the ensuing aftermath of the liberation, we saw an ebb and flow of forces in Iraq.

One of them was a surprise for me to learn, as al Qaeda stepped in to places and took over in places like Fallujah and Ramadi--that we allowed that to happen on our watch. We occupied bases in Iraq. We had swept through the country and cleaned the country up. We had set up a government and turned it over to the voice of the Iraqi people. Free enterprise was starting to flow. Oil was starting to flow and was starting to go into the treasuries of Iraq. And yet, cities like Fallujah and Ramadi and others were taken over by al Qaeda. We watched that happen. That happened under the Bush administration. After it got to a certain point, President George W. Bush began to look for solutions. He was not willing to accept a capitulation in Iraq, an all- out pullout of Iraq that would have allowed for al Qaeda and our American enemies, generally Sunni-related forces, to take Iraq back over again. That was what we had under Saddam, not al Qaeda but the Sunni forces dominated Iraq. And the forces within Iraq that had been pushing back on American forces and Shia forces within Iraq, our President was not willing to accept that. President Bush was not willing to accept that.

He put together the surge, the counterinsurgency strategy that was drafted by General Petraeus. General Petraeus took some time off from his combat leadership in Iraq to sit down at Fort Leavenworth and write the counterinsurgency strategy. That strategy, before it was actually brought forward and published, was a strategy that was beginning to be developed to be implemented in Iraq.

I had the circumstance of timing to have been in Iraq before the surge was a name but when the concept was being discussed and developed by our commanders in the field and pushed by General Petraeus at the time. I saw the success of the surge as we went in and aligned ourselves with the tribal interests of the Sunnis as well as the Shias, who understood that al Qaeda was too brutal, that they could not be trusted to simply allow the Iraqi people to run their own country and run their own government, and so they aligned themselves with the people who they envisioned would be the successful ones on the other side of the violent and bloody conflict that was ensuing.

That aligned the right people on the right side, on our side of that particular battle, Mr. Speaker, that particular phase of the war in Iraq. There were many battles. It allowed for the surge of U.S. forces to step in, sweep al Qaeda out and build an alliance and an allegiance with local tribal interests say, in Anbar, and in multiple provinces and really all of Iraq to establish a peaceful foundation that would allow for a legitimate government of, by, and for the people of Iraq, and a free enterprise system to be put in place. They had then an opportunity to succeed and an opportunity to build a stable democracy in the country of Iraq.

Those were the circumstances that the Bush administration left for the Obama administration. However, I would add one piece to this that is apparently not being discussed in today's news media, Mr. Speaker, and that is this: on November 17, 2008, after Barack Obama was elected for his first term in office, President Bush, under his administration, I will say allowed or recommended or assented to our U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, who is an individual who is a wonderful public servant, one of the most knowledgeable people that we have on that whole area of the world we call the Middle East and whom has impressed me with the deep knowledge and the good judgment he has, and the careful rhythm of the work that he does, someone who has an eye on the moving of the organism in that part of

the world and how U.S. policy influences that part of the world. So I wanted to put these commercials in for Ambassador Crocker because I remain very impressed with Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

It came to be his task to sign, however, a new status of forces agreement with Iraq. The moment I read that status of forces agreement, which was signed by Ambassador Crocker on behalf of President Bush, November 17, 2008, after President Obama was elected, so under the lame duck era of President-elect Obama and in the last months of President Bush's administration--Ambassador Crocker signed the status of forces agreement, which agreed to pull all military forces out of Iraq, agreed to abandon the bases that we had established, abandon the airstrips that we had established, and the defensive positions, and the ability to project force in Iraq was not only diminished, it was essentially eliminated by that agreement.

I was alarmed that the administration would negotiate and agree to such a status of forces agreement that so weakened our ability to project power in Iraq; that with all of the blood and treasure that was invested, it sent the message that said either we don't care any longer or we have such confidence in the Maliki regime and such confidence in the new government that had been set up throughout those bloody years in Iraq that we didn't need to be there any longer.

I think of the history of the United States' involvement, Mr. Speaker, and the times we have gone into places like Germany, Japan, the Philippines, Korea, for example, around the world where America has invested blood and treasure, we have also established bases to operate from, to project power, to project force, to protect freedom throughout the reaches of the interests of the United States of America, and at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and billions, in fact trillions of dollars, we have not in the past washed our hands and walked away as if we wanted to be finished with it, except that as I speak, Mr. Speaker, it occurs to me that we did have General Winfield Scott in Mexico in about 1845. We signed the Treaty of Hidalgo which essentially gave Mexico back to Mexico after the Americans had invaded and occupied the state of Mexico, including Mexico City. We could have stayed. We could have established an American presence there. We could have brought the American civilization into Mexico. Looking back on it historically, perhaps we should have done so, but that was the time when American blood and American treasure was just packaged up and brought back home again, although out of that bargain came the Gadsden Purchase and also a new line of American border between the United States and Mexico. So there was something gained from that.

In this case, we sacked up our bats and went home. We left a few marines in the embassy in Baghdad. The rest of it, we left to the Iraqis. As the intelligence came up, Mr. Speaker, and we watched what was going on, we learned that ISIS was growing and the conflict in Syria reached a questionable peak last September, last August, actually, around Labor Day in September when President Obama announced that he was planning on doing a tiny little, itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny surgical strike into Syria, and that was when Secretary of State Kerry said it would be, and this is not an exact quote, but what I remember is that the strike would be infinitesimally small. So a tiny, little military ding on Assad's regime to send a message to him: Don't use your chemical weapons any longer on Syrians. Well, that never happened. It didn't happen partly because we needed the British cooperation. Or, apparently, the President wanted the British cooperation and David Cameron, the Prime Minister, went to the British Parliament and said, I would like to have authorization to conduct a military operation strike--I don't know if he said infinitesimally small--in Syria.

And the British Parliament rejected that proposal, and so David Cameron was powerless to go forward in support of a U.S. effort that might have been a military strike or two, however small they might have been, in Syria.

Then our President, President Obama, toyed with the idea of coming to Congress and asking us for the permission or the endorsement or the authority to conduct operations in Syria.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I want to make it clear that my opinion is, constitutionally, the President of the United States is Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. Some in this Congress would argue that the President can't issue a military strike order without first getting the consent of Congress.

I would argue instead that we are living in an era where the President of the United States must have that authority. He must have the authority to, in an instant, order a military strike if that is what the circumstances and the intelligence say is required. It is the President's decision. If the President orders our military into operations and over a period of time--and I think that an appropriate period of time today is a 30-day window--then if it is going to go beyond that, he should come back to Congress and ask for our support and ask for our endorsement of those military operations. But the initial strikes, the President has to have the authority, and has the authority under the Constitution, to order an immediate and military strike.

The President didn't do that. He followed David Cameron's request before the British Parliament, and then when the British Parliament said, no, he toyed with the idea of asking Congress. Congress sent enough messages out through the media that essentially was a whip check on the vote of Congress on whether we would authorize military force going into Syria.

When the President understood he wasn't going to get that authorization, then he decided apparently not to act in Syria, and he decided apparently to lead from behind--which is the definition of following, not leading--and he decided apparently to do the things in foreign policy that we have seen him do continually, and that is best described by the word ``dither.'' The President has been dithering on foreign policy, especially the things that require immediate response.

There is a theory in human nature and philosophy that says that if you procrastinate, then eventually the decision will be made for you, that if you dither, the decision will be made for you.

Action in Syria, or the decision, was resolved by dithering and waiting, and now it became clear that we can't identify good guys on either side of this argument. We had good guys. And I didn't advocate for this, Mr. Speaker, and so I am somewhat of a Monday morning quarterback looking back on this Syrian issue.

We had some intelligence that identified the people that were good people, those who wanted to see a free Syria. The Free Syrian Army initially led by Syrians that believed in a free Syria and Syrians that believe that Syria needed to remain a nation-state, a country unto itself, that was owned, operated, and run, a government that responded to the people of Syria, that was the initial ideology that drove the Free Syrian Army by the intel that I picked up. I have traveled into that part of world a number of times, Mr. Speaker.

One of the colonels who was a leader in the movement was essentially, I'll say, given over to the Assad regime in a military operation and was then pressed into prison, and that made him powerless. At that point, al Qaeda and the offshoots of al Qaeda and the factions of it began to assert themselves and infiltrate the Free Syrian Army to the point where we are not able any longer to identify the positive forces in Syria. You have al Qaeda and their affiliates, including ISIS, that are operating there, that have established the foundations for what they believe is to be the future caliphate of Islam.

