Floor Statements

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 40 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, May 21, 2010, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to be recognized here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives and have the opportunity to address you and hopefully illuminate some of these arguments that come before the American people, that come before this Congress and that reflect down that hallway to the United States Senate. And, Mr. Speaker, I long heard from over on this side in the 30-Something group that for years-- actually they went from their thirties to their forties--stood over here, two, three, four, sometimes five or more, and they would make the argument that, if we would just give them the gavels, everything would be all right with the world; that if we would just let them be in the majority, they could fix the problems of America and the world. And they constantly harangued against the Republican majority that existed until the end of 2006, constantly promised that they would fix all the problems that we have, and constantly attacked then the President of the United States.

It's so interesting to me, Mr. Speaker, to have watched the transformation over the last 3-plus years, 3\1/2\ years now; and we are almost halfway through and probably, by business days, more than halfway through this Congress and on to the next election in November here of 2010. It's pretty interesting to me, Mr. Speaker, that the people who made all those promises about what was wrong with the world had to do with George Bush and the Republican majority, that were going to fix the problems, now I haven't heard any of them step forward and say, You gave us the gavels. The American people trusted us with the majority--them, not me--and by golly, we've fixed these problems for America. Look how great it is, now that the people who clamored for the gavels were handed the gavels on January 3, 2007, some almost 3\1/2\ years ago.

The problems that they were going to fix seem to be worse, not better. The problems we had with our economy got a lot worse, not better. The problems we had with energy got a lot worse, not better. The problems that we have with this society and the understanding and human nature seem to be getting worse, not better. I haven't yet heard the 30-Something group, those that are left of them, come to the floor and do the mea culpa, nor have I heard them point out that they've succeeded in the policies that they said that they would enact. And, in fact, Mr. Speaker, if you look back on the record, it is the exact opposite.

This Pelosi Congress, when we came in by Constitution on January 3, 2007, there was a great ceremonial and factual passing of the gavel that went from the hand of John Boehner to, at that moment, Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And we saw actually right in the aftermath of the election in November of 2006 when that majority was won by the Pelosi Democrats, we saw a shift in the policy of the country. We watched as the, let me say heir-apparent at the time became chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Charlie Rangel of New York, go on the talk circuits all over the country, national television, program after program after program, booked solid. And they asked him over and over again, which of the Bush tax cuts would you want to preserve and which would you want to provide that they go away? What will be the burden on capital, and how costly will capital be for business, especially big business, moving forward from that period of time after the election in 2006 and the inauguration, let me say the installation of Speaker Pelosi in January 2007, and that period of time after that as the new Chairs of the committees, their new staff and the new members of the committees were seated and they began to assert their will on American policy.

What I heard from the apparent and future Ways and Means Committee chairman, Charlie Rangel, that he would repeal or work to repeal any of the Bush tax cuts, it simply was by a process of elimination. He was asked over and over again every way that the news pundits could ask him, what would you do with the Bush tax cuts, the May 28, 2003, Bush tax cuts. Because the answer wasn't definitive, but there was a process of elimination. The smart capital in the country concluded that there were none of the tax cuts that Charlie Rangel would like to preserve.

That was in November, December, January, and partway into February of

2006 and early 2007. So what we saw was a dramatic drop in the investment, capital investment that took place into industry in America because capital is smart. It doesn't last very long if it is not. It understands that the cost of capital was going to get more expensive. The more expensive capital was going to be a burden on business, and the profit margin was going to go down if the tax cuts went up and if the tax burden went up. Increased tax burden raises the cost of capital, the profit margin goes down and capital doesn't seek that kind of an environment if it gets too far apart. That is what was going on.

In November and December of 2006 and January through February of 2007, industrial investment went down because the cost of capital went up and the prospects for profitability went down and that, Mr. Speaker, was the beginning of an economic decline that this country has faced and the globe has faced since that period of time.

Now, the people that stood here on the floor that as Chairs of committees that made these arguments at this microphone here and those microphones there over and over again argued that it was all George Bush's fault, and if they just had the gavel, things would be better. They didn't argue that they needed the Presidency, not at that time. They argued that they needed the majority in the House of Representatives where all spending must begin according to the Constitution.

Well, they achieved their goal, but they never accepted their responsibility for the effect of their actions or inactions. In the case of the Bush tax cuts, it was the inaction to extend the Bush tax cuts that became the culprit that was part of the downward spiral of this overall economy. The actions that came forward were massive spending.

It was also the disruption and the suspension of the deliberative process here in the United States Congress. For more than 200 years, this Congress has had a tradition of open rules in the appropriations process that would allow, Mr. Speaker, anyone, any Member of this Congress who has their own franchise, \1/435\ of the people of the United States of America, they are duty bound to represent their wills and their wishes, coupled with the principles they have presented to them prior to their election, duty bound. This Congress has for more than 200 years recognized that duty to allow Members of Congress to do their duty and offer amendments to perfect legislation, and particularly in appropriations, where we have had the long, centuries- old tradition of open rules that allows for any Member to bring an amendment down here when there is an appropriations bill that is being considered on the floor and offer that amendment into the Record.

And provided that part of the bill hasn't been passed in its deliberation, require that that amendment be debated and can require by request of the Member a recorded vote on that line item that they may be addressing.

I did that more times than anyone else in this United States Congress in the appropriations process in 2007. It was, Mr. Speaker, the last legitimate process that this Congress has had in this legislative arena. The balance of it has been closed rules, modified closed rules, very much tightly held and constrained amendment process that shut down the debate here in this Congress and took away the franchise and the right of a Member who has been elected by their constituents.

And, by the way, the number of constituents that I represent, Mr. Speaker Pro Tempore, or the number of constituents that you represent, or the number of constituents that Speaker Pelosi represents are essentially the same. They don't deserve more representation because they live in San Francisco and Nancy Pelosi's district, or because they live in, let me say, Miami in somebody else's district, or because they live in Iowa in my district. Mr. Speaker, they deserve the same amount of representation. And every Member of Congress needs to be on equal standing and have that opportunity to offer those amendments and require this House to be accountable for the decisions that they make up there on that voting board. But it has been shut down.

Since the appropriation process of 2007, there has not been a legitimate process of debate and amendment that perfects legislation to take place since then. That is how badly this constitutional republic, that is how badly this deliberative process has been usurped by the iron fist of the Speaker. And the American people little know how badly that cripples our ability to reach out across this Nation and pull the best of the wisdom we have of 306 million people and incorporate it into our decisions. Because where I sit, I have input that comes from all over my district, smart people. Smart people that will give up a couple of days from their business and their work and they will reach into their pocket and they will buy a plane ticket here and back and a couple hotel rooms for the opportunity sometimes to sit down with my staff or some other Member's staff even for 15 minutes so they can make their argument. They deserve our more serious ear. They deserve our best effort and our best judgment. They deserve our respect.

But when this process is shut down to where the Speaker decides if an amendment is going to be heard if that pleases her, all of that wisdom, almost all of that wisdom is completely shut out and this process that was devised and determined by the Founding Fathers is suspended until we reach saner times, or maybe forever.

Lord only knows what happens to the majorities in this Congress. But I know this: this American Government cannot function at a high level of efficiency, nor can it produce policy that is good for the people of the United States of America if it is going to have to go through the filter in the Speaker's office before it can be considered on the floor of the House of Representatives.

That would be, if it worked, if that rule applied to our speech outside of this Congress, it would be a violation of the First Amendment. This happens to fall under our rules a process so it circumvents the First Amendment rule and fortunately I and others can come to this floor and raise this subject and speak to it openly so the American people can understand what is taking place here in the House of Representatives on the floor when the people are being run out of the Rules Committee up on the third floor in the hole in the wall and we are watching partisan votes come through the committees here on the floor of the House that do not deliberate on the policy at all, but deliberate exclusively on the partisanship, which party are you with; therefore, that is how you vote, not an objective consideration of the policy.

But the 30-something Group and those that have come to this floor with them and after them made the argument that if they just had the gavels, all would be right with America. Well, we have seen unemployment rates go from 4.6 percent and less on up to 9.9 percent. We have watched that number of those who are underemployed, those who no longer fit the definition of unemployed, that number go from 5 or 6 or more million, added to the 15.4 million that are unemployed today. There are more than 20 million Americans that fit the definition of unemployment as the American people understand it. More than 20 million.

We have 8 million working illegals in America, and that is a minimum. And if the President of the United States directed Janet Napolitano, with a little assistance from Attorney General Eric Holder, to enforce immigration law, we could open up almost all of those 8 million jobs for the American people, and we could do so in a very short period of time. But there is no will on the part of this administration to enforce immigration law. There is no will. There is a will to pander to an ethnic group that they decide is going to be the future of the future majority of the Democrat Party.

And I watched with something significantly less than respect and with a high degree of cynicism as I watched them posture themselves about fairness and how we should provide amnesty and how we can't fix the immigration problem in America unless we first provide comprehensive amnesty.

And I listened to that argument under the Bush administration, and it didn't make any more sense then that it makes today to argue that we should grant people a path to citizenship because, after all, our law enforcement is being tied down by enforcing immigration law against people that are not

criminals, that have minor violations, and if you just required them to pay a fine and learn English and pay their back taxes, you could give them a path to citizenship and all would be right with the world.

Mr. Speaker, how does this fix anything? We have had in the past something like 4 million illegal border crossings on the southern border in a year. We encounter a single unique individual as many as 27 times down to the border by Arizona; 27 times, one individual. I have stood down there at the station at Nogales and watched as they bring them in after they picked them up for jumping the fence or coming across the border. I watched them come through. They know the drill. They have been stopped by a Border Patrol agent out in the field, and the Border Patrol agent just simply restrains them or, let me say, retains them, and along comes a private contractor with a van.

These people are wearing police-style uniforms in gray, and it is a white van with, let's say, reinforcement built in the side, containment for human beings, sliding door on a white van. The Border Patrol agent picks people up, calls the private contractor, they pull the van in, load them up and drive them over to a holding cell or on up to the station headquarters. They already know that they put their personal items in a Ziploc bag and they walk into the station often, many of them, with a smirk on their face.

They know right where to sit. They sit down against the wall with their little Ziploc bag of their possessions, and they know that they wait their turn. And they will be picked up and go over and have their fingerprints taken one at a time, get their digital photograph taken, now with a flash, and once that data is collected, they go into a holding pen until there is a van available to take them to the port of entry where they waltz out, get in the van, the doors close, the van goes to the port of entry back to Mexico, turns sideways, they open up the van door and the illegals that have been processed and fingerprinted and had their digital photograph taken, get out and they walk back to Mexico. The door closes on the van, the tires squeal, and the van goes back to get another load.

And we do this over and over again, for as many as 4 million people that come across our border, interdicting perhaps 20 to 25 percent of them that do so, realizing that with these 4 million people that pour across our border in a year--think of it, 4 million people. Santa Ana's army was about 4,000 that assaulted the Alamo. This is 4 million people a year, a huge haystack of humanity.

Now, think what it's like to make the argument that the Bush and Obama administration made, that if we would just legalize all these people, then we could focus on the bad elements that are within them. Well, first of all, if you're going to legalize 4 million people or 4 million attempts, and maybe that's not 4 million unique people. If you're going to legalize all of them, how would you avoid legalizing the people that were the bad elements? This is a haystack of humanity, and in it are the needles that are the bad elements.

And so can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, sorting out, out of that haystack, the needles? So you'd approve a stack of hay, and in that may or may not be a needle. You grab another bundle of hay and you'd approve that and you would give them a path to citizenship. Then they would have a card that would give them the ability to go in and out of United States, stay in America, go to Mexico or wherever they want to go, and that card would let them travel. And we would have automatically anointed them to be acceptable to work in the United States, live in the United States, travel throughout the United States, and go back to their home country and come back in the United States.