As a result, partly the result of the U.S. not asserting itself, partly the result of perhaps not having intelligence that was good enough in that part of the world, the U.S. didn't act. The President led from behind. The U.S. didn't act. The British Parliament said ``no'' to David Cameron, and we have a mess in Syria. We have had multiple executions and beheadings taking place, Christians being persecuted and killed in Syria as well. Now the foundation of ISIS has flowed out of Syria and is flowing across Iraq.

This group, the ISIS, has asserted themselves to the point where some are

saying we need to avoid a civil war in Iraq. I will argue instead we are almost past that. We are almost past the point where the civil war has actually been engaged and it is closer to the point where it could be over, resulting in an ISIS invasion and occupation of nearly the entire nation-state of Iraq. They pushed that far into the countryside where the majority of the real estate is controlled and occupied by them.

This is an astonishing development, especially considered in light of the President's statements 3 or 4 months ago when he told America and the world that we didn't need to worry very much about ISIS because they are simply the junior varsity--the junior varsity, Mr. Speaker. How could a force, a junior varsity that doesn't have an identifiable source of military supplies and munitions--although we have some intel on where that comes from--that doesn't have a confident, identifiable source of funding to pay their people or buy their equipment munitions--although we have some fairly good sources on where that comes from--how could this junior varsity rise up in a period of 3 to 4 months from the time that the President said that they are the JV, how could they rise up and take over that much of Syria and flow into Iraq and invade and occupy Anwar province, for example, and now take the refinery at Baiji, the largest refinery in Iraq, and shut down or control the oil supply in Iraq? Now they have diverted it back to their own uses. Now we are at gas rationing in Iraq. Baghdad is threatened to be surrounded. The President has announced some days ago that he is willing to send up to 300 military personnel into Iraq presumably to prepare to evacuate Americans.

This is a calamity of colossal proportions, Mr. Speaker. Apparently, it was unforeseen by the White House and the President of the United States, the wise Commander in Chief and the people in the White House who have the maximum access to the entire intelligence community, the intelligence community that is being discussed and reauthorized here on the floor of the House tonight by the chair and the ranking member, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

I would think that the question that it doesn't take much intelligence to ask is: Mr. President, how did you miss this? How did you declare ISIS the junior varsity? How could they have emerged as this powerful force that is sweeping across Iraq?

This isn't a civil war. This is a blitzkrieg by the enemy that is taking over the civilian governments and invading and occupying the towns in Iraq and executing the people who do not fit their particular religious sect. They are persecuting Christians. They are driving Christians out of that part of the world, and they are killing those that they choose to.

It isn't that alone. They bragged over a week ago that they had executed 1,700 Iraqi soldiers. Most of these soldiers will be Shi'a. And it is the Sunnis that are doing the executing and the killing. They have long been the most aggressive, the most militant, the most brutal, and the most violent force of the Islamic world, in that part of the world, in Iraq in particular.

ISIS has apparently and, according to some news accounts, are so violent and so brutal that they have even caused al Qaeda itself to step back from them and say: You are too violent and too brutal. Now, that is going a long way to think that people that would fly planes into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, and burn to death the Americans that they did would find that the brutality of ISIS is so brutal that they would want to distance themselves from it.

I am not sure I believe that analysis. I think that that is one of those conclusions du jour that we come to; once you hear somebody say it, it gets repeated again and again, and pretty soon others pick it up, no one challenges it, and now we think that al Qaeda has been repulsed by the brutality of ISIS. I am not convinced of that.

Mr. Speaker, I can say this: I am repulsed by their brutality. I am repulsed by the beheadings that they do. I am repulsed by the videos. I am repulsed by the pictures. I am repulsed by the summary executions of hundreds, and probably thousands, of people that don't fit their religious sect that find themselves within the enforcement capability now of the black-flagged ISIS.

I am repulsed by what has come out of there. If we could see the actual reality of all the things that are going on within that part of the battle zone and in the aftermath of it as they go down through the streets and do their ethnic cleansing, I think we will find that thousands of people have been summarily executed by ISIS.

I think we will find that at least hundreds have been beheaded. I think we will find that thousands have been shot in the back of the head as they have their hands tied behind them and they are forced to kneel. I think we will find that in those numbers there will also be hundreds, and perhaps thousands, that have been forced to lay on the ground in a ditch and simply executed with AK-47 fire into the back of their heads or wherever. I think we will find that some--in fact, the videos are out there now--have been forced to kneel beside a pit in a hole in the ground that has a fire burning in it from gas poured into the hole, had gas poured onto their heads and then pushed into the hole to be burned to death in a pit.

That is the kind of brutality that we have that is taking over that part of the world. That is the kind of people that have raced across the desert, in the open desert, and faced no air power from the United States of America whatsoever. They have only faced this: the President sitting in the White House dithering, a President who has decided--he gave a speech a week ago last Friday at noon in this town, and this speech was, he came out to do his press conference and he said--I am going to give this my summary version, the Steve King interpretation of the President's speech that day, a week ago last Friday at noon. He essentially conveyed this message to us:

Things aren't going as well in Iraq as we had hoped. There is an enemy that has penetrated into Iraq. We are not going to have boots on the ground in Iraq. I have several options. We are going to study the options for a few days. It will take at least that long to evaluate. There will be no boots on the ground. We have options, but we are not going to deploy any options until such time as there are political solutions. If there is not a political solution, there is not going to be peace in Iraq.

So he says: I am going to require the Iraqis to produce a political solution before we will use any of the options that we have that might--he didn't say this--but that might help them, was the implication. There will be no boots on the ground. We are going to study this for a few days. Then after we study it, we are going give the Iraqis an assignment, and the assignment will be: produce a political solution and then maybe we can get around to helping you.

Huh. Well, that is the formula, Mr. Speaker, for dithering. That is the formula for dithering rather than fiddling. And while Iraq is being invaded by the black flag, radical Islamists to establish a caliphate, the President is dithering in a very similar way that Nero was fiddling while Rome was burning.

Iraq is collapsing. The soil in Iraq has been sanctified by the blood of our warriors and our heroes to the tune of billions upon billions of U.S. dollars, much of it borrowed from foreign countries to keep this budget and this economy afloat. All of that price, and we don't know how this is going to come out?

I actually don't expect that the entire nation-state of Iraq will be swamped by the black flag ISIS. I don't actually expect that, but it is a significant threat that that happens--a significant threat. As we watch the map, as the flood and the takeover of that sanctified sand in Iraq is getting greater and greater on the side of ISIS and smaller and smaller for the Shi'as, and while the confusion within what I would call the legitimized Government of Iraq causes them to retreat and back up, it looks like their last redoubt is likely to be Baghdad.

The President has dithered, and the opportunities for air strikes from the military have diminished and now the opportunities to actually bring what would otherwise be a cheap delay, at least, of that invasion, an invasion that runs at the speed that is as fast as an American military, an American armor penetrated into Iraq when we

went in to liberate in March of 2003. ISIS is penetrating into Iraq at a speed almost that fast without nearly the equipment, without nearly the planning, without nearly the communications as the Iraqis peel backwards in front of them.

This is something more similar to--well, I will put it this way: when Desert Storm came about and needed to be done, there was much discussion in the public airways in this country about the Republican Guard in Iraq, these crack troops that were highly trained and well equipped.

Even though their tanks were a little bit on the old side, they were supposedly well maintained and well positioned, and their armor could not be penetrated. To send U.S. forces against them in the desert was going to be a bloodbath supposedly, if you listen to some of the pundits here in this country, generally the liberal ones.

I am listening to this dialogue and have been to the locations now a number of times, and I see where they have dug their tank pits, and they take a bulldozer, dig the sand out in two directions, pull the tank down in, they set that tank in, in a fighting position, and it can fire.

It can fire from that fighting position, and any kind of horizontal fire will be blocked by the dirt that surrounds it, but from the air, they are sitting ducks.

That seemingly did not occur to the liberal people who were pontificating about how fearsome the Republican Guard was, but we know what happened when the American Air Force began to fly sorties over the Republican Guard and over their armored divisions.

A similar, in fact, a greater vulnerability existed for ISIS, as they traveled down the paths through the desert and the roads--easy, easy targets for the U.S. Air Force.

While this is going on, the President had decided: I am going to spend some days thinking about this, we have to study this, we will gather all this intel together, and then I am going to require a political solution for the Iraqis, I am going to dither.

Frustrating and infuriating, it should send a message to the Iraqis there isn't a will there. Our enemies know that, so they push on us. They push on us in Iraq, and we are watching the real estate be taken over, with black flags flying over it.

We are watching the will of the Iraqi troops to collapse in the face of the enemy. We have watched, as I said, the refinery of Baiji is now invaded and occupied, Fallujah is, and Ramadi is--multiple cities--Tal Afar, on and on, multiple cities in Iraq taken over, who now have a black flag of al Qaeda's affiliate, ISIS, flying over it.

The influence of America is diminished and pushed backwards. Iraq looks to Iran as an ally. They wonder if the U.S. is going to do anything.

That is what we are faced with, Mr. Speaker. We are faced with a Russia that is pushing hard against the free world, a Putin who took the glory of the Olympics and the Russian hypernationalism that flowed from it and decided that he would immediately, after the Olympics in Sochi, went in and invaded and occupied Crimea.

He had a base there with a lease on it. If it was just a place to operate from, he could have done that peacefully, without violating international law and without going and invading and occupying. He could have operated freely out of his naval base there in Crimea. He chose not to do that.

I think it is ironic that Yalta was invaded and occupied by Putin. That was the location where Stalin and Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt negotiated the line across Europe that was to be the line in the aftermath of the Second World War, which became the Iron Curtain and became the dividing line between east and west.

Yalta was invaded and occupied as a component of Crimea, by Putin riding on the wave of Russian hypernationalism that came from the success of the Olympics, and now, he is pushing into Ukraine and testing them.

We know that--no, let's just say this, Mr. Speaker: we believe that, when troops show up and they are wearing Russian uniforms and they are carrying Russian weapons and they appear to be deployed as Russian troops in everything except a lacking of insignias on their uniforms and not flying a Russian flag, who do we think these people are? Do we think they are something other than Russians?

Why would we think that some force that looks, for all the world, like Russian forces--because Putin doesn't admit that they are Russian, somehow they might have come from someplace else. Who do we think they are? The Russians, the Russians in Russian uniforms, with Russian equipment, Russian supplies, Russian systems, everything except the Russian insignias.

Meanwhile, we don't hear from the President of the United States in a strong way, and meanwhile, Ukrainians wonder what is going to happen. They wonder if they have a chance of defending themselves. They wonder if any other part of the world is going to do that. Are we going to see the Iron Curtain be pushed westerly again?

When the Berlin Wall came down November 9, 1989, that was the crashing down of the Iron Curtain. For a time, freedom echoed across Europe, all the way across Europe. In fact, it echoed, at least theoretically, all the way across Asia, to the Pacific Ocean, and it has been pushed back again by the strong arm of Vladimir Putin.

Now, we are seeing a line of demarcation between east and west that is being redefined by Putin with his hypernationalism, in his effort to restore the old Soviet Union--the former Soviet Union.

The Eastern bloc countries are very nervous about what happens with a very aggressive Putin. They are very nervous because they wonder: Do they have an ally in the United States?

They wonder if they can hang on for another 2\1/2\ years until a new President is elected that is going to believe in America, in a robust America, an America that defends itself, an America that has bonded with its allies, an America that has tax and regulatory policies that allows for the growth over a free enterprise system, so that we can see an economic vigor that will drive our economy here and give us confidence in who we are again and go to the furthest outreaches of the world where Americans are doing business in country after country.

The AmCham, the American Chamber of Commerce, and nation after nation become the ambassadors of the United States. They teach the world about trade and free enterprise. They teach the world about we have an American--it is not a hypernationalism. What it is is a very active commercial style. I would give an example.

As I deal with the Australians, for example--and I have a special affection for the Aussies--they will come and make contact, and they will make friends, and they will be sociable. Then they will go away, come back again, and do that same thing.

On the third time, they are more likely to bring up the discussion about the business that they want to conduct, Mr. Speaker, but Americans are not like that. We are a little bit different.

We are more like the Donald Trumps, where we come in, we figure out what we want to do businesswise, we think we understand what the other party needs and wants in a business deal, we believe that all parties involved in a business deal need to have an opportunity to profit.

So if $1 is going to change hands with one other person, two people need to benefit from that, the buyer and the seller. If it is a three- way deal, then three entities benefit. If it is thousands or tens of thousands of people--shareholders, for example--everybody is designed to benefit from that.

We go in and we say: Here is the deal. This is our proposal. This is why it is good for you. This is why it is good for us. This is why we ought to sign here on the dotted line. We will get around to all the niceties and discussion afterwards. Maybe we will have a meal or a drink together, but let's do the business, and then we will talk about the social side.

That is the American way. We do business fast. We do business efficiently. It is a culture that has developed in this country because we have had an unfettered ability to buy, sell, trade, make, gain--here in America, without a government interference, without the belief that we had to set at the table negotiators that represented

the government, negotiators that represented the unions, to sit and talk with the negotiators that represented the capital.

In America, we do business with capital--capital because we do business for a profit and capital deserves a return on its investment. Labor gets the benefit from that profit by increasing wages and benefits to hire the best people to produce that good or service that has a marketable value.

That is what has made America's economy great, is our attitude about buy, sell, trade, make, gain, do good, produce goods and services with a marketable value here and abroad.

Let's send our Americans abroad to do business, let them take our values there, let them encourage people to come here and do business with us, and let's open up our trade wherever we can all over the world, with a free and smart trade system, that if we are going to grant access to our markets, what we ask is let us also have access to your markets.

We don't believe etiologically in trade protectionism. We believe in free and smart trade. We don't believe in stupid trade. Stupid trade would be, well, you have access to our markets, but it is okay with us if we don't have access to yours. No deal.

Americans make a lot of deals, and we make them efficient, we make them smart, we make them fast, and we make them all over the world. That has been a foundation of the burgeoning growth of the American economy and the American civilization.

It has been restrained in recent years because we have a leadership that has failed to convince me that they believe in free enterprise.

We should remember that, even on the immigration flashcards that we have, Mr. Speaker, when legal immigrants come to America and they want to study to become citizens of the United States, they will study the history of this country and the things that are necessary to be prepared to take the naturalization test.

USCIS, the Citizenship and Immigration Services, has a collection of flashcards that they can study from, so they can be prepared for the test.

These flashcards are laminated. They are about this big. They are mostly red in their base with white letters on them, and you can look at them and ask this question: Who is the Father of our Country? Flip that card around. The answer: George Washington.

Who emancipated the slaves? Other side of the card: Abraham Lincoln. What is the economic system of the United States of America? Flip the card over: free enterprise capitalism, Mr. Speaker.

Now, I wish that the White House believed in it as much we ask our legal immigrants to believe in it as they prepare for the test for the naturalization to citizenship of the United States. That is part of who we are; yet our economy is stagnant, it is flat.

There seems to be an attitude that emerges from the administration that free enterprise and that capitalism itself is somehow a dirty word. No, it is a foundation of the economy of the United States of America. It is on the test.

They believe, as I watch their reaction, that somehow the capital, the employers, are victimizing both employees and customers and that there is plenty of money there and plenty of profit there to pay for more regulation, to pay for more taxation, and to pay for more raises and wages and benefits for employees that could be dictated by the White House.

That is not the American way. It has got to be free enterprise. The relationship between the employer and the employee is up to them, not up to the government. The government can't set wages.

A government can't determine that one work is comparable to another work. Only supply and demand can do that effectively and efficiently. That is the American way, Mr. Speaker.

There are other things that are the American way. For example, we don't support lawbreakers. We don't believe that people who habitually, in a calculated way, systematically violate America's laws should be rewarded for doing so.

We understand that, when Ronald Reagan said, what you tax, you get less of; what you subsidize, you get more of; and if you subsidize lawbreakers--if you reward lawbreakers, you get more lawbreakers.

I was disappointed with Ronald Reagan. I was disappointed twice during his administration. I watched him closely. I believe that Ronald Reagan understood the founding principles of this country so confidently and so clearly that no amount of lobbying, no amount of rhetoric, no amount of misinformation was going to change his adherence to the fundamental principles that are the pillars of American exceptionalism.

So here in this Congress, in 1986, in the House and down through the rotunda and the Senate, there was an intense debate about amnesty.

The debate went something like this: There are 1 million illegal immigrants in America. They have come across the border--generally across the border from Mexico--and it is too difficult, we can't deport them all--I think I have heard that before--so we must make an accommodation to them.

We are having difficulty getting enforcement at the border because there are competing interests in those who would drag down the effort to enforce our immigration laws, especially secure the border, but we can get full cooperation on border security and full cooperation on domestic enforcement if we just give amnesty to the million people that are here illegally, and from this point forward hereafter, we will all enthusiastically join together and enforce immigration law, and INS will be in every office of every employer in America, examining your records, to make sure that you are carefully following the law and being there to be the tool to help enforce immigration law.