Now, first, we don't have any indication that we could possibly do a background check to approve the people that would get a path to citizenship and get this amnesty. I have asked them, I've asked the people that come into the United States, that are living here--they may or may not have come in here legally--Can you produce a birth certificate from Mexico so we can do a background check?

Well, it turns out that those that are born in a hospital can generally produce a birth certificate. But about half of them are not born in hospitals and they cannot produce a birth certificate. That's just the fact.

So when I ask them, Can you get me a birth certificate, their response to me is, Yes, I can do that. What do you want it to say? How old should I be? Where should I have been born? What should the birth certificate say?

In other words, whatever kind of fraudulent document that is necessary to get them legalized in the United States, they'll produce that. And if they produce a fraudulent document, it's unlikely that it's going to have a paper trail of whatever laws they might have violated in a foreign country. So the very idea we could do a background check on them, it is an impossibility to do a background check on people that come from the foreign countries that we are talking about.

Now, we may be able to do a background check on them just off of the fingerprints that we probably already have on record at Nogales or wherever they came across the border, probably could do that background check on what they have done, potentially, to violate the laws in the United States, but that's a very small part of their human history. A larger part is in their home country that can't be traced because we can't trace them back to an individual identity.

So this argument that a huge haystack of humanity of 4 million strong can be legalized and we can focus on the needles in that haystack because they are the bad elements is simply a flawed premise. No one can present this to me in a rational fashion, how it gets easier if you legalize people; because the people that would be legalized, some would be, the percentage would be very similar to the negative elements that exist in that broader cross section of society anyway, unless you presume that the bad elements will not try to be legalized. Of course they will. They'll try to game the system.

So this huge haystack of humanity with the needles in it would be legalized, granted amnesty, handed cards that allowed them to travel anywhere in the United States and in and out of Mexico or their home country. So a people that would travel more across the border rather than less will cause us more problems rather than less. We have 90 percent of the illegal drugs in America come from or through Mexico. And Mexico is not accountable for all of it, but 90 percent come from or through Mexico.

And of that, all of the illegal drugs that are distributed in America, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency in the interviews that I have done with them, the illegal drug distribution chain has at least--every illegal drug distribution chain has at least one link in that chain that's provided by an illegal. So magically, if everyone that is in America woke up in their home country tomorrow morning, every illegal drug distribution chain in America would be severed, at least one link would be pulled out of that.

Now, I don't propose that that would mean that illegal drugs would stop flowing into America or stop flowing into the consumers in America. I would just say that it would be temporarily suspended, some for a few minutes or hours, some for weeks or longer. But it would be temporarily suspended.

Illegal drug smugglers are protected by the flow of illegal humanity. Even if they are good people, they want a job. They want to take care of their family. They inadvertently provide cover for those who come in here for evil purposes, drug smuggling, people smuggling and worse.

And we've watched as Phoenix has become the second highest kidnap city in the world, second highest in the world. Highest, Mexico City. Why is Mexico City the highest? Kidnapping is part of the criminal culture in Mexico City. Why is Phoenix the second highest? I will suggest, Mr. Speaker, that the kidnapping culture that exists in Mexico City is being transferred into Arizona and into Phoenix, at least to some degree, causing that major kidnapping problem that is in Phoenix.

And so 90 percent of the illegal drugs coming into America come from or through Mexico. And Phoenix has become the second highest kidnap center in the world, partly because of the drug

smuggling trade, the people smuggling trade, the profit margins that are there.

And in deference to President Calderon, who is in this city, I think, right now as we speak, I do reject the criticism that he has provided for the State of Arizona for passing their own immigration legislation. But I also will concede his argument that there's a powerful magnet here in the United States, and that is the use and the purchase of illegal drugs, that the illegal drugs that are the magnet that really brings about the markets that cause the drug wars in South America, Central America, Mexico, coming into the United States.

If we could shut off this illegal drugs magnet--there's two magnets that need to be shut off in America. One is the jobs magnet that hires illegals and pours them into our economy, who work at substandard wages and then the taxpayers have to subsidize the subsistence for the families that should be sustained by the wages and the benefits. That's one thing that is a magnet that needs to be shut off, and there's ways we can do that, Mr. Speaker.

But the other is this huge magnet, which is the demand for illegal drugs in America, that sets up the production and the distribution chain and the drug cartels that are so utterly brutal, especially in Mexico, where I saw a number that I can't substantiate. I will just tell you, Mr. Speaker, that it was reported in the news that over the last several years in the drug wars in Mexico, they've had 23,000 people killed, 23,000. Now, that would be drug cartels killing members of other drug cartels. It would be local law enforcement officers. It would be intimidation attacks on families. It would be the military personnel that are engaged in this fight. But it is a very high amount of casualties that have taken place in Mexico to shut off the illegal drugs in that country.

And I understand the frustration of President Calderon that the United States is providing the magnet for the illegal drugs, and we are critical of them for the human smuggling, the drug smuggling, and the cash smuggling that comes out of the United States down into Mexico and places south.

Well, it's all right for us to be critical of what's going on in Mexico, but we have to acknowledge that the drug abuse problem in the United States is a big part of that. And if we could shut off the magnet of drug abuse in the United States and the magnet of employers who are seeking to hire substandard-wage workers in America, we could solve a lot of the border problems by doing that.

The rest of the border problems that can be solved will be solved by building a fence and a wall on the southern border. Now, this is not that hard to figure out, Mr. Speaker. We spend $12 billion a year on the southern border when we add up the costs going into ICE, the Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection, all the equipment that they need, the benefits, wages, and pension plans that go along with that, and we used a corridor some 40 miles wide or so along the southern border. $12 billion for a 2,000-mile border. That's $6 million a mile, Mr. Speaker.

And I constantly hear the message that we have to have more and more boots on the ground, more boots on the ground. And so I suggested to the then-chief of the Border Patrol, if we could produce an impermeable barrier from heaven all the way down to hell so no one could go over the top, no one could go underneath, and they were completely impermeable, how many Border Patrol do we need to protect that border? And the answer that I got was, well, we still need more boots on the ground. Well, that wasn't expert testimony. That was the party line. If you have an impermeable barrier that no one can go over or under, you cannot argue that you need more boots on the ground, Mr. Speaker.

And I make this argument hypothetically because of this: Good solid barriers on the border cut down on the need for personnel, or they improve the effectiveness of the personnel that we have. That's the equation.

You can't envision that if you build a fence and you come inside of that 60 or 100 feet and you build a concrete wall that is 13\1/2\ feet high with a wire on top of it and a foundation underneath of it, and you come in behind that and you build another fence, and you've got roads on either side of that concrete wall, triple fencing with a concrete wall, wire on top, cameras, sensory devices that are there and agents that can patrol and come directly to the spots where there's activity and problems, you cannot convince me that you need more Border Patrol agents instead of less. You can't convince me that more people will cross the border if you don't have a fence--or, excuse me. You cannot convince me that more people will cross the border if you do have a fence than if you don't. Of course they're effective. And they're effective. We know they're effective. They're cash flow effective.

Six million dollars a mile, Mr. Speaker, is what we're spending today on open, vast areas of the border where there was only a concrete pylon established from horizon to horizon; $6 million a mile. And who would not take a check for $6 million to guard the border for a mile?

My west road, no one lives on it, a mile of gravel. If the Feds came to me and said, Steve, I've got for you $6 million this year and every year for the next 10 years. I'll give you $60 million to guard that mile from your house west. And by the way, I'm going to dock from that $60 million every time somebody gets across that border illegally. And I'm going to require you to bond that so that the effectiveness, if you--that you will guarantee that you'll get the job done.

I would not as a, let me say, as an astute entrepreneur look at my west mile with no fences on it and hire myself 100 Border Patrol agents with Humvees and radios and put helicopters in the air and guard that border with hovering helicopters and Border Patrol agents that are sitting back 4 or 5 or 6 or 20 miles from that road and go catch them when they come across and get into my cornfield. No, Mr. Speaker, I'd build a fence and a wall, and I'd put sensory devices on that and I'd have cameras. And when somebody approached the wall and tried to get over, we'd know. We'd see it coming, and we would call our handful of Border Patrol agents there to address the problem. That's what needs to happen where there's high crossing rates over our southern border.

It defies common sense to believe that you can chase people around the desert cheaper than you can prevent them getting into the desert. And no one has put the cash to this and the cost to what's going on. I'm the only one I know of in the entire United States Congress, House and Senate, that can tell you $12 billion on the southern border is the annual cost, $120 billion for 10 years. That's how our budgets go, $120 billion.

Six million dollars a mile, $60 million a mile for 10 years. Sixty million. Think what you could build for every mile that you can imagine in your neighborhood, Mr. Speaker, over 10 years if you had $60 million. This country would be so full of edifices of construction if we had $60 million to invest for every mile.

We have got to have it be effective. And we have got to be smart about how we spend our money. And we have got to establish immigration policy that is good for the social, the economic, and the cultural well-being of the United States of America. And I pledged to do that.

I have introduced legislation which will do so, Mr. Speaker. It's called the New IDEA Act. New IDEA stands for the New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act. And what it does is it brings the Internal Revenue Service into the immigration enforcement arena, the IRS. The IRS seems to like to do their job from time to time. In fact, let's just say that they are good at it. I don't want to necessarily accuse them of liking it. And the effectiveness of the IRS is one of the reasons that I brought them into this mix when I introduced the legislation.

So the New IDEA Act stands for the New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act, Mr. Speaker. It clarifies that wages and benefits paid to illegals are not tax-deductible for income tax purposes. It provides for the IRS, during the course of a normal audit, to come into a company and run the Social Security numbers of the employees through a database. And that database would be the E-Verify database, which

has proven to be well more than 99 percent efficient and effective. And if those employees, one or more of them, cannot be verified to be lawful that they could work in the United States, the IRS then will give the employer an opportunity to cure that problem. But the bottom line is that they will deny the business expense of wages and benefits paid to illegals as a tax-deductible item.

So if an employer paid a million dollars in wages to a list of illegals and the E-Verify program could not verify that they could lawfully work in the United States, then the IRS would deny that business expense of a million dollars. It would go from the schedule C exemption side, the business expense side, over to the profit side of the ledger, in which case that all becomes a taxable profit event.

I did this at 34 percent corporate income tax, and that has gone up, but I did the math at 34 percent, and it turns out to be this. Your $10 an hour illegal becomes a $16 an hour illegal when you add the tax liability at 34 percent and the interest and the penalty that's assigned by the IRS.

So your $16 an hour illegal is a pretty expensive ticket. And the million of dollars in wages that would have been paid that were deducted as a business expense now become an additional, well, let me say $600,000 in costs to the employer. They will make a decision then not to take that risk and to hire an American worker or someone who is lawfully present in the United States that can work here.

I am all for that, Mr. Speaker. It is the right thing to do. Bring the IRS into this. Pass the New IDEA Act, the New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act, and let the IRS join with the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to build a team so that the government is all on the same page, singing from the same page of the hymnal, so that the right hand, the left hand, and the middle hand all know what the other one is doing. That's the right thing to do here in America. That shuts down the jobs magnet. It doesn't shut it entirely off.

Some have suggested that we should pass legislation that makes it a felony to hire an illegal. Well, you know, we have document theft that goes on with those employees. And Janet Napolitano has taken a position she is not going to enforce even against document theft in the course of people that are working illegally. We can turn our pressure up against the employers and make it a felony, and we can lock them up in jail or give them massive fines. I suggest instead we provide the incentive so that all of the employers can be under that kind of scrutiny with a 6-year statute of limitations that's written into the bill that then allows for the IRS to go back 6 years.

Now, think how this works, Mr. Speaker. If you paid a million dollars in wages out to illegals in a year and the IRS came in and did the audit and they took your $10 an hour and it became $16 an hour, and $10 an hour equated into a million dollars, you would have $600,000 in tax liability for that year. And the interest and the penalty that goes back actually accrues to a greater number, but let's just say it's level across the period of those 6 years. Now your $600,000 in penalty to the employer that paid a million dollars in wages to illegals becomes $3.6 million in liability to the IRS. Now, that is a powerful incentive to clean up your employee base to comply with the law, to do due diligence, and to hire people that can legally work in the United States of America.

This argument that we are in that we have to pass comprehensive immigration reform in order to solve our problems here is a false and specious argument. It doesn't hold up to any kind of logical scrutiny that I know. It's only out there because there is a political gain that is being sought on the other side. People that want to expand their political base and make a promise to different groups of people that they would be their benefactors.

And by the way, when I look at the pattern that is taking place between the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, the President of the United States, the Attorney General, the Assistant Secretary of State Posner, this is an astonishing thing. The immigration law that was passed in Arizona mirrors Federal immigration law. It was designed to do that. The people that wrote it were smart people that understood Federal immigration law. They intentionally wrote it in such a way that it would not conflict with Federal law and would not be preempted by Federal law.

And here are some things that I know: That local law enforcement has always had the authority to enforce Federal immigration law. One of the ways that I have described that is, could you imagine local law enforcement arguing that they didn't have the authority to enforce another jurisdiction's law? Say for example if it was a county sheriff, can he sit out there and write speeding tickets on a State highway or does it have to be a county highway? If a county sheriff happens to see somebody run a stop sign in the city does he decide that, well, that's the town of Phoenix, but I am a Maricopa County sheriff, therefore I can't write a ticket for running a stop sign that is a city stop sign in Phoenix? Does a State trooper that watches a national bank be robbed not enforce that because they can only enforce the laws against robbing State banks, not national banks?

I mean how bizarre is it to believe that local law enforcement would have no business enforcing Federal immigration law? I would submit to the Record, Mr. Speaker, a case in 2001, a Federal district court that ruled in the case of the United States against Santana Garcia that established that local law enforcement has an inherent right and responsibility to enforce Federal immigration law.

There are several other cases that are on point on this, but I know of none, I know of no cases that would argue that local law enforcement does not have the authority to enforce immigration law. Of course they do, just like they have the authority to enforce other Federal laws. Or for example, I believe it's a Federal violation to murder a Federal agent. I believe it's also a violation of every State law for first- or second-degree murder or manslaughter in the United States of America to murder that same Federal agent.

Now, who would argue that if the Federal Government didn't prosecute the murder of a Federal law enforcement agent that the State couldn't prosecute because it would be a preemption of Federal law? It is complete irrational baloney to believe that there is a preemption that prohibits the States from protecting themselves or ordering their societies.

So Arizona has written their immigration law that simply says, hey, it's against the law to be in Arizona illegally in violation of Federal immigration law. And they went to great pains to establish that there has to be probable cause in order for law enforcement to pull people over and inquire beyond that. Probable cause. So probable cause would be let's say a taillight out, a brake light out, a car that's speeding, a stop sign that's been run. How about a bank that's been robbed?

They chase all of those vehicles down, they approach the vehicle, they ask for a driver's license. If they are handed a matricula consular card, that's almost de facto proof--a person that carries one has no reason to have one in America if they are here legally. If they are here legally, they have got documents that they can use. So a matricula consular card would be probable cause--excuse me, that would be probable cause, but it would be a higher standard than the lower standard of reasonable suspicion. And that law enforcement officer then would get to ask a few more questions and determine if that individual was in the United States legally or illegally.

Now, if he suspects and comes to a conclusion that it's worthy of taking it to a higher level, he can call ICE and have them go through the process and take care of the situation. If the back of the van opens and 15 people start to run across the field, well, that's reasonable suspicion I would say, Mr. Speaker. But it's not targeting, it's not profiling, it's not prejudice.

And all of this fulmination about the profiling and the prejudice is a great big red herring designed to create this political argument that they think they have got some traction in.

And I, Mr. Speaker, have been through a number of these. It took 6 years to establish English as the official language in the State of Iowa. I

had the same discussions and the same debates take place over and over again. And they argued that if we establish English as the official language of Iowa there would be people all over the State that were disparaging other languages and the people that spoke it. And so in the bill we wrote that it's unlawful to disparage any language other than English.

So oddly, and I didn't accept this amendment willingly; it became part of the law nonetheless, oddly people can disparage English in the State of Iowa and no other language. Well, it never really applied. Never heard of a case where anybody was disparaging any language. And I suppose that there may be. I don't know if anybody actually is disparaging English itself either. But all of this hysteria that was being ramped up, it went on for months and in fact for years, and all of the allegations that it was going to destroy our society and it was a bitter pill, it was an insult to people, when the bill was passed and it became law, it went away. All of the worries that were there went away.

I also was principal author in the Iowa Senate side of Iowa's workplace drug testing law. And that law, among other provisions, allows for a drug test to be conducted on an employee provided there is reasonable suspicion that they are using those drugs. Now, reasonable suspicion is credible, objective, identifiable characteristics. It's pretty close, although it's not quite verbatim from the statute. It's been 12 years.

That gives you a bit of the idea, Mr. Speaker of the definition of reasonable suspicion. Objective, credible, identifiable characteristics. And as much noise as was made about that, that we were going to test people on reasonable suspicion, we were going to test them on random testing, we were going to test them post-accident, we were going to test them preemployment, we did all of that. We didn't ask law enforcement officers to go and be trained and come into the workforce and look around for people whose behavior was erratic or maybe their pupils were dilated, or people who were nervous or irritable or whatever it might be.

We just simply directed that the employer designate an employee who would be the one who could declare that there be a drug test on someone because of reasonable suspicion. And the standard that's written into the bill is that employee has to go through an initial 2 hours of training, 2 hours, and then each year refresh that training with a minimum of 1 hour of training. So that might be the truck driver, could be the nurse, could be the janitor, it could be the CEO. Actually, if it's a small business, it could be about all those things wrapped up in one person.

But these are not people that are necessarily trained by their profession to identify a reasonable suspicion. They are just simply trained within their job to do so. And we for 12 years, for 12 years we have had reasonable suspicion in Iowa applied by employees of companies who have received 2 hours of initial training for the first qualifier and then each year thereafter 1 hour of training.

And they have pointed their fingers at employees and said, I have reason to be suspicious that you are abusing drugs. You go and provide a urinalysis now because that single individual's judgment thinks so. Now, that would give an opportunity for people to be profiled, for them to be discriminated against, for a law to be abused in a broader way than it could possibly be done in the State of Arizona. And yet in 12 years, in Iowa under the reasonable suspicion law, we don't have a single case of any type of persecution or prejudice or profile that has emerged.

Now, it doesn't mean there aren't some people who have not complained along the way. But I know of none. I've not had a complaint come back to me. There's not been a case that's been filed. The language for reasonable suspicion in Iowa that's granted to someone with 2 hours of initial training and 1 hour of annual training after that, it doesn't necessarily have a specific background required, has worked beautifully. And hundreds of companies now provide a drug-free workplace because they have the tools to work with.

And why would we think that an immigration law that applies in Arizona right now, if it's enforced by the Federal Government, somehow becomes a discriminatory law if it's enforced by local government? The very people that have to live with their neighbors and friends. The law enforcement officers that in Arizona are more likely to be Hispanic than the Federal officers that are enforcing immigration law. In some of the communities, that's true.

So why would we presume that law enforcement officers are inherently racist or bigoted or they would use their job to target people? I think this: I think the level of hysteria that exists in Arizona and across the country, especially with the boycotts that are out there, is proportional to the fear of the open-borders crowd, the whining liberals crowd, proportional to their fear that Arizona's immigration law will actually be effective. That's the answer to what's going on. They don't want to see a law passed that will be effective because they're for open borders, they're erasing the United States of America, they're for allowing people to flow back and forth at will. And, you know, you can't be a Nation if you don't have a border, and you can't call it a border if you don't defend the border.

And we are a Nation that has great respect for the rule of law. All of the people that come here to this country don't have any experience of respect for the rule of law. They don't understand that justice is blind here in America, or is supposed to be blind. They don't understand that there is a provision of, I'll say, a statue of the Lady Justice who holds the scales in her hands and she's blindfolded because she's weighing this justice without being able to see who the person is that the justice is being provided for.

And so this immigration law in Arizona that the President of the United States played the race card on and played to, unnecessarily, to fears falsely and erroneously when he made the statement in a speech a few weeks ago that a mother and her daughter that didn't quite look the right part--and I've forgotten the exact language that he used--could be going out to get some ice cream and they could have somebody stop them and demand their papers.

Well, that's inconsistent with the law that I read. It is demagoguery, Mr. Speaker. It's inaccurate. It's willfully scaring the American people for political reasons.

And it fits right down the path of the President standing right back here and saying to the Supreme Court who sat here that they had unjustly decided a case before them and seeking to intimidate the judicial branch of government, in fact the Supreme Court of the United States.

And so if the President read the bill, he didn't understand it or he willfully misrepresented it. We know if we take his word under oath, and that was the Attorney General Eric Holder last week when he was asked by Congressman Ted Poe of Texas, did you read the bill--meaning the Arizona immigration bill--he had to admit no, he hadn't read the bill and he hadn't been briefed on it either.

Now an Attorney General of the United States coming before the Judiciary Committee to testify before the committee would be intensively briefed on subject after subject. He would be so boned up and ready that he could respond to anything. And this Attorney General couldn't see fit to bother to read a bill that's less than a dozen and a half pages long, double spaced? One that he felt free to speak to and make allegations about and imply that it could lead to discrimination and racial profiling or flat out say so in his public statements.

I was shocked to think that the question that I would have not considered was even one that legitimately just couldn't imagine that the Attorney General of the United States would not have read a bill that he was so critical of, but he did not. Thanks to Ted Poe, we know that.

So the President didn't read the bill or he willfully misinformed the American people. Attorney General Eric Holder said he didn't read the bill, but still he misinformed the American people.

The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, admitted before John McCain, her colleague from Arizona, that she hadn't read the bill. She was aware of it, but

she hadn't read the bill, but she felt free also to talk about the potential effects of Arizona's immigration law.

And then we have the assistant Secretary of State, Posner, who repeated to us that they brought up the Arizona immigration law to the Chinese early and often and apparently made the statement of mea culpa for the United States that we had laws that were discriminatory and perhaps bigoted. But he hadn't read the bill either.

The President of the United States didn't read the bill. He misinformed the American people, unintentionally or willfully. The Attorney General of the United States, who is looking into suing the State of Arizona, hadn't read the bill, but he misinformed the American people unintentionally or willfully. The Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, hadn't read the bill but was misinforming the American people unintentionally or willfully. And the assistant Secretary of State, Posner, hadn't read the bill or intentionally was misinforming the Chinese. All of this going on in the Department of Justice has been directed by the President of the United States to investigate Arizona's immigration law.

Now, if the President gave that order without reading the bill, you would think he would have someone around him who had read the bill and had briefed the President. There's no sign of that. So apparently they're taking their marching orders from MoveOn.org or the ACLU.