I listened to that, and I thought: President Reagan, you know you can't reward lawbreakers. If you do that, you are going to get more lawbreakers--just like if you subsidize any activity, you are going to get more of that activity, and if you tax it, you are going to get less of it.

Well, the penalty for violating the law is equivalent to a taxation. It is a deterrent for violating the law. The greater the penalty, the less law violators that you have.

The less the penalty, the greater the incentive, the more law violators you have. So, if you wanted to subsidize lawbreakers, you are going to get lots more lawbreakers.

These arguments, I thought, were so clear that I didn't need to go stand outside the White House with a sign. I could just write a letter here and there and with great confidence raise my family, run my business, and have trust that the President of the United States would veto that Amnesty Act that was to come to his desk in 1986.

It came to his desk and the people around him strongly encouraged President Reagan to sign the Amnesty Act and take all of this disagreement and all of this angst off the table that had to do with the million illegal aliens who had entered the United States illegally or were unlawfully present in America, give them a legal presence and be done with it, and INS will enforce this law at the border--Border Patrol--and internally at Immigration and Naturalization Services.

Ronald Reagan signed the Amnesty Act. In my construction office, as an employer, I hit the high levels of frustration, at least for that stage of my life, but I began to comply with the law.

When we had applicants for jobs that came in, I made sure that I took the records that they have. I made sure that I evaluated their documents and their Social Security card, if I could get it. Most of the times, I could then. And a driver's license. At least two forms of identification.

I made sure that our job application form collected the records necessary that were required by that 1986 Amnesty Act. I made sure that I kept those records for every applicant. I was prepared for our employees and the applicants for the jobs that wanted to come in and work for King Construction, and I made sure that I had all those records up to snuff. I was meticulous in keeping those records and making sure that my executive secretary kept those records because I feared--or I was concerned--I don't know that I was afraid, because I did it right--but I expected INS, or Immigration and Naturalization Services, the forerunner to

now ICE, to show up at my office and say, We want to see your records. We want to make sure that you haven't hired anybody illegally. We want to make sure you haven't entertained hiring anybody illegally. We want to make sure that you have collected the documentation so that you are not enabling the employment of illegal aliens in America.

Well, you all know this, Mr. Speaker. Nobody ever showed up from INS, as they didn't show up in millions of employers' offices around the country. The enforcement didn't materialize domestically. It didn't really get enhanced at the border either. The promise of enforcement came unfilled, but the promise of amnesty for a million people came in triplicate.

Three times the number of people that were projected to be amnestied by the 1986 Amnesty Act were actually granted amnesty. Over 3 million of them were granted amnesty. I have met with a respectable number of them at random and happenstance over the years, and I asked them, What do you think of amnesty? They will look at me and they will say, I support amnesty. I think it was a good idea. Amnesty was good me for, amnesty was good for my family. Amnesty is a good policy.

So I say, What do you think about the rule of law and what do you think about the reward when people break the law? Should they be rewarded for it?

Well, that takes them off in a place they don't want to discuss. They just know what was good for them. I don't disagree. It was good for them, but it was bad for America. It was really bad for America, because here we are 28 years later and we are still debating the issue. The carrot of amnesty still hangs out in front of people from all over the world that says, Well, Americans have a soft heart. They are the most generous Nation in the world, welcoming immigrants to the tune of 1.2 million legal immigrants a year.

We don't even care about the quality of the standards of those who are coming into America legally--not very much, anyway--because between 7 and 11 percent of the legal immigration in America is immigration that is measured by some kind of a standard that might be an index of what they can do to contribute to our country.

Every nation in the world should have an immigration policy that is designed to enhance the economic, social, and the cultural well-being of that country.

I have long stated and continue to believe that we must have an immigration policy here that is designed to enhance the economic, social, and cultural well-being of the United States of America. We can't operate an immigration policy that seems to be designed to become the safety valve for those in poverty in the world--over 7 billion people. The poverty in the world grows at a faster rate than we have the ability to drain off even those who are the most aggrieved by poverty.

By the way, the numbers that I have seen when we were back at about 6 billion people on the planet were that there were about 4.6 billion people on the planet that had a lower standard of living than the average person from Mexico.

So if you think about alleviating poverty, there are many places to draw people from where the poverty is worse. And there are many places to draw people from where the perpetrators of violence come in significantly greater numbers.

However, even the violent death rate in the United States is only one-third of the violent death rate in Mexico. If you compare violent death rates in other countries, Mexico is one of the safer countries from Central America and on south. I think you actually have to get down to Chile before you find a country that has a violent death rate in the Western Hemisphere comparable to the lower death rate of the United States.

At one time, Colombia had a violent death rate 15.4 times that of the United States. Our rate today is 6.5 violent deaths per 100,000. Roughly 10 years ago, our violent death rates was 4.5 violent deaths per 100,000. At that time, Mexico's violent death rate was 13.2. A 4.6 violent death rate in the U.S., a 13.2 violent death rate in Mexico.

Drug wars and the massive killings that have taken place that have exceeded 50,000 people in Mexico--maybe 70,000 or more that have died in the drug wars--that is part of the statistic that has taken Mexico at a higher violent death rate now of over 18 per 100,000, and perhaps there is some index here that the U.S. violent death rate has gone in that period of time from 4.6 on up to 6.5 violent deaths per 100,000, but the ratio remains the same. Mexico is about three times more violent than the U.S., but it is significantly less violent than countries like Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

It has been stated here in this Congress that the highest murder rate, I believe, in the world, is Honduras. I have not seen those numbers, Mr. Speaker, and I don't know that that is true, but I can tell you the violent death rate in Guatemala is 74.9 violent deaths per 100,000 compared to 6.5 violent deaths per 100,000 in the United States.

It is easy enough to do the math. It is a little more than 11 times the violent death rate of the United States in Guatemala. So there is significant violence there, but some of the people that are the perpetrators of that violence are also migrants.

If we look at McAllen, Texas, and the housing that is taking place as illegal immigrants come across the border, it looks like thousands and probably tens of thousands of what I will call migrants that appear to be coming from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, they come a thousand miles through Mexico, arrive at the Rio Grande River, and stage themselves to try to come across the river into the United States.

They are brought across by coyotes who are part of the drug cartels. Sometimes they come on jet skis, sometimes in rafts, sometimes in inner tubes. They come across the river.

The staging that is there and the pushing of the people that are in here, the mix of the population that are being picked up at McAllen, Texas, is reported in the Guatemalan newspaper to be this. Of that mix of unaccompanied minors--certainly, they aren't all unaccompanied minors, but it is a special category--of that mix, 80 percent are male--that is, 8 out of 10 are boys, 2 out of 10 are girls--younger than 18. They are 17 and younger. Eighty percent boys, 20 percent girls.

Of the country of origin, two-thirds of them are from the three countries that we have defined as OTMs, or other than Mexicans-- Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. That is two-thirds of them.

We see pictures of little kids. We hear stories of a 3-year-old, a 2- month-old, 4, 5, 6, and 7-year-olds. Yes, they are there. They are there in some kind of numbers. Mostly, those younger kids are in the company of, generally, a mother or a parent.

Of those unaccompanied minors, 83 percent of them--let me get my numbers right here--80 percent are boys. Eighty-three percent of them fit this age group, Mr. Speaker, and that is they are either 15, 16, or 17 years old. Eighty percent are boys and 83 percent fit those three ages--prime ages for gang recruitment.

It isn't all innocents that are coming into America through this. Yet we have a heart, we have an obligation. The first thing we have to do is stop this, and we have to send them back and we have to require the countries of origin to distribute them in the places they want them to live in their country of origin.

We have an agreement. The reason only 12 percent are from Mexico is we have an agreement forged by a bill that passed this Congress in 2008 that requires Health and Human Services to negotiate a repatriation policy. So when we pick up the unaccompanied minors, within 48 hours they are to be turned over to Mexican authorities and taken back to their homes in Mexico, to a significant degree. And not always within 48 hours. That does work, which is why we don't see a larger number of Mexicans coming in on that.

But the OTMs--the other than Mexicans--are exploiting a loophole because we don't have an agreement with those countries. We need to change the statute here in Congress and send a bill to the President that negotiates an agreement so those countries can receive those unaccompanied minors. They will be required to do so. And if we fail to reach those agreements, we should then freeze the foreign aid to those countries so that that amount cannot increase to provide them an incentive.

I would remind the people, Mr. Speaker, who are sending their children here, releasing a child and saying, Go across a thousand miles of Mexico, go with enough pesos to pay mordida to get to the United States, and present yourself to the Border Patrol and say, I am afraid that I'll be killed in my country, I remind them that in this country, if a mother or a father loses track of their child and their child wanders off down the street, they are guilty of child endangerment. They are guilty of child abandonment.