And so the Department of Justice is investigating. They're looking for a way to bring suit against the State of Arizona on what could the basis be. And I asked the Attorney General this last week before the Judiciary Committee, Can you point to a single component of the Constitution that may have been violated by Arizona's law? No. Can you point to a Federal statute that would be in conflict with Arizona's immigration law? No. Can you point to any case law, any controlling precedent that would indicate that Arizona doesn't have the authority to enforce their immigration--the immigration law? No.

But still at the direction and order of the President of the United States, the Attorney General is using the force of the Justice Department to investigate Arizona and Arizona's immigration law all while inside that Justice Department they have canceled the most open- and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of America--that's the New Black Panthers--smacking billy clubs in their hand, calling white people coming in to vote in Philadelphia ``crackers'' and intimidating them from voting. And the Justice Department says we don't have enough evidence to convict.

And the Assistant Attorney General, whose name is Thomas Perez, testified before the Judiciary Committee that they achieved the highest possible penalty. And the highest possible penalty was to put an injunction against one of the four New Black Panthers, prohibit him from standing at that same polling place with a billy club and intimidating voters in the 2012 election. But after that, it's apparently not a problem.

It was a false testimony on the part of Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez. They didn't achieve the highest penalty that was available to them, even though he testified otherwise, and the Justice Department canceled the case, the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of America.

And then we have the case of Kinston, North Carolina, where the people of Kinston, North Carolina, voted that they wanted to have nonpartisan elections in their citywide elections. A lot of communities in America opt for that. Something like 70 percent of the communities in America don't want to have partisan elections. So they say you can't put a Republican or a Democrat, no ``R'' or ``D,'' by your name. You get elected to represent this city without having a party identification.

Kinston, North Carolina, voted to do that overwhelmingly. The same person inside the Justice Department that dropped the charges for the voter intimidation in Philadelphia, Loretta King, also sent a letter to Kinston, North Carolina, because they are a covered district and covered by the Voting Rights Act and they have been labeled discriminators since the middle 1960s, have to get approval if they are going to change any system of their elections under the Voting Rights Act because they are a covered district.

So she denied the will of the people of Kinston on the basis that African Americans who wanted to vote for another African American wouldn't know to vote for that African American unless they had a ``D'' beside their name. Well, that seems to me to be a race-based decision, not one based in law or logic.

I don't think it's logic that people can associate necessarily a ``D'' with skin color. I'd like to think that they were voting without regard to skin color, that they were actually voting for people that will do the best job of representing them in Kinston, North Carolina.

That's strike number two against Loretta King and the Justice Department.

She had a third strike against her, and that was a rule 11 being applied for filing a specious case that was unfounded, and it cost the Federal Government $570,000 to pay that out because she brought a case that couldn't be supported that was false and specious and unfounded. And there's better language for that to be found under the rule 11 language that's there.

All of this the Justice Department can investigate and continue with the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case. They canceled the will of the people in Kinston, North Carolina, based on a race decision of Loretta King who had brought this false and specious case that cost the American people $570,000 all while this Justice Department that has enough resources to investigate Arizona with no rational reason why, with no constitutional thing that he can point to, he can't even investigate ACORN.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to be recognized by you to address the House of Representatives in this most deliberative body that we are. I often come here; and in the 30 or so minutes that I spend waiting and anticipating my opportunity to address you, I also can't avoid lending an ear to the gentleman who often presents ahead of me. I sometimes think about what it would be like if I just could walk in here in the last 30 seconds and not feel compelled to rebut the previous 60 minutes.

I am going to just compress this a little bit so I can get on to the subject at hand that I came here to talk about; but, yes, many Republicans, and perhaps every Republican, will oppose this financial bill that has the Barney Frank bill sent to the United States Senate and become the Chris Dodd bill. In fact, I don't know any two people that would probably have less favor in rewriting the financial laws in America than those two individuals.

They have had a long time now to investigate what has happened with the finances in America and what has happened with the downward spiral of our economy, and when this happened. It started before this seminal date, but the seminal date, Mr. Speaker, was September 19, 2008, when then-Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson came to this Capitol and asked for the $700 billion in TARP funding. Then-Senator Obama, and now-President Obama, supported all of those moves. President Obama as Senator and later as President supported the takeover of the banks, the insurance companies, Fannie and Freddie, General Motors, Chrysler. And, by the way, the student loan program, not to mention ObamaCare. And now we have the financial world and an effort to take that over. And yes, I will stand and oppose these changes. I will stand and oppose them for a lot of reasons, perhaps that I will have an opportunity to get into a little bit later in this hour, Mr. Speaker.

The Federal Government should not be making arbitrary decisions on which businesses succeed and which ones fail. They should not be in a position to be evaluating. And if there is credible evidence of an entity, a corporate entity, a financial credit entity--credible evidence as to whether they might be in trouble, that would give the Secretary of the Treasury the authority to pull the plug on a company, take it over by the Federal Government, separate it any way he so chose; or, bring regulators in to intimidate them before or after the fact.

This bill, this Chris Dodd bill or Barney Frank bill, gives the Federal Government the authority to take over any business in America that is a credit business that they should choose.

Now, again, I hope to get to this. But at this moment, Mr. Speaker, I would transition this subject over to the subject that I came here to speak about, and that is right now we have Attorney General Holder testifying before the House Judiciary Committee. I came directly here from there, or I will say almost directly here from there, having

listened to a measure of his testimony and his response to some of the people that are on the Judiciary Committee. And as this unfolds yet, I come here because I am dissatisfied with the responses that I have received from the Attorney General. I actually think that he is a fine fellow and he would make a good neighbor, but I am concerned about the politicization of the Justice Department.

And even though Attorney General Holder made remarks at the end of my question period that their office would not be political, they would be impartial, they would function under the law, I happen to have a special view of Attorney Generals. And whether they be State Attorney Generals or whether they be U.S. Attorney Generals, they have to understand the Constitution. They have to understand the rule of law. They can't know every Federal statute. I wouldn't hold anyone accountable for that. But when they have had an opportunity to do an investigation or had an opportunity to brief themselves on a subject matter that is bound to come up, I would expect that they would be conversant enough with the law and with the Constitution to be able to make an argument that would defend the actions of the Justice Department at a minimum.

And so I made the remark and posed this situation. And this is off of the opening statement of Congresswoman Judy Chu, who said that Arizona law--and this is with Attorney General Holder, the sole witness before the committee and he was the audience that she was speaking to--she said, Arizona law is cruel and it institutionalizes racial profiling. She also said that people are ``already being detained because they forgot their driver's license at home.'' She continued and said that it's burdensome and unnecessary for people to carry multiple forms of identity, which reminds her of living in a Cold War state. I don't know what Cold War state she may have lived in. But I made this point to Attorney General Holder and asked him if there was anything in his knowledge that the Arizona law could be doing now that would affect the activities of the law enforcement officers in Arizona in such a way that the allegations by Ms. Chu could be accurate; that they're already detaining people because they forgot their driver's license at home, and that it would institutionalize racial profiling.

Mr. Speaker, this is the highest level deliberative body of the world and this dialogue has gotten down to this point where we have people that are representing a State law that's very well known by now that specifically prohibits racial profiling and prohibits the utilization of even the factor of race if it's the sole factor. That's by law. It's an Arizona law. And to have a Member of Congress say to the Attorney General in a hearing when the Attorney General is under oath that people are already being detained. People are already being detained on an Arizona law.

Here's the quote: ``Already being detained because they forgot their driver's license at home.'' They also said the law is cruel and it institutionalizes racial profiling. It's as if this law had already taken effect. And it's a fact that Arizona law, unless specified otherwise, does not take effect until 90 days after the Governor signs the bill, which was some couple or three weeks ago. It's certainly not 90 days, Mr. Speaker.

As I point this out to the Attorney General, one would think that a person that is at that high level in this country with this very high- level responsibility could at least concur that the Arizona law hasn't been enacted yet. But he could not bring himself to do that because that would have caused him to come into a political disagreement with the activists on the Democrat side of the Judiciary Committee, the most polarized committee on the Hill. Now that's a presumption on my part on his motive, but it seems to fit a pattern.

He admitted that he has an investigation going on looking into Arizona immigration law. And when I made the point that the President of the United States had announced that he had directed the Attorney General to look into Arizona immigration law, I heard no rebuttal. I twice presented to Attorney General Holder that the President has directed that this happens. So if the President of the United States directs the Attorney General to conduct an investigation into State statute, on what basis is the follow-up question to Attorney General Holder?

They've been investigating now for some weeks. And what is the basis of your investigation? Well, Constitution, statutory, the principle of Federal preemption of State law. Now that's a general answer that you can pick up in any law school or many articles in the newspapers these days about Arizona law itself. And so when I followed up with a question of specifically where in the Constitution do you have concern about Arizona law and where in the Federal statute would you have concern about Arizona law perhaps violating the Federal statute and stretching beyond the bounds of Federal preemption, I got a generalized answer that, Well, it's been the practice that the Federal Government has dealt with immigration law. The practice, the implication.

We have the Justice Department investigating Arizona. We have the Justice Department investigating Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County. They have targeted him for months and months and months because he's politically incorrect. He enforces Federal immigration law. It violates the activists that help support the President. But we can't find out that it violates any Federal statute, any constitutional requirement that's there.

I believe from what I've seen--and I've visited Tent City and Sheriff Joe Arpaio on the border and I have gone to that border many times. And I'll go back again, Mr. Speaker. But when we have an Attorney General that's committing the resources of the United States and the resources of the taxpayers to investigate a law in Arizona that enjoys at least 70 percent support of the people of Arizona, a significant majority of the support of the people across this country--that mirrors Federal law, and when you have a Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, who's a former Governor of the State of Arizona, who admittedly had her tugs of war with Sheriff Joe Arpaio when she was the Governor and he was the sheriff, one would think that an administration, a President of the United States, an Attorney General, a Secretary of Homeland Security would have jumped for joy that Arizonans have decided to use their State resources to enforce the Federal immigration laws that the Federal Government is not enforcing adequately enough.

Instead of jumping for joy, instead of going down and giving Sheriff Joe Arpaio a high-five or maybe the Governor of Arizona another high- five or a good ``atta girl'' for signing that bill and for the work that was done in the State legislature, particularly that led by Russell Pearce, whom I have watched for some time and appreciate a great deal--we can't have the Federal Government, obviously, supporting something that the American people want, the Arizonans demand.

It was almost a primal scream of desperation that caused the Arizona legislature to pass the legislation that mirrored Federal law so that they are going to prohibit sanctuary cities within Arizona and require local law enforcement to support Federal immigration law by setting up a State law that makes it against the law to break Federal immigration law. That's not technically correct, but it is the analysis that best describes it, Mr. Speaker.

Our Attorney General is spending resources to investigate Arizona and still can't point to a single place in the United States Constitution or a single Federal statute that he thinks could be the cause of concern. When I asked him, he said, Well, it's under investigation, and it's inconclusive at this point.

Well, I read through the Constitution and I came to a conclusion. As far as the constitutional understanding is concerned, it is this: there's two places in the Constitution that could be relevant with regard to Arizona immigration law. One place where it says the Federal Government has a responsibility to guard against foreign invasion. Well, now, we could talk about what a foreign invasion is, but when it's 4 million people a year pouring across our border illegally and at best

we can interdict a fourth of them; when we have twice the size of Santa Anna's army coming across our border every night, one might define that as an invasion.

They aren't all carrying weapons. In fact, very few of them are. But I will guarantee you there have been more weapons carried across that border in the hands of people who are coming in here illegally than all the weapons that were carried in the hands of Santa Anna's army when he came across into Texas that 150-some years ago.

So, Mr. Speaker, the Constitution requires the Federal Government to defend against invasion, but it doesn't prohibit the States from defending themselves against invasion. I would hope the Attorney General would understand that principle. I address that because there's only two places in the Constitution that address immigration. And I think that I have handled that issue so that it's essentially not rebuttable.