If they are guilty of that, maybe not always on the first offense, but on subsequent offenses we do this. We take those children into the custody of our Health and Human Services, whichever the State may be, and we can terminate the parental rights and we can place that child into foster care and we can transfer that child into adoption. Because we in this country do not tolerate parents who abandon their children or fail to take care of their children or endanger their children.

That is the very description of what happens if you send a child across a thousand miles of a country. That has got to stop, Mr. Speaker. I will be introducing legislation very soon that addresses that very topic.

I appreciate your attention and indulgence, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, simply, this amendment says, as the gentlelady read, ``None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to transfer weapons to the Palestinian Authority.''

I would like to express why I brought this amendment. I take you back, Mr. Chairman, to April 23, 2014, when Fatah and Hamas unified within the Palestinian Authority in the Palestinian organization. That unification brought about a terrorist-designated organization, a foreign terrorist organization, joined together with Fatah. This is April 23.

On June 6 of 2014, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said: ``We will work with and fund the new Palestinian Authority government.''

So what that means is, they have decided, for the first time, that our taxpayers' borrowed money is going to be committed to a terrorist organization.

1997 was when Hamas was designated as a foreign terrorist organization. Since 1997, Hamas has launched tens of thousands of rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel.

Khaled Mashal of Hamas said the reconciliation of the two organizations, Fatah and Hamas, will consolidate the resistance. Not bring about peace, but consolidate the resistance.

We can't afford and cannot fund a power-sharing Palestinian government that includes Hamas because they are a foreign trade organization.

I would bring to the attention of the floor, Mr. Chairman, the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006, which bans funding to a government that includes Hamas until they meet three different conditions.

One is that they recognize Israel.

Two is that they renounce violence.

And three is that they accept previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements.

They have done none of those three things and, therefore, can't qualify for this funding. So we cannot fund a power-sharing Palestinian government that includes Hamas because they are a foreign trade organization, because they do not recognize the Jewish state, they do not recognize their right to exist.

But prior to June 2, 2014, the U.S. has never recognized a government that includes Hamas, and so that is why I bring this amendment.

And I would point out that the administration has been isolating Israel in a number of ways. Secretary Kerry, in April of this year, compared Israel to an apartheid state. I have been there a number of times and I have not seen that. I don't recognize that, and I don't think it is true. I think Israel would reject that, and I would encourage them to do so.

But in May of 2011, President Obama said that Israel should return to its 1967 borders. That would be indefensible for Israel to do that.

So we need to stick with the existing statute, the 2006 Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act. And this amendment cuts off funding to that military supply and support.

Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, my amendment prohibits any of the funds used within this portion of the bill from going to cities that have passed and enacted what we call sanctuary cities or sanctuary political subdivisions. The section of the code that we refer to, 8 U.S.C. 1373, reads this way:

Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or

local law, a Federal, State, or local government entity or

official may not prohibit or in any way restrict any

government entity or official from sending to or receiving

from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which would

now be ICE, information regarding the citizenship or

immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.

This is current law. We have multiple cities in the country that are violating current law, and they are doing so with impunity, and when we send funds out of this appropriations bill to those cities, it simply ignores an opportunity that we have to restrain these cities, which is for them to come back and comply with Federal law.

I was brought up in a law enforcement family. I had the Constitution waved at me on a regular basis. It was expressed to me clearly that it is the supreme law of the land, and the enumerator powers in it, which this Congress does assert and defend, are included within 8 U.S.C. 1373.

In other words, Mr. Chairman, if these cities and if these political subdivisions disagree with Federal law, they can come here and ask Congress to change the law, but to defy it and to do so with the level of impunity that they have cannot be accepted by the United States Congress. We have a responsibility to assert our constitutional and statutory authority.

That is what my amendment does. It says any cities that have sanctuary policies and that implement those sanctuary policies are not going to receive funds out of this section of the bill, and the dollar figure we are dealing with here is from a fund of $1.235 billion.

I would point out that, today, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, testified before the Judiciary Committee. He was speaking specifically of Secure Communities, the act that allows for fingerprints to be transferred back and forth between the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, or the NCIC.

He said:

Even with the Secure Communities issue, we have mayors and

Governors pursuing laws that limit the effectiveness of

Secure Communities.

This addresses Secure Communities in this way, and it addresses sanctuary city policies, of which the Secure Communities policy, according to Secretary Jeh Johnson, is a very worthy one.

So this supports at least the tone of the message delivered today in the Judiciary Committee, and it supports what this Congress has done multiple times in the past. I urge the adoption of my amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I would point out that these political subdivisions, particularly in the cities, are contravening and ordering their officers not to cooperate with Federal immigration officers, refusing to allow them to collaborate with or to transport or to otherwise cooperate with our Federal immigration officers.

We simply cannot have a law enforcement structure in the United States

where you don't have local and State and Federal officers cooperating with each other. It is not good for our communities' security, and it is not good for our national security.

This is in defiance with and in contravention of Federal law that directs that they cannot do this. They write these ordinances anyway in defiance of the law, and this Congress must assert its primary authority over the funding that flows to those communities.

If we fail to do that, we shouldn't be surprised if there are many other Federal laws that are contravened or defied, so I would urge its adoption.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, first, I would like to reiterate the statement made by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Goodlatte, and my appreciation for the service of Mr. Wolf from Virginia and the job that he has done for my years that I have been here for my years and beyond. As a member of the Judiciary Committee and this Congress, I very much appreciate Frank Wolf's contribution to the well-being of this

country and the well-being of justice and compassion around the world that he has demonstrated.

The amendment that I offer this evening, Madam Chair, is an amendment that calls upon the Department of Justice to use $5 million from the general administration fund to investigate the discretionary enforcement decisions of the Department of Homeland Security concerning their release of--and I will go through a series of these numbers that catch my attention and should alarm Americans:

For 2013, potentially deportable aliens, ICE encountered 722,000, according to a report. They only charged 195,000. That means they released 527,000 potentially deportable aliens.

Of the criminal aliens they encountered, they released 68,000 criminal aliens. That was 35 percent of the criminal aliens that they encountered. Roughly another 195,000 encountered; 68,000 released. That is with no charges, Madam Chair. Some will say that is under the DACA provisions. I will say that the President has no constitutional authority to create groups of people that are exempt from the law--DACA standing for Deferred Action for Criminal Aliens, in this case, Madam Chair. It is not prosecutorial discretion.

Deportable aliens released on the streets now--they are on the ICE docket for removal, but they are on the streets--870,000; 36,007 criminal aliens released pending deportation--36,007. Of those are 88,000 convictions all together in a variety of crimes from murder to kidnapping, arson, sexual assault, extortion, robbery, burglary, assault, and many others. We know this: that for a long period of time, about 15 years on average, 76 percent of these criminals released do not show up for their final removal hearing. That means 27,000 of the 36,000 will abscond. The administration will say: Well, we had to release these criminals, these murderers and sexual assaulters and kidnappers, we had to release them because of a Supreme Court decision in about 2001 called the Zadvydas v. Davis decision.

In that the Supreme Court held that we couldn't retain an individual who was being deported when the home country wouldn't accept that individual. But that is only 3,000 of the 36,000 that would be under the Zadvydas decision. That is 8 percent. The other 92 percent could have, and should have, been removed from this country--193 homicide convictions of the 36,000. So when the gentlelady from Wisconsin laments 1,000 deported today, there is about every other day--more often than every other day--there is a murderer released on the streets under this policy that we are getting out of the Department of Homeland Security and ICE.

So my request is that $5 million out of this administrative budget be directed to investigating the actions of the Department of Homeland Security and coming back with an analysis of what is going on and why that we have so many criminals released onto the streets of America: 193,000 murderers in 1 year alone; 426,000 who have committed sexual assault; 303 kidnapping convictions; 1,075 aggravated assaults, on down the line; 16,070 drunk or drug drivers released. And here is the kicker, Madam Chair: 303 were released to have been convicted of flight escape. They had broken out of jail, convicted for breaking out of jail, put them back in jail, and released them again to save them the trouble of having to break out of jail again.

These are the kind of things that I would ask the Department of Justice to take a look into because their mission statement says that they are to enforce the law, ensure public safety, control crime, and seek punishment for those who violate the laws. It is de facto amnesty that is going on in the Department of Homeland Security. It is very consistent with the Department of Justice's mission statement that they look into these actions.

Let's protect the American people from criminals being poured loose on the street by the tens of thousands. I don't lament so much 1,000 deportations a day as I do 193 murderers turned loose in a year. I would point out to the gentlelady that if the deportations in this country exceeded the illegal entries, we wouldn't have this issue of illegal immigration in America.