Then the other point is article I, section 8 of the Constitution, the other place where immigration is dealt with, where it says that Congress shall have the power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization. A uniform rule of naturalization. Well, what can that be? That means that Congress sets the legal immigration laws with regard to how people come into this country and become citizens. We do that. We have set those standards. But there's nothing in the Constitution that prohibits the States from passing their own immigration laws unless they are attempting to preempt existing Federal law or unless those laws are unconstitutional.

So one would think that an Attorney General that had all of these resources investigating Arizona law and was aware of the investigations that are going on of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, when there are allegations of violations of civil rights down in Maricopa County, all the resources poured into that, I've yet to find any substance. And still, millions of dollars are being spent, all kinds of time is being burned. There's all kinds of politicization going on. And the Attorney General swears there is not, that his office will not be political.

Well, I will submit, Mr. Speaker, that when the President of the United States says, Here's what could happen under Arizona law if a mother and her daughter are going out to get some ice cream, somebody can come along and say, Where are your papers? Anybody remember that? I do, Mr. Speaker. And so that was making this law political. The President of the United States made it political. And he's the man that ordered a Justice Department investigation of Arizona? And he alleges-- the President alleges--that it's race-based and racially motivated when the law itself specifically prohibits that from happening. We can't have the presumption on the part of the President of the United States or the Attorney General that the law enforcement officers in Arizona are motivated by something other than race. Maybe they're motivated to support the rule of law. Couldn't we presume that that's it? That's the case. That's their oath. Can't we tell by their practice that they have enough to do without targeting?

Look at the crime across Arizona. Phoenix, the second highest in the hemisphere. And kidnapping. The kidnapping, the smuggling, the deaths, the murder rate, crime rates over the last 10 years in Arizona have gone up. The illegal border crossings may have tempered down just a little bit, but on the other hand, it might just be that Janet Napolitano's operation isn't as aggressive as it was under even Michael Chertoff. But I suspect that even then they had diminished their enforcement.

When you make the argument that your interdictions on the border have gone down, therefore you're getting the border under control, it might just be you're not doing your job as aggressively as you were before. There can be twice as many people crossing the border, and you can be picking up half as many as you were before. But that doesn't mean the half as many you're picking up equates into fewer people crossing the border. That may be. In fact, I expect it is true that fewer people are crossing the border. But it doesn't equate that the enforcement is any better than it was. It may be better. It may be worse. But it's not conclusive.

What is conclusive here is the Department of Justice has become political. It is a political tool. It saddens me to see this and hear this and to have to make this argument here on the floor of the House. But I didn't come, Mr. Speaker, lightly armed. I only point out the Arizona component of this because that's the dialogue that just took place within the last hour or so. The Department of Justice is investigating Arizona for constitutional statutory violations but cannot point their finger to a single place in the Constitution or a single controlling Federal statute.

And, by the way, I would point out also that, according to Federal case law, the precedence that we can find, that there is ample precedent that local law enforcement has the authority to enforce Federal immigration law, with or without a 287(g) agreement and a memorandum of understanding, which has been somewhat gutted by Secretary Napolitano. The precedent that I would cite would be U.S. v. Santana-Garcia, a Supreme Court decision that establishes that local government has the ability--local law enforcement--has the constitutional authority to help enforce Federal immigration law.

I would go on further with this: that Sheriff Joe Arpaio is on solid ground. They would have found a way to crack him by now if he were not. It's been, I believe, politically motivated. The effort to go down and make race the issue when it is law enforcement that is the problem and that Federal immigration law that's not being adequately enforced is the problem. The Attorney General should be able to at least defend the actions of his Justice Department, even though implicitly agreed that the President had directed that there be an investigation. Based on what? The President's supposition that a mother and her daughter would be perhaps of the wrong skin tone and they would be picked up and asked for their identification because they went out to get some ice cream?

It seems the President has an inclination to engage in these kinds of things. When he had an Irish cop and a black professor, who did he side with? He jumped to a conclusion without having heard the facts, and he ended up having to have a beer summit.

Well, maybe we could have a summit with Sheriff Joe Arpaio on the South Lawn of the White House, and they could sit down at the picnic table together and discuss these things so that all of the resources of the Federal Government don't have to be tied up in knots on these suppositions for the unfounded presumption that there is something unconstitutional about Arizona law or something that violates Federal statute.

I see that I am joined on the floor by the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, who has just come from the hearing of the Attorney General. I would be so happy to yield as much time as he may consume to Mr. Smith from Texas and thank him for joining me here on the floor.

Reclaiming my time, and I asked if the gentleman from Texas could yield for a question before he moves on to his other important duties. And that is, I am a bit perplexed that the Attorney General couldn't or wouldn't point to a part of the Constitution that he thought might be violated by Arizona law or point to a Federal statute that might be violated by Arizona law or point to a piece of Federal case law that would prohibit local law enforcement from enforcing Federal immigration law. And would the gentleman from Texas have any idea how that question might have been answered by an Attorney General better informed?

Reclaiming my time, and I very much thank the gentleman from Texas for illuminating the subject matter and especially the polling component of this. One would think that the Attorney General, as he was preparing to come before the Judiciary Committee-- and historically, the Attorney General has briefed himself for several days with people who will ask questions and, I will say, play out a role so that he can be tested, prepared, and ready to testify before Congress. One would believe that the Attorney General, that the first thing that he would be briefed on is Arizona immigration law. The Justice Department is investigating Arizona, and yet there seems to be not a realization of what's going on. He admits to the investigation. And to not have read the law and perhaps not read the summary----

Mr. Speaker, I need to put the little bit of this in the Record from memory of what I have read of the immigration law, which is actually most of it. That it mirrors Federal immigration law, and it makes it against the law to violate Federal immigration law, but it's the law that is set up--it's mirrored and written by the State of Arizona. And I thought I had a summary of it here. Should I be able to find that, I will speak to it factually, but otherwise from memory.

But in any case, it allows for--if a law enforcement officer encounters someone in the normal practice of their doing their duties, they have to have probable cause to stop someone. Probable cause might be speeding, an accident, a crime that's taken place, a traffic violation. And once they pull over a vehicle, for example, they can ask for identification, like they would for anyone that is driving under any other stop. If then at that point, they have probable cause to stop the vehicle or encounter an individual, then, if the identification isn't adequate for, let's say, driving, then there's a reasonable suspicion for that officer to ask a few more questions. That officer can ask some questions such as: Where are you going? What are you doing? Where are you coming from? Where were you born? Why don't you have a driver's license?

And if the individual hands the officer a Matricula Consular card, that's pretty much conclusive evidence that they are in the United States illegally, and there isn't any other purpose to have one other than to function in the United States by those entities that will recognize it. It's issued by the Mexican consulate. It's not a valid U.S. ID. And if they're U.S. citizens or if they are lawfully present in the United States, they will have immigration documents or U.S. identification. And the immigration documents for legal immigrants, they are required to carry on their person. So people lawfully present in the United States who are not citizens--let's just say they have a green card, and that green card allows them to legally work in the United States, they are required to carry it on their person if they're 18 years old or older at all times. Arizona law just respects that. That's a Federal law. Arizona law respects that as well.

So this is probable cause to stop someone, reasonable suspicion that they're unlawfully present in the United States in order to follow through with any further questions or any further inquiry. Now if people boil out of the back of the van and start to run off into the desert, that's more than reasonable suspicion. And yet the objections that are coming from the people who are protesting against Arizona law are the objections that we're hearing from--I guess before the Judiciary Committee and a person of Representative Judy Chu, who already alleges that Arizona's law is cruel and it

institutionalizes racial profiling. No, it prohibits racial profiling as far as an exclusive component of reasonable suspicion or probable cause. She said, People are already detained because they forgot their driver's license at home. Who's doing that? They're not detaining people because of that, not under the color of this new Arizona immigration law, because it's not enacted yet.

We're already hearing the fears, and the Attorney General is investigating because the President has apparently decided for some political reason that they need to do something to suppress Arizona from enforcing Federal immigration law, instead of saying, attaboy, attagirl. It's about time that the State stepped up to help out of frustration. If the Federal Government had done their job, there wouldn't be an Arizona immigration law. But they are not. They are ineffective. They lack the will. And that's our problem. It's not lack of resources; it's lack of will to enforce Federal immigration law. It's not lack of resources.

Three years ago or so, a little bit more, we were spending $8 billion to protect our southern border. That's a 2,000 mile border. So, Mr. Speaker, I know you've already done the math. That's $4 million a mile, $4 million a mile to protect our southern border, and I said then, If you give me $4 million to protect a mile of border, I will be happy to take that check, and I can warranty my work. I could guarantee you that we aren't going to let anybody cross that mile for $4 million. Now the price has gone from $8 billion to protect our 2,000-mile southern border to $12 billion to protect our border, and still we have ineffectiveness because we have a lack of will and a lack of clarity of mission. And it comes from the top down. If it's clear that the President doesn't want the borders enforced, the Secretary of Homeland Security seems to not want to enforce against illegal workers in the workplace. She seems to want to just simply posture to enforce against employers.

Now I admit that there are many Border Patrol officers and CBP personnel and ICE personnel who go to work every day who do their job very well. In fact, I congratulate them for that. They want to do that. They put their lives on the line every day. They deserve our support. They deserve our adulation many times. But they're burdened by a lack of mission, and even though the mission is posted on the wall down at the station in Nogales, that mission has got to be something that the top articulates. And if the President of the United States articulates something else, when Arizona passes an immigration law that mirrors Federal law, and the President attacks Arizona law and inflames public fears in an erroneous fashion, what more could he do to undermine Arizona law and Federal immigration law?

He has said to everyone that's enforcing--not just local law enforcement that's enforcing immigration law. He has said to all of his Federal officers from the White House down, ICE, CBP, Border Patrol, all of them, well, he really doesn't want to see immigration law enforced. And it's clear, of course, that he doesn't want to have racial profiling used, and I would agree with him--as an exclusive component. However, if it's part of the other indicators, it had better be used. Would we say that we can't use as an indicator when it comes time to enforce the law against international terrorism that a young Middle Eastern male cannot be considered as one of the factors? We've kind of said that when people go through the airport. I think it's wrong. I think it's foolish. And in fact, Mr. Speaker, I think it's downright stupid to set aside our common sense for the sake of political correctness.

So an Arizona law, though, goes to great lengths to make it clear that race cannot be the sole factor when evaluating reasonable suspicion or probable cause. How much further could they go? It reminds me of the official English law that I spent actually 6 years getting established in Iowa. We have demonstrations and protesters. I would say, Come into my office, sit down, tell me what your concerns are. Hour after hour, I listened. We had witnesses before the committee. And it was about how their language would be disparaged. So we wrote right into the law that it was unlawful to disparage any language in Iowa other than English. And do you know, I don't know that anybody's disparaged English either, but they haven't disparaged any other language in Iowa.

These fears that are mounted by that 1 percent or 2 percent or 3 percent of the aggressive liberals, they wouldn't come to pass. They didn't come to pass when we passed an official language law in Iowa or the 20-some other States. And furthermore, the fear about reasonable suspicion, giving law enforcement an excuse to target someone that they don't like because of racial reasons, that isn't going to come to pass. It may be a wild exception somewhere out there in the barest little minority of law enforcement officers, but it's not going to come to pass. This is a presumption that the law enforcement officers are racist and that they're biased and that they're bigoted against a particular race. And many of the communities in Arizona have a significant percentage--and in some communities, a majority of their law enforcement officers are Hispanic, and yet we're going to label all law enforcement officers in Arizona as racist without one scintilla of evidence and have allegations by Members of Congress, as Ms. Chu, or the President of the United States, or, by his silence, or refusal, or his reluctance, I should say, to respond to the points that I raised with him, the Attorney General of the United States.

It creates a perception that this is a racist society and that we can't even have logical laws that uphold the rule of law because somebody will abuse those and stretch the limits and target someone.

Now I will tell you, and we heard from Mr. Smith, statistically, the law enforcement officers in Arizona have enough to do without that. They are faced with the highest kidnapping rate in the United States, second highest in the entire hemisphere. They have murder rates that have gone up, kidnapping rates, drug smuggling rates that have gone up, and violence that has gone up. The coyotes are taking the lawlessness from Mexico into the United States. Ninety percent of the illegal drugs consumed in America come from or through Mexico. And 100 percent, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency, 100 percent of the illegal distribution chains in America have at least one link that is the link that is provided by an illegal that is in the United States.

So, if by some magical formula everybody woke up tomorrow morning in a country that they were lawfully residing in, it would at least temporarily sever every illegal drug distribution chain in America. Now, it probably wouldn't take very long to rebuild some of those, and it would take longer to rebuild more of those, and eventually we would still have this illegal drug distribution chain in America because the problem we have is that the demand for illegal drugs in this country is so powerful and so great, somebody is going to find a way to meet that demand.

Until this Nation understands that we have to line up against the consumption of illegal drugs and shut down that magnet that brings illegal drugs into America, we are going to have billions of dollars come out of our economy that are going to flow to and through Mexico to other points where drugs are originated. We have $60 billion a year that are wired out of the United States to points south; about half of that to Mexico, and the other half goes to the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. About $30 billion into Mexico, about $30 billion to points south.

Some would argue that those are legitimate wages that are being wired back to family and loved ones. Yes, I would agree some of that is legitimate wages that are being wired back to family and loved ones in those countries of origin of people who are working here in the United States. A lot of it is illegal wages that is going south that should not have been earned in the first place if we had enforced our immigration law.

But a whole lot is being wired, shipped, laundered out of the United States to pay for the drug buys going south in places like Mexico and on down through Central America to South America. And we don't have a Drug Enforcement Agency that understands this equation adequately enough to intercept them. I have

talked to them. I don't blame them entirely for that. We need a mission at the top.

The President of the United States has got to articulate a mission. Instead, he is playing race bait games to undermine the law enforcement in the State of Arizona and across the country, and undermining the efforts of our Border Patrol, ICE, and customs border protection. And, by the way, the Shadow Wolves down there, the cells whom I admire so much and have a good friendship with, they are out there doing their job every day.

The Attorney General isn't willing, cannot, and I asked the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee to point out for me what I am missing in the Constitution that would prohibit Arizona from passing an immigration law like they did, or what is in the Federal code that would prohibit them from doing so, or what is in case law that might apply to that. And, of course, Mr. Smith, an excellent lawyer with a wonderful staff in his own right, doesn't fill out the answers to the those questions because I don't believe there are any. And I don't believe the Attorney General fills out the answers to those questions because I don't believe there are any.

When I raised the issue that the office of the Department of Justice is playing, is politically motivated, of course he rebuts that. He has to give the ``I am pure'' and ``we don't do political things within my department.'' Well, I will raise some points that I believe are definitive rebuttals to that.

I believe that the Justice Department has demonstrated a political nature well beyond immigration, and I would take us to the case of the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of the United States of America, and that was in Philadelphia in a previous election where we have video of members of the New Black Panthers standing outside of a polling place in paramilitary uniforms and berets, and one of them is standing there with a billy club, a nightstick, smacking it into his hand and calling people, white people coming in to vote, calling them ``crackers'' and telling them that they are going to take over the country and he is going to be out of power, those white people. It was intimidating to the individual that collected that film.

There is much other investigation which has gone on, and this investigation that was carried on by the Justice Department before President Obama swore into office and before Eric Holder became the Attorney General, there was an open-and-shut case that was completed against the Black Panthers that were intimidating voters. And I don't believe I need to say at this point ``allegedly,'' because I have seen the film. It is the most open-and-shut case.

But, when Eric Holder took office shortly after that, we saw the most open-and-shut case in the history of America of voter intimidation cancelled by the Justice Department. The case was there. They had everything but a plea, and perhaps they had a plea and I didn't verify that.

Now, the New Black Panther Party, there were two lawyers involved in the dismissal of this who have a bit of a reputation: Steve Rosenbaum and Loretta King. According to an article written in the National Review by Hans von Spakovsky, who has a personal knowledge of most of the lawyers involved in Justice on these issues, that Rosenbaum and King are two of the worst political hacks to be found in the career ranks of the civil rights division. That is an exact quote out of his article. He goes on and says: I have previously written about King's ambition to run for office in Maryland and on the Democratic ticket.

But putting that aside, Rosenbaum hasn't worked on a voting case since he left the voting section in 1994; yet he came in in 2009 to cancel the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of the United States. That is the New Black Panther Party members standing in paramilitary uniforms and berets, billy club in hand, calling white voters coming in ``crackers'' and intimidating them, and at least implicitly threatening them. And they cancelled the investigation when we have video of the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of America.

And then von Spakovsky goes on in his article to say that Loretta King hasn't worked on a voting case since she left the voting section in 1996. Yet the assistant attorney general on that case was Thomas Perez, who testified before the Judiciary Committee, and I believe he did so dishonestly, not just deceptively, when he told us they had achieved the highest punishment allowable under law. That was not true. That was not true. They accepted simply an injunction to prohibit one of those four members of the New Black Panther Party from doing the same thing again in the next election at the same location. That's the highest penalty allowed by law for intimidating voters in America? When the very underpinnings for our Constitution are legitimate elections, and even as important as legitimate elections it is the American people having faith in the legitimacy of our elections, canceled the case.

And he said that according to Tom Perez, the assistant attorney general, who should have to answer for some of this, he had two attorneys who had deep experience and he relied on their professional experience, their 60 years. Well, their 60 years didn't have to do with civil rights cases in the voter rights case, at least since 1994 or 1996.

And there were others that were involved in this that actually did the investigation that had substantial experience. In fact, they have more than 75 years between the two of them, the investigators that were involved in the actual investigation of that suit.

And by the way, Tom Perez, the assistant attorney general, in his testimony twice claimed that rule 11 mandated that the case be dismissed. Rule 11 provides sanction against lawyers who file frivolous and unwarranted lawsuits.

So our Department of Justice investigators, our attorneys trained specifically in that, who are bringing a lawsuit against voter intimidation for the New Black Panthers Party, when we have them on videotape, were intimidated because they thought there would be a rule 11 brought against them and there would be damages that would have to be paid because their investigation was frivolous? Frivolous or unwarranted, to be specific with the language. But to any lawyer, that is incendiary, to allege that a charge, a case that is being investigated professionally and legitimately might have a rule 11 brought against it and they had to drop it. It is an insult to the professionalism of our investigating attorneys whose names in this article are Coates and Adams. And they have prohibited them from defending themselves against such a charge, that they might have pursued a meritless case. And the Attorney General, in this case Perez, the assistant attorney general, operating under the authority of Eric Holder, has even ordered these attorneys not to comply with subpoenas before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights when the law directs that they do so, the Federal law, and directs all these Federal agencies to ``cooperate fully with the commission.''

And the Justice Department isn't political? When they can cancel the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of the United States of America, I submit that is starkly and bitterly political and the direction that was given by Loretta King would not cause me so much to focus on her if I didn't see her name pop up elsewhere.

Well, it turns out that Loretta King, long time supposedly not a political appointment of the Department of Justice, has been involved in some other cases, cases in which attorney's fees were awarded against the Justice Department, and that would be rule 11. In the civil rights division of the Justice Department for filing a meritless case, Loretta King, whom Perez claims made the dismissal decision, and I accept that description because her name pops up enough other place so I believe that is true, was one of the lawyers on record in the case of Johnson v. Miller, which was a redistricting case that went all of the way to the Supreme Court.

And not only did Loretta King lose that case, but both the Supreme Court and the Federal district court severely criticized the civil rights division's handling of the case. They found its practices ``disturbing.'' The district court found ``considerable influence of the ACLU's advocacy on the voting rights decisions of the United States Attorney General to be an embarrassment.''

So to read this in its continuity for the benefit of your attention, ``The Supreme Court and the Federal district court severely criticized the civil rights division's handing of the case, finding its practices disturbing. The district court found the considerable influence of the ACLU's advocacy on the voting rights decisions of the United States Attorney General to be an embarrassment. It was also surprising that the Department of Justice was so blind to this impropriety, especially in a role as sensitive as that of preserving the fundamental right to vote.''

This is what is going on with the case that Loretta King worked on that was rejected by both the district court and the Supreme Court. It went all of the way to the Supreme Court. The American taxpayers were forced to pay $587,000 in attorneys' fees and costs that were awarded to the defendants to compensate them for an unwarranted lawsuit, one in which Loretta King and the other Justice Department lawyers commanded the State of Georgia, as the Supreme Court noted, to engage in ``presumptively unconstitutional race-based districting.'' That's what we are working with.

So it looks like the antithesis of the allegation made by the assistant attorney general. It looks like Loretta King has been involved in some cases that had to do with race-based quota direction and distorting I think equal protection under the law. And this isn't the only case for Loretta King. I have named two now. She is a principal player in the dismissal of the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of America in Philadelphia, the New Black Panthers Party.

She's an attorney in the case that has been reversed by the United States Supreme Court resulting in $587,000 in settlement costs because of the unjust case that was brought before the Court.

And now I move, Madam Speaker, to the third component of this, and this is Kinston, North Carolina. In Kinston, North Carolina, they had a referendum. They had a vote to decide to take their local elections and move them away from partisanship, to make them nonpartisan, so that the candidates that would be on the ballot for mayor and city council and whatever offices they may have in that city of Kinston, North Carolina, would not be labeled as Republicans or Democrats. They would be labeled instead as candidates to serve their community.

Well, it happens, that's the case in most of the city government in the United States. They are nonpartisan. People want to elect a mayor that's not a Democrat or a Republican, a mayor that's going to serve them in their community. They want to elect city council members of the same thing. They don't want them identified as Republicans or Democrats, and I'm glad that it is that way, as nonpartisan as possible in local government. And whenever local government passes a referendum to make their elections and their office holders nonpartisan, we should champion that. We should be working against partisanship.

But the opposite happened in the case of the decision of the Department of Justice. Now, you might ask yourself, Madam Speaker, why would the Department of Justice stick their nose in a local decision. Madam Speaker, you might ask yourself, had you been focusing on my dialogue here, why local governments would want to have a referendum, why they would want it to be nonpartisan. We know the answer. They want to get away from the bitter partisanship.

But furthermore, Madam Speaker, you might ask, why would the Justice Department inject themselves into a local political decision and deny Kinston, North Carolina's decision made by a significant majority of their people that they wanted their people elected, not as Republicans or Democrats, but just simply as nonpartisan servants of their community.

Well, it happens that Kinston, North Carolina, is one of those covered districts that are defined under some of the Voting Rights Act that was authorized, reauthorized here some three or more years ago in the United States Congress. These covered districts cannot change anything within their election law or practices without being approved by the Justice Department, the civil rights division of the Justice Department. And so if you're in a covered district--now, covered districts are generally those districts that would have had a high percentage of minorities in them, presumably, also that have a history of, let's say, the institutionalization of Jim Crow laws or racism that goes back to the civil rights era of the 50s and 60s. When the Civil Rights Act was passed in, I'm guessing now, I believe it was 1964 or 1965, these covered districts were restricted from making changes in their election practices without approval of the Justice Department, in fact the civil rights division of the Justice Department.