I urge adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee for yielding to me, and I want to also thank the efforts of the Judiciary Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence for the broad and intense work they have done on this bill.

The USA FREEDOM Act starts with the right concept, and that is that the civil liberties of Americans were at risk. Even though we have very few examples of people being victimized by it, there is not a level of comfort in this country. And so the move to block the Federal Government from storing metadata and still allow for them to be able to set up under a FISA warrant a query through privately held data is the right way to go. It is a conclusion that I drew early on in the many hearings that I have been to, both classified and unclassified hearings.

I quizzed the witnesses, and I put my mark down on those committee hearings, but what happened was the process moved quickly, and over a weekend there was an intense job to write a bill that turned into a substitute amendment, and a debate in the Judiciary Committee referred over to the Select Committee on Intel. Both committees acted quickly. I offered an amendment before the Judiciary Committee. It was voted on. But I have to say that, in my opinion, it was not considered in a fashion that would have allowed for the full judgment of the Judiciary Committee to weigh in.

My amendment is set up so it allows for the intelligence community to negotiate with the telecoms--the telecommunications providers--for a period of time longer than is today required by the FCC.

I think it is not possible for anyone who supports this bill to argue that it makes us safer. It protects our civil liberties more, but there is a window beyond the FCC requirements that I would like to see be available on something other than a voluntary basis.

I wanted to come here to this floor and put my marker down on that concern, that we should not sacrifice the security in America and we should protect the civil liberties of Americans. We can do that at the same time. I think this bill falls somewhat short; although the underlying concept of the bill, I do support.

Mr. Speaker, it is my honor and privilege to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, and I come to the floor this afternoon, Mr. Speaker, to address you and bring up the topic of the dialogue that has been--I will say flowing forth on the floor of the United States Senate over the last few weeks.

As I listened to that dialogue and listened to the way they have taken Saul Alinsky's ``Rules for Radicals'' and decided that they are going to implement them and deploy them on the floor of the United States Senate, it occurs to me that when, out of the mouths of people like Senator Schumer and Senator Reid and Senator Durbin come these allegations--and sometimes allegations that name and target Members of the House of Representatives, it occurs to me that, when I came to this Congress, Mr. Speaker, in 2003, there was a rule that existed here that prevented a Member of the House of Representatives from naming a United States Senator here on the floor.

It was kind of a shield of protectionism, so that the Senators could not be directly criticized in the dialogue that we have here on the floor.

My good friend and then-Member of Congress, Tom Feeney from Florida, read through the rules, as a good, honest lawyer, newly elected to the United States Congress would, and he saw that rule and wondered: Why can't we utter the name of a United States Senator on the floor of the House of Representatives?

He could come up with no reason why we shouldn't be able to do that, and so he brought an amendment to the rules that struck that prohibition, and thereafter, thanks to then-Congressman Tom Feeney of Orlando, the rule is gone. It was amended, and that is a good thing because, now, I can actually name the people who are attacking me on the floor of the United States Senate, and let you know, Mr. Speaker, what is going on in that other body, that body that constantly calls for bipartisan work and bipartisan cooperation.

This is what I get from Senator Chuck Schumer, New York, May 1, 2014, on the floor of the United States Senate. He decided he would target me and blame me for the things that he believes are failures of the entire House of Representatives.

Here are some of the quotes that Chuck Schumer uttered on that day of May 1 from the floor of the United States Senate. He called me ``an extreme outlier on the issue of immigration reform.''

I would direct Chuck Schumer to the Republican Party platform. You will find there language in the Republican Party platform that supports the position I have long held on immigration, and that position that I hold is this: We need to respect the rule of law. We need to secure our borders. We need to have an immigration policy that is designed to enhance the economic, the social, and the cultural well-being of the United States of America.

It can't be for the Democratic Party of the United States of America because they are so closely aligned--in fact, they have enveloped the entire Progressive Party. The Progressive Party comes to this floor on a regular basis and gives speeches and presents their position.

Their position, at one time, could be found on the Democratic Socialists of America Web site, dsausa.org. There, socialism is celebrated. As Progressives celebrate socialism, they are wrapped up inside the Democratic Party.

We don't adhere to that on my side. We adhere to the rule of law and the Constitution, a secure border, a sovereign United States of America, and a policy for immigration that is designed to enhance the economic, social, and cultural well-being of the United States of America.

We have enough common sense, Mr. Speaker, to know that our country is limited in size and scope. It is a large country, but we cannot be the relief valve for all of the poverty in the world.

There are 7 billion people on the planet, and if they all have good sense, they would all want to live here. We need some of them in those countries to rebuild those countries and establish American principles, so that they can enjoy the prosperity that we enjoy, reconstructed around first principles, in the other countries of the world.

We need to lead the world. We don't need to necessarily bring all the world here to feed the world here in the United States. And so, an extreme outlier, not so. Chuck Schumer represents the extreme outliers, and they are socialists, Marxists, progressives, liberal Democrats. I am sure that one of those labels will be one that he has already embraced, Mr. Speaker.

Second quote, Senator Chuck Schumer of me, Steve King:

The rhetoric of Steve King is beyond the pale. I am certain

that the majority of Republicans in the House have their

stomachs churn when they see Steve King spew that kind of

rhetoric.

That is not exactly collegial dialogue, Mr. Speaker, to see that kind of thing. What I wonder is why would Chuck Schumer think that he would know when the stomachs of Republicans might churn. I think they might churn when they hear him say those things. Although, rest easy, Mr. Speaker, mine doesn't.

I take this all with good humor because I understand that it is a tactic. It is an Alinsky tactic, and it is designed to bring out a goal. It is not necessarily to raise me up to the point where he assigns me with the full sense of responsibility and authority to determine immigration policy here in the House of Representatives. Oh, I wish it were so, Mr. Speaker. I don't believe it is so. Yes, there is some influence there. History will decide how much--not me, not Chuck Schumer.

Here is his goal: I believe that Senator Schumer has concluded that he could taunt the leadership and the House of Representatives, and that includes our Speaker of the House, into bringing amnesty legislation to the floor of the House because, if it does and if it should pass, the Senate would conform with any amnesty legislation because they are controlled by Democrats.

I have long known and long been restrained by people in my own party, Mr. Speaker, from laying out the argument as to why almost every Democrat I know wants open borders and amnesty and a never-ending supply of illegal aliens in the United States of America.

It is a pretty easy formula to figure out, especially if you sit here for 10 or a dozen years engaged in hearings and debate on a weekly basis, you begin to hear the thread of their conversation and you begin to understand the real truth behind their motives. It works out to be this:

Of course there are a large number of illegal immigrants in the United States. We have been using the number 11 million since we stopped using the number 12 million, but they didn't stop coming into America. I don't quite understand why we would think that there are fewer illegal aliens in America today than there were 10 years ago. I believe there are more.

If they come across the border at the rates that the witnesses from the Border Patrol and other witnesses in the hearings have been testifying, they will say that they will stop perhaps 25 percent that try. When I go down to the border and ask them, they will say, well, 10 percent has to come first. It is probably not 10. Some will say, with a little smirk, 3 percent is maybe what we stop.

If I take the 25 percent, 25 percent effectiveness on our border and you look at those whom they do interdict on the border and you do the calculation, that turns out to be a number that is equivalent to 11,000 a night--on average, 11,000 a night coming across our southern border. That would be at some of the peak levels that we have, Mr. Speaker. I would think it is more objective for us to dial that number back down to somewhere in the neighborhood of about half of that. So half of 11,000, 5,500 a night is pretty close to the last reliable information that I found on how many are coming across our border illegally.

Well, so I asked this question: What was the size of Santa Anna's army? About that, about 5,500 or 6,000. So it gives you a sense, the size of Santa Anna's army coming across our southern border every night, on average. I don't say day and night. Most of it is at night. I have sat down on the border at night multiple times. I have traveled

the border and done multiple trips down there to monitor what is going on on our southern border. It has gotten a little better in Arizona, and it has gotten worse in Texas.

We don't have control of this border, but that doesn't trouble most Democrats, because they recognize that the millions of people that are coming into this country illegally are counted in the census. And so, if you would go to a district in California like Maxine Waters' district, she only needs about 40,000 to 50,000 votes in her district to get reelected to the United States Congress. If you go to my district, it is well over 120,000 votes for me to be reelected to the United States Congress. The difference in that is two things. One is I have a very, very high percentage of real American citizens that do vote in my district; she has a lower percentage. And I have a higher turnout of people who are responsible enough to vote; she has a lower percentage.

Illegal aliens are counted in the census all over America, and when new district lines are drawn, those district lines treat people the same as citizens. The Constitution doesn't say count the citizens and then reapportion; it says count the people.

And so Democrats are happy enough to see the country filling up with people that they get to count when they do a district, because they get a Democrat district that is another vote here in the House of Representatives, Mr. Speaker. They want to turn this country into a single-party country.

When you think of what happened in California, they are trying to bring about the same kind of transition in Texas. If they can turn Texas from a red State into a blue State, there will never be another conservative elected to a national office in this country again. They know that. That is why they have thousands of their operatives working in Texas, trying to turn Texas over into a blue State.

They know that illegal immigration is an essential key. Back in 2007 or so when they bussed in tens of thousands of demonstrators, many of them self-professed illegal aliens in America, many of them wearing identical T-shirts that were issued to them apparently on the bus, then-alive Senator Teddy Kennedy stepped out to the west lawn of the Capitol and stepped up to the microphone and, through an interpreter, said to that group of people, who was interpreting to them in Spanish, he said:

Some say, report to be deported; I say, report to become an

American citizen.

That was the Democrats' clarion call, the call out to illegal aliens in America to migrate toward the Democrat Party, to those that are outside of America to come into America and migrate towards the Democrat Party. They operate in those neighborhoods doing voter registration drives and signups and organizations, a lot of it funded by Federal dollars that matriculates down into their organizations. They do know what they are doing. They have built a cultural edifice around much of the minority community in America, and much of it has been because, Mr. Speaker, they have been telling them lies. They have been telling them lies about the political opponents of the leftists that are engaged in those neighborhoods; and we have seen this flow, Mr. Speaker, as far as the White House.

The divisions that have been driven between Americans, divisions driven down the line of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, prosperity, those wedges have been driven in a calculated way for the political gain of the people that sit over on this side of this Chamber. I have seen too much of it to believe that I could be off by 1 degree in the statement that I have made, Mr. Speaker.

I am continuing onward, Senator Schumer of myself:

Steve King, a far right, way out of the mainstream outlier

doesn't just spew hatred; he calls the shots.

Hmm, I don't think that he could point to any hatred that I have spoken to and identified as spewing. Calling the shots? No, I hear the wisdom of the Republican Conference. I have to hear what they say and what they think and where they anchor their thoughts. We have coalesced on this, Mr. Speaker: whatever we might do to change immigration law, we can't trust the President of the United States to enforce anything he doesn't like. It doesn't just have to be immigration law; it can be anything.

The President of the United States picks and chooses the laws that he will enforce. He essentially tells us: I am not going to enforce this series of laws because I don't like them, and I am not going to enforce these series of laws because I don't like them. It is not just immigration; although, that was some of the first examples and some of the most egregious examples, Mr. Speaker.

And we saw them come through as the Morton memos, and I will circle back to that in a moment. We saw the President, by executive edict, not always in executive order, sometimes a third-tier notice on a Web site of the United States Treasury, sometimes a verbal statement that he makes before a press conference in the Rose Garden at noon on a Friday. The President of the United States will step up and say, for example, when he was speaking to the churches who objected to their religious freedom being taken from them, their conscience protection that was to be assured to them, written into the ObamaCare law, after they took that religious freedom, conscience protection away from our people of faith, and in particular the Catholic churches that filed multiple lawsuits, and other religious organizations did the same, the President was taking 2 weeks of heat and criticism as the faith communities rose up, and he decided to put an end to that. So he held a press conference at the White House at noon on a Friday, and with the Presidential seal in front of the podium, he stood there and said: I am going to make an accommodation to the religious organizations in America, and now I am going to require the insurance companies to provide these things for free.

Well, these things were contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilizations. Contraceptives, Mr. Speaker, we understand what they are. Abortifacients are pills that bring about the abortion of a little, innocent, unborn baby. Sterilizations are those things that might come with tubal ligations or vasectomies. Those were the things that were in ObamaCare that are particularly egregious to the principles of the Catholic church.

And so the President decided he would make an accommodation written in the rules, by the way--not the bill, but in the rules. The President said: I am going to make an accommodation to the religious organizations, and now I am going to require the insurance companies to provide these things for free. He repeated himself. He said: Provide these things for free. For free.

I thought, hmm, how is it that the President can step up and give a press conference and change a law or change a rule that has been published by Kathleen Sebelius' Health and Human Services? How does the President have the authority to simply speak and make those changes? Surely there must be a rule that is amended. Surely there must be a bill that has been introduced that has a lot of responsible cosponsors, that has a prospect of being passed. Maybe he has got an agreement with our Speaker and majority leader here and Harry Reid over in the Senate.

So we went back and scoured the rule, Mr. Speaker. The rule didn't change, not one i dotted differently, not one t crossed differently. There was no change in any written document, the written document that required the religious organizations to provide contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilizations.

The President said now the insurance companies have to do this for free. Not one word changed in print anywhere. The insurance companies stepped up to that verbal directive from the President of the United States. That should be appalling to any American citizen that took an eighth grade civics course to understand that the President doesn't write the laws. The President doesn't have the authority to change them. Congress has granted to the executive branch the authority to write rules, an Administrative Procedure Act that directs how those rules that are proposed by the executive branch are published for open public hearing. There is a process they must go through.

The President is not the king. The President doesn't get to issue edicts verbally from the podium and have the force and effect of law to change that

policy without any print being changed anywhere in a rule or in the Federal Register or in the Federal Code. That is what he did with that particular case, Mr. Speaker. I use that as an example to tell you how far this President has overreached from his constitutional authority.

So the President has first imposed contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilizations on our religious organizations, then lifted the imposition verbally by telling the insurance companies: Now you are going to have to do this for free. What did they do? They complied. They listened to the President's press conference and decided, okay, we are going to do what he tells us. They didn't go back and check the text--well, maybe the text of the press conference, maybe the text of his speech, but there was no rule. There was no law.

The President also suspended welfare-to-work. The temporary assistance to needy families was written that required welfare-to-work. It was written so that then Bill Clinton couldn't circumvent it. It was written tightly and with the idea that a President would stretch it. What happens? This President simply suspended welfare-to-work under

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding me time to address the subject of this rule.

Mr. Speaker, this House is considering a combined rule. It is a rule that addresses the NDAA and it is a rule that addresses the USA FREEDOM Act wrapped up together.

Mr. Speaker, I would reiterate the point that we are addressing a combined rule between the National Defense Authorization Act and the USA FREEDOM Act.

The first component that I would like to address with the time that I have is an expression of appreciation to the Rules Committee for going through all the amendments of the NDAA, taking a look at that and coming down with a rule that recognizes that the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee is immigration policy, not Armed Services.

Mr. Speaker, I commend the Rules Committee for the decision that they made on the NDAA. Even though there were dozens and dozens, actually scores of amendments to consider last year, there was an amendment that addressed the immigration issue that was made in order on the bill. That brought about a debate and a discussion here on the floor.

Instead, that debate took place this time in the Rules Committee and the Rules Committee declined to approve essentially amendment number 58 that dealt with the immigration issue. It is the proper jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee. Additionally, it was bad policy.

So I rise to thank the Rules Committee for that decision and transition into a discussion about the USA FREEDOM Act, which I am troubled by; and that is the process of regular order in this Congress, and the idea that, as the Congress put together a bill that blocked the Federal Government from collecting metadata on telephone bills, there was a negotiation that took place over the weekend, a substitute amendment was delivered, announced at 12:35 p.m. on a Monday, we took up the bill I believe the next day quickly, no amendments were accepted, we didn't have an opportunity to have a serious discussion about the national defense, national security implications of a bill that addressed the civil liberties.

I support the underlying bill, I support the effort to protect the civil liberties of the American people.

I thank the gentleman.

The amendment that I offered, even though it was voted on, the debate really didn't consider this proposal that the head of an element of the intelligence community may enter into an agreement to compensate for retaining call detail records for a period of time.

What the underlying bill does in section 215 is it limits the amount of time that we can get a FISA warrant to do a query of existing records in the private hands of the telecommunications companies to the 18 months that is required by the FCC. We need to have the opportunity for this Commander in Chief, the intelligence community, or a subsequent Commander in Chief to be able to expand that period of time while still protecting that data within the possession of the private sector companies, which we have confidence in.

That is an issue that I would like to see before this Congress. It is not going to be voted on in this bill. I am troubled by the national security implications of it, which brings me to the floor. I will support this rule. I do thank the Rules Committee. But I wanted to make that point that when national security issues come up, somebody has got to put the marker down.

I urge all to consider the point I have made here today.