So in Kinston, North Carolina, or many other places across the country, if they had a voting booth that was in an old city hall building and the city hall was falling down, and they wanted to move that voting booth across the street into the new city hall building, they would have to get the approval of the Justice Department to move that voting booth over there, and the Justice Department would then be doing an evaluation as to whether that voting booth was being moved for some race reason.

That's the minutiae of what's going on. It's a bigger picture, and there are other ways to analyze it. But I'll boil it down to the minutiae because this is minutiae, Madam Speaker. This Kinston, North Carolina argument is minutiae. They decided they wanted to have nonpartisan elections. I couldn't imagine why that would be race based or have anything to do with race.

Well, they were denied, and the will of the people in Kinston, North Carolina, was wiped out and negated by a decision that was written by Loretta King, who said, and when the case referred to a change to nonpartisan elections, and I have the letter that goes to the city and it says this--now, imagine, this thinking. It is beyond my ability to get my mind around this. It says: Removing the partisan cue in municipal elections will, in all likelihood, eliminate the single factor that allows black candidates to be elected to office.

Now, how could anyone get to this point where, if your motive is for black candidates to be elected to office, you have to identify them apparently as Democrats, or otherwise people going to the polls wouldn't know how to vote for the black candidate if they didn't have a D by their name. This is, if there's a rationale in Loretta King's writing, that's it. And it's pretty much a stretch, in my view. But she writes this, and I'll repeat this into the Record, Madam Speaker, because this is breathtaking: removing the partisan cue in municipal elections, meaning identifying as either Democrat or Republican, the D or the R, in all likelihood, would eliminate the single factor. Eliminate. Now it didn't say one of the factors or a primary factor. It said it would eliminate the single factor that allows black candidates to be elected to office.

In other words, she's saying if you don't have a D by your name and you're a black candidate, you can't be elected to office. It's the single factor, according to her interpretation. So she wiped out the will of the people of Kinston, North Carolina, with this Justice Department decision under the hand of Loretta King.

And she goes on and writes: In Kinston elections voters base their choice more on the race of a candidate rather than on his or her political affiliation.

Wow. Do I read that that she's defining the people in Kinston, North Carolina, as racists at their core? They base their choice more on the race of the candidate than on their political affiliation.

And she goes on to write: Without either the appeal to party loyalty or the ability to vote a straight ticket, the limited remaining support from white voters for a black candidate will diminish even more. And given that the city's electorate is overwhelmingly Democratic, while the motivating factor for this change may be partisan, the effect will be strictly racial.

Oh, my gracious. These kind of decisions, the decision that wipes out the will of the people of Kinston, North Carolina, identifies them as a bunch of racists that can't decide who they want to be their mayor, without having a label of an R or a D beside them because that's an indicator of race. A D is an indicator that you're more likely a

minority candidate apparently, according to her analysis. There's nothing here that's based on anything that has to do with law, except that it tears asunder the equal protection clause of the Constitution that makes it a race-based decision on her part, that sets up and accuses people of being racist.

And by the way, the Voting Rights Act and the covered district component of this label somebody's granddaughter who was born a generation and a half or two after her grandfather was labeled a racist by this law, also a racist. It makes it, you inherit racism under this covered district Voting Rights Act.

But I suggest Attorney General Holder, if he's going to be a nonpoliticized Justice Department, has an obligation to take a look at all of the actions of Loretta King. If she can go in and wipe out the will of the people of Kinston, North Carolina, define them all as a group of, well, a significant majority of them anyway, as a group of racists, if she can cancel the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of the United States of America, if she can bring a case that's so unmerited that it ends up costing the taxpayers $587,000 under rule 11, and if the Justice Department, under the direction of Eric Holder and under the decision and under-the-oath testimony of Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez, if the Justice Department can do the things that they have done and argue that they had to close the Black Panthers voter intimidation case because of the fear of rule 11 when, in fact, it's the other way around, and the Attorney General of the United States would sit before the Judiciary Committee an hour and a half or so ago and tell this Nation that his office isn't politicized, with all of this evidence to the contrary, and put all of the resources that he has into the investigation of Arizona immigration law, the constitutionality of it, whether there's a Federal statute that prohibits it or whether there's any case law out there, any case precedents that might affect it, and still not speak to any of those three issues, so the resources of the United States of America are being used in a politicized fashion, Madam Speaker, and I think I have made my case. I appreciate your attention.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 4 o'clock and 25 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, May 14, 2010, at 11:30 a.m.

Well, I thank the gentleman from Missouri for heading up this Special Order hour and for talking so much common sense into the Record himself. And as we watched, there are two different paths one can follow. The road that's being traveled by the Obama administration and the Pelosi House and the Reid Senate is a road down the path of Keynesian economics on steroids. And the path that we should have followed, and the path that we've got to get back to, is more of the Adam Smith, free market component of our free enterprise economy. And if we look at all of the components of this free market that have been nationalized, taken over, or are under a great threat of this Congress taking them over, we can add up, as I've many times said, the banks, the insurance companies, Fannie and Freddie and the car companies, the student loan program completely, the nationalization of our bodies under Obamacare, our skin and everything inside it. Now we have the financial services bill sitting over there in the Senate about ready to get shoved out of there and back here for a conference report, and it could end up on the President's desk. If we add all of that up, and if we add to that cap-and-tax, which is another huge endeavor on the part of the President, the Speaker and the majority leader in the Senate----

Let me add up the percentages of the formerly private sector from a year and a half ago, and it comes to 74 percent of the private sector would be either nationalized today or nationalized with the two acts that are pending that they're trying to bring at us, that being cap-and-trade and the financial services, Mr. Akin, and I'd yield back.

We are at least at 51 percent that has been nationalized, and that's the banks, the insurance, Fannie and Freddie, the car companies, and then Obamacare. That's 51 percent.

It's based upon the private sector activity as analyzed by Dr. Boyle of Arizona State University, who's written the analysis and the article on it, Mr. Akin.

We have seen history being made. And those things are what one would consider to be a done deal. And then we are on the cusp of the financial regulations, which is another 15 percent of the economy some

say. And then add to that another 8 percent, and which I think is a very low estimate of what cap-and-trade or cap-and-tax would actually do to us. So I don't know what's left. Whatever part of the economy they would like to take over.

But from my standpoint, every bit of free enterprise that's out there increases the vitality of Americans. They have got a reward for working and producing more effectively. It's not enough to work hard; you have got to work smart, too. And everything that the Federal Government takes over diminishes the vitality of the American worker and lowers the average annual productivity of our American people, which diminishes us as a people and reduces our gross domestic product and takes our standard of living down.

Is that the point in history when the first order came down no work, no eat?

But in the United States?

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives and the privilege to also have the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin) yield to me as he delivers the leadership hour presentation on the economic situation here in the United States and the opportunity to say a few words on that particular subject. And I may revert back to that subject, Mr. Speaker.

However, I would shift this subject a little bit over onto a subject matter that seems to be on the minds and lips of Americans all across this country. I have had the privilege to travel to some of the corners of America in the last few weeks and had my conversations in the coffee shops and in the restaurants and in city halls and in meeting places, and I was a little bit surprised that--I had had the perception that in my district immigration becomes an issue that is very much front and center, and I expect that's going to be the case in States like Arizona, California, Texas, those States that are border States, New Mexico, where you have a large number of illegal border crossings. But I didn't expect it would be the case in the Northeast, for example, and other places across the country to the intensity that it was.

I found that at every stop someone would bring up immigration. And it reminded me of the times in 2006 and in 2007 when this Nation debated immigration intensively and constantly at every stop, even to the point where, as much as I like to talk about it, and as interested as I am in the subject, and since I am also the ranking member of the Immigration Subcommittee it's my job, Mr. Speaker, but in my town hall meetings in '06 and '07, in many of them I set the rule that we were going to talk about everything except immigration until we had dealt with everybody's concerns and issues. And then we would go to immigration to finish the time that we had left. And invariably, we would get to immigration and it would burn all the time that we had left because the American people are very intense on the immigration issue.

And we watched as Frank Luntz did a focus group, or at least one that I could see down in Arizona, he just came back from that recently, and we watched how that group itself was divided between themselves, with very intense emotions, most of them full of frustration and anger about the immigration issue, not in complete agreement on what to do.

It seems as though the Hispanics in America are where you find the objections to the enforcement of immigration law, the most vocal ones. And yet we also know there is a large number of Hispanics that many of them have been here for hundreds of years, their families have been. But I will submit that that doesn't get anybody anything.

I just shook the hand of an individual down at the Turkish reception tonight who is a naturalized American citizen as of about less than 3 weeks ago. And I would express this, that for any of us to argue that our ancestors have been here since the beginning of the Republic, the Daughters of the American Revolution, for example, and I am glad that they maintain those traditions. And it means a great deal throughout the families. And we understand that we have obligations that are generational that pass along because of the culture and the heritage of the family and the duty to our country.

But I recall standing in the Indian Room in the Old Executive Office Building as Emilio Gonzalez, the director of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Services, gave a speech at a naturalization ceremony there which I attended for that purpose. And when he said to those gathered that were about to take the oath to become naturalized American citizens, he said, Look out that window. Look out that window. And when you look out the window, you look out at the White House itself and you see the vast south lawn and the south side and the west side of the White House. And he said, I want you to know two things. One of them is from this day forward you are as much an American as the person that lives next door. And he pointed to the White House, where President Bush lived at the time.

He said, when people ask you where are you from, don't tell them that you

are from Turkey or France or Mexico or Canada or wherever it may be. Tell them you are the first American. That you are an American and you are the first American, and you are as much American as the man that occupies the White House today. That's the right sentiment for this country for legal immigration. That's the way we should think about new Americans, in every bit as good a standing once they take that oath of citizenship and go through their naturalization process, in every bit as good a standing as someone born to the 10th generation of Americans that might be here.

But each of us has a different set of history, a different set of family memories that were taught a little bit differently, but we need to tie together under this American banner and this American history.

And so the idea that we are going to see students that are sent home from school because they are wearing the red, white, and blue on a day that's supposedly Mexican nationalist day, a day that's Cinco de Mayo, a day that's not celebrated to any significant extent even down in the city in Mexico where the Mexicans won the victory over the French, but celebrated here in the United States. Started up as a promotion. I think it was a beer distributor that actually began the celebration of Cinco de Mayo here in the United States, whatever that is.

Mr. Speaker, I don't take issue with the celebration of a holiday that makes people proud of their culture and their heritage. If that were the case, then I couldn't celebrate St. Patrick's Day, which I also recognize isn't celebrated so intensively in Ireland itself, but here it really is. And there are some real parallels here. It's the people that reject the American flag and reject the American culture that I take issue with, not the new Americans that are here that are proud of being and becoming Americans by choice.

But we have a big decision to make in this country. And this immigration debate has gone on for a long time. And it centers on this: it centers on the idea that the people that came across the border illegally should somehow be granted citizenship or a path to citizenship, if that's their goal, and somehow it turns into a reward for breaking the law.

Now, we need to recognize, Mr. Speaker, that there are hundreds of millions of people across this globe, and perhaps billions, that would love to come to the United States and become Americans. And they are waiting in line in the right way. They are respecting our laws. And I will submit that the people that respect our laws will make better citizens than those who have broken our laws. And our argument here in this country comes down to this: grant amnesty to people that broke our laws, reward them for breaking our laws because there is an argument that we must capitulate because we can't enforce the laws that we have.