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to be recognized by you to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives, and I appreciate this privilege to do so. It is something that I would encourage a lot of the Members to participate in and express the wishes of their constituents and their opinions here on the floor so that not only you can turn an ear and listen to this presentation here tonight, but also so that it inspires dialogue all across America.

We will remain a free country and we can remain a constitutional Republic if we have open debate and open dialogue and if the values of the American people remain consistent with our roots.

I would first, Mr. Speaker, start out with listening to the dialogue of the gentleman who spoke ahead of me, and I would note that his statement that there are people that went ahead of him and his family that are blue collar, it seems to me to be maybe a generation removed from the real America that most of it is blue collar. And I think it is important to note that this country that we are is not going to continue to prosper unless we have people whom people respect and honor and who produce goods and services that have a marketable value here at home.

For those that get paid to pontificate--I, among them, okay--that is an important function also. For those who get paid to sit on the couch, that is not so important a function. But those that produce goods and services that have a marketable value here and abroad are the ones that grow our economy. In the private sector, it allows us to be competitive with the countries around the world. I think of my neighbors, many of whom are engaged in agriculture and how we compete with the most competitive economy in the world and we compete in a favorable way and we set the pace. We set the pace in productivity. We set the pace in efficiency. We set the pace in quality and in food safety. That is the circle around my neighborhood that you can see in any direction looking out from my house.

I am proud of those neighbors who produce those goods and services that have a marketable value here at home. A lot of that, most of it is the kind of thing we would call blue-collar work. I am impressed by the professionals that come here to Congress.

I came from the construction world, hands-on, in the ditch, shovel in hand, grease gun, wrench, steering wheel, yes, pencil and calculator from the lowest guy on the totem pole to the guy who started a company to now a second-generation King Construction Company. We have been engaged in this economy for I believe this will be our 40th season that we are engaged in now.

You see the flow of the economy, and you have respect for those who put their hands, their back, and their mind to work every day. I appreciate, also, a great deal these values of America, the roots of who we are as a people.

I was observing this morning, as I was getting ready to leave my place, that there was an individual who was interviewed on FOX this morning in their morning show by Steve Doocy, and it was Mallory Factor, an author I happen to know, an individual I count as a friend. He laid out the four principles of conservatism, and I thought it was a useful thing. I took the notes down and put them in my pocket because I believe he is exactly and succinctly right that this country needs to be rooted in those principles of conservatism. Without them, we are cast adrift.

Here are the four principles that he laid out:

The first one is respect for the tradition and wisdom of our past generations. That is a fairly succinct way of saying our Founding Fathers got it right. They laid down a foundation, a foundation in faith, free enterprise, and fidelity that has been the foundation for America becoming the unchallenged greatest Nation in the world. And if we are to stay that way, we need to remain respectful to the traditions and wisdom of past generations.

The second one is a rule of law. Mr. Speaker, you have heard me speak often and consistently about the rule of law. Lady Justice is often portrayed as blind. The statue of Lady Justice is of her holding the scales of justice, perfectly balanced scales of justice, weighed equally on either side. But Lady Justice is blindfolded because she doesn't see class or race or ethnicity or sex. She sees simply here is a human being before the court to be treated the same as any other human being, regardless of where they might sit in the social stratification by wealth, by race, by ethnicity, by sex, whatever the qualities might be. Whatever the qualifications might be, Lady Justice is blind, and the rule of law must apply to everyone equally. That is number two.

The third one is the belief in an individual freedom and liberty. And I will go a little further than Mr. Factor in that these rights come from God. Our Founding Fathers understood, articulated, and wrote: We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men--and that means men and women in the vernacular--are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.

It is an individual belief, the belief in individual freedom and liberty--not a freedom that is granted to you by government, not one that is bestowed upon you by the sovereign or the king, but this God- given individual liberty that comes from God that we then entrust from the people to the government. We loan our sovereign rights to the government to organize our society.

Government doesn't have the power. It is we the people that have the power, and we loan that to government. And if it is the other way around, if government grants rights, then government can also take those rights away. If that is the case, we would be similar to many of the other governments, many of the other civilizations, and we are not. We are the United States of America, founded upon four of these conservative principles.

All of these principles are conservative principles: the respect for tradition and wisdom of past generations, the rule of law, the belief in individual freedom and liberty, and the fourth thing is a belief in a law higher than man's law. That is God's law.

Mr. Speaker, those are the four principles of conservatism. A little tidbit of wisdom that came out this morning--and I made a little note and slipped it in my pocket--I think it is important that we here in this Congress reflect upon those values that made America great and what it is going to take to strengthen those values, restore those values, and carry America to the next level of our destiny.

When this Congress deviates from those principles, when this Congress deviates from the Constitution, when the Congress deviates from individual rights, and when the Congress decides they can tax some people and transfer that wealth to other people and somehow be a leveler or some kind of a wealth transfer that resolves this class envy issue, then America is diminished because what it does is it diminishes the vitality of our people.

If you get out of bed and go to work every day and you know that Uncle Sam is going to get his share, the minute you punch that timeclock, Uncle Sam's hand comes out; and when he gets what he wants for the day, it goes in his pocket. Then the Governor's hand comes out, and he puts it in his pocket.

Then you have some other taxes to pay along the way, and when that is all done, some time in the afternoon, you get to actually work for yourself and your family.

Well, that is a little bit depressing to think you don't get to work even in the morning. If you go to work at 8 in the morning, you are taking your lunch break before you are getting anything for you and your family.

Now, what if the government is sitting there taking it all? What if it was we are going to confiscate all of the money you earn? Then we will deal it out to these other people, and you will get your government welfare check just like everybody else; and we will all have the same resources to work with.

We are all going to have the same amount of food, clothing and shelter, and recreation. We are all going to have the same health insurance policy. We are all going to drive an equal-value car, but some have to work, and those who don't want to don't.

Think about that. I have heard that. I have heard that debate on this floor. People will say--from over here on the leftist side of the aisle, they will say those that want a job should have a job, which implies that those who don't want to work shouldn't have to.

So if they are able-bodied and able-minded, then they should be contributing to this economy or have earned and stored up the wealth to sustain themselves, not tax the other person that is punching that timeclock or going to work for that salary because what happens is, pretty soon, the one who is being taxed to fund the one who is not working figures out that it doesn't pay so much to work.

It happens in the margins, so people start moving across from one side to the other; and over time, you will have good, smart, productive people who are smart enough to figure out that it doesn't pay for me to do this any longer, so they will drift over into maybe a part-time job, maybe work under the table, maybe some black market stuff, or they will tap into some of the 80 different means-tested Federal welfare programs we have in this country and take their standard of living up above that they might have if all they did was work.

That is where this country has gone. The welfare program has grown so great that it has discouraged some of our most productive people. It is a disincentive. It discourages me that, if we are maybe a generation removed, as I listened to the gentleman from the Hudson Valley, he is a generation removed from blue collar, I would like to think that we are always going to need blue-collar people.

We are always going to need for this country to have a middle class, a middle class that is growing in numbers and increasing in prosperity in relation to the productivity that they are putting out, and this country is always going to need to compete with the other countries in the world.

We can't just collapse down into the idea that we are going to be an economy that has professionals that live in gated communities that hire servants at a cheap rate, and then they will have the people that are a diminishing middle class and the unskilled and the low skilled that will make a meager wage, always keeping that meager wage down by a refueling of legal and illegal unskilled immigrants coming into this country that can only compete in the unskilled jobs.

The highest level of unemployment that we have--the double digit unemployment in this country are the people in the lowest skilled jobs. So how is it that almost every Democrat and a pretty respectable number of Republicans can leap to this conclusion, which is we need more unskilled workers, we need more of these workers to come in because it will grow the economy?

Well, just because you have somebody, if you bring in 1,000 people-- and we know that we are going to have to educate the children especially and the youth, we will have to provide health care and housing and nutrition, the food, clothing, and shelter--as I said, 1,000 people could come in, and if one of them does a day's work, that contributes to the GDP, the gross domestic product.

So if the day's work of one in 1,000 contributes to the GDP, they, by their definition, say the economy is growing. The economy will grow if you have more and more immigration, and they don't say unskilled.

Well, we have an opening here for some skilled people to come into this country. We have an oversupply of unskilled. We have 101.4 million Americans of working age who are simply not in the workforce--101.4 million, that is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The numbers total this: those 16 and up who are of working age, plus those who are on unemployment today--officially signed up on unemployment--add those two numbers together, 101.4 million.

A third of our population is of working age and not in the workforce. Yes, some are retired, and some are handicapped, and some are homemakers, and some of them are in school; but a whole lot of them could actually be recruited to come into the workforce and

produce that good or service with marketable value and increase our