Mr. Speaker, it is not the case that we can't enforce the laws that we have. And it is not the case that enforcing those laws would be ineffective in resolving this immigration problem that we have in this country. The problem we have is our administration lacks the will to enforce the law. And it isn't just the Obama administration and it isn't just Secretary Napolitano who have demonstrated a lack of will in enforcing immigration law. This goes back through several Presidents.

I would take us back to 1986, when President Reagan signed the Amnesty Act of 1986. And it was to provide amnesty for a million people that were in the United States illegally. And by the way, President Reagan was honest enough to call it the amnesty bill when he signed it. It was one of the very few times that President Reagan I will say let me down on something that I thought was philosophically wrong. And I remember disagreeing with President Reagan in '86 when he signed the amnesty bill. And I didn't consider that I would end up in the United States Congress some less than 20 years later to my arrival here and there would be an argument about what was amnesty.

It wasn't any question about what amnesty was in 1986. Ronald Reagan admitted the bill was amnesty. But he said he had to sign the bill. In order to get control of the borders, in order to enforce the law, he had to sign the amnesty bill. Now, that was his calculation. And I don't think he liked it philosophically, and he probably came to a conclusion that he didn't have a choice. Whatever the rationale was, he signed the bill. He called it amnesty. No one argued it was amnesty. It was to be a million people.

But the fraud and the corruption, the people that gamed the system tripled the number. And those who received amnesty in '86 were closer to the number of 3 million than they were the number of 1 million that was supposed to be the amnesty to end all amnesties that was going to put this away. And the only way we could get control of our borders in 1986 was to give amnesty to the people that were here and enforce the law against the employers and tighten the border and make sure that there wouldn't be a magnet for people to come into the United States.

And so, Mr. Speaker, what happened was the enforcement that was stronger, far stronger under Dwight Eisenhower, that diminished from Dwight Eisenhower's time on was stronger under Ronald Reagan than it was under the first Bush administration, and it was stronger under the first Bush administration than it was under President Clinton. And I recall my frustration with each of those Presidents and their lack of will to enforce immigration law.

And under Bill Clinton there was an accelerated effort to naturalize a million people into the United States. And I will say legal or illegal, as the anecdotes came to me. And I have talked to some of these people. They told me that they understood that they would be fast-tracked to citizenship, but they were to vote for Bill Clinton for President. That's what I heard from some that came through my district that I have sat down and talked with. And I don't know the specific data on that; I only know the anecdotal data. But if one shows up and tells me that, it's a pretty sure bet that there are quite a few others that had that same idea.

So a million were accelerated through naturalization in 1996, and a lot of them voted for Bill Clinton. And a lot of frustration was built among those of us who respect our borders, the sovereignty of the United States, the need and the obligation to defend the borders, and who respect the rule of law and do not want to see it subverted or eroded, especially intentionally and willfully by an administration seeking to produce a political gain.

And then, Mr. Speaker, from the Clinton administration, we transitioned into the Bush administration, George W. Bush, a man who I personally like and respect and admire, and found a couple of things to disagree with along the way, and this was one of them.

Well, it's odd for me, Mr. Speaker, to stand here on the floor and speak to the issues that I disagreed with with Ronald Reagan or the issues that I disagreed with on George W. Bush, but I saw a lack of enforcement of our immigration laws during that period of time under the George W. Bush administration as well.

And there was, in the second term of the Bush administration, there was a concerted effort to try to bring our--to try to bring comprehensive immigration reform to bear. ``Comprehensive immigration reform'' was the fancy term for ``amnesty,'' and the debate about the meaning of amnesty ensued then. And rather than simply admit the meaning of the word ``amnesty'' and admit that comprehensive immigration reform really is comprehensive amnesty, the debate ensued about what amnesty was.

So the American people had to submit to a cacophony of different definitions of amnesty, and continuously the argument was made that, well, whatever it was they wanted to do to provide amnesty wasn't amnesty. I recall that discussion about, well, what if they pay a fine for $500 and they promise to learn English and they promise to pay their back taxes, couldn't we give them a path to citizenship? And that's not amnesty, is it, because, after all, you charge them a fine. It's, well, if you're going to sell a path to citizenship for $500, I will have to call that amnesty.

And if someone promises to learn English, that's an obligation of the naturalization process. You have to prove proficiency in both the written

and spoken word of the English language to be naturalized as an American citizen. Now, I know they get a little sloppy with that, and some of the people that are naturalized just aren't so very good when it comes to the spoken or written word of English. And you'll notice that at a naturalization ceremony when it comes time for people to stand, they may not recognize what that means. And I have heard different directions that have gone out to the crowd, and some sat there without responding, even though it was the most significant and pivotal moment of their life.

Well, I'm surely proud of those who step up and want to become an American and who are determined to assimilate themselves in the broader overall American culture, which has a lot of subcultures in it, admittedly, Mr. Speaker.

But we saw the enforcement of immigration diminish over these administrations that I've talked about from Dwight Eisenhower all the way to Barack Obama. And with Barack Obama, it's different than it was under the Bush administration. The Bush administration actually accelerated it and began to enforce the law at least more aggressively than they were in the last couple of years. It was, I believe, an effort to convince the American people that they were committed to enforcing immigration law. And I don't know if their heart was ever in it, but I believe it was at least, at a minimum, an effort to establish a record and a standard that they would use enforcement so that the rule of law could be reestablished, and then upon the establishment of the reestablishment of the rule of law, might possibly be able to pass an amnesty bill that the American people would accept.

I think it was a political miscalculation. I think it was a mistake for George W. Bush to give his amnesty speech that he gave on that January 5 or 6 of that year, sometime about January 5 or 6 of 2005, I believe it was. I think it was a mistake for the President to do that. I think that he should have first come out with a standard of we're not going to ask the American people to establish a new policy and grant a path to anything, to guest worker, or path to citizenship, or more of a permanent green card status until--unless and until we can establish, as a Federal Government, that the rule of law and the law enforcement personnel whose job it is to enforce immigration law will be enforced, and that those who break the law would do so with the expectation that they would be confronted by the law and punished in proportion to their crime.

And I will also submit, Mr. Speaker, that a nation that doesn't have a border can't declare itself a nation. We must have a border. We must define the border, and we can't call it a border unless we defend the border. And on our side of the border, the law must prevail and justice must be blind, and it has got to be enforced by the people who are paid to enforce the law. If they decide not to do that, they are subverting our very civilization.

Many of the people who come here come into the United States because they live in a country that doesn't have the rule of law, a country that has corruption, a country that's always spiraled downward into third worldism, a country that probably can't be brought up to a--what I will say is a successful, modern, civilized nation within our generation, this generation of man. Many times it's hopeless to think of it with the level of corruption and the lack of rule of law.

Can't have that happen in the United States of America. Justice has been blind in America, and the rule of law has been firm, and it's been evenhanded, and it's been rigid throughout centuries.

So Arizona recognized that there were Federal immigration laws that were not being enforced, despite all of the Federal officers that worked the border in Arizona, the lack of will, the lack of will that comes from the top, from the President of the United States to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security right on down the line through the Border Patrol and U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel. You can go into the station at the Border Patrol and you can read the mission: We're going to get operational control of the border, to put it in the short version. The mission sounds good. But the mission has got to be in the heads and the hearts of the people who are carrying it out, and that's got to come from the top.

I listened last week to a speech that was delivered here at the American Enterprise Institute by General Petraeus who received the Irving Kristol Award there that evening, and it's a very respectable honor that recognizes the contributions of a very respectable man, Irving Kristol. And General Petraeus is a very fitting recipient of that reward.

And from memory, he made three points. As he left Iraq, and where I had first met him in 2003 where he commanded the 101st Airborne at Mosul, I think it's important to note that General Petraeus, even then, they swept in and liberated the northwest quadrant of Iraq and the Mosul region and a couple of other provinces there. That was around March 22, in that period of time. By mid to late May, General Petraeus had held an election in Mosul. That's 2003. They elected a governor, a vice governor, and I met with them and also a business representative in Mosul.

He promoted very effectively liberty and freedom and a version of democracy there that could be carried out in that country. And I asked him, How did you have an election? How did you know how to do that? He said, We didn't know how. We just knew we needed to have one. We needed to have local representatives that we could deal with.

It was interesting that General Petraeus set the governor and the vice governor at the head of the table. He sat on the side of the table to send the signal that the Iraqis were running the show even then, even within months of the time that they had been liberated.

Well, General Petraeus' speech last week laid out three steps along the way to success, and they were points that he made as he holed up at Fort Leavenworth there in Kansas, not that far from me, I would add. And he and others that he gave significant credit to wrote the COIN language, the counterinsurgency booklet that was so well published and distributed across the country. Over a million copies have been distributed, and I've read fair parts of it.

But he laid out this point that first you've got to get the big things right. You've got to articulate the mission. You've got to plan the mission. The mission's got to be right. It's got to be understood. You have to get the big things right. Then you've got to market it and sell it to the people who have to carry it out. That's step number two. Step number three is see to it that the mission is carried out, right down to the details.

But first, you've got to define the mission, and then you have to market the mission to the people who are going to carry it out, and then you have to follow up to make sure that the mission is carried out down to the details.

Well, the mission that we have in border security and immigration enforcement in America is not clearly articulated. Congress can pass legislation, which we did in the Secure Fence Act that establishes that we're going to build 854 miles of double fencing, in some cases triple fencing, and that the Secretary of Homeland Security had to certify when they had operational control of the border. Operational control of the border. And there's a good definition in the Secure Fence Act that defines ``operational control of the border.''

But it suffered an amendment to it over in the Senate that weakened the Secure Fence Act that was Duncan Hunter's major effort here in the House of Representatives. The definition of ``operational control of the border'' was reduced and subverted. And the result was that the mission that Congress laid out for the border protection personnel altogether was ill defined because of the squabbles from within.

So we weren't able to get the big thing right, the first thing right. We were not able, as a Congress, to define the mission. Even though we tried and we voted on it here in the House and we passed a very clear mission, but it was subverted over in the Senate, and it's been undermined by some of the people on the border.

And the effort to require that before you could build a fence you have to negotiate with the local political subdivisions and local people, and that local

includes the people on the south side of the border? I don't think there's any merit to going to Mexico and asking them if we can protect our border. That's just an added mission that undermines the mission.

So what we have are custom border protection personnel, border patrol agents, ICE agents, others along the border, including our National Parks personnel that are swimming upstream against a high tide of illegal people and drugs pouring through there. Maybe they understand the mission, but they do not believe, nor do they have the confidence, that the higher-ups will support them.

And so they are out there every day, punch the clock, do their shift, do what they can do, plug the hole here, plug the hole there. But there isn't anyone in this administration from the White House on down that has defined how we actually accomplish this mission of controlling our borders and shutting off illegal immigration in America.

Now, I don't think it happens to be all that complicated, Mr. Speaker. I think you have to have the will.

And so the first thing to do is shut off the bleeding at the border. And as Congressman Phil Gingrey from Georgia so articulately said, and I'm confident he's worked--he's a doctor. I'm confident he's worked in the emergency room. He said, when somebody comes in that's a victim of an accident and they wheel him in on the gurney and they're bleeding all over the place and they're bleeding all over the floor and bleeding from several places in their body, he said the first thing that you don't do is grab the mop and the bucket and start to clean up the mess. The first thing you do is stop the bleeding. Get the patient stabilized and get it under control. And once you get it stabilized, then you can worry about cleaning up the mess. Well, we have a lot of discussion about what to do about cleaning up the mess, and we don't have a lot of discussion about what to do to stop the bleeding.

So here are the places where the bleeding exists so we can do something to stop it. First on the border is this. We have had--and I don't know that I have confidence in the numbers in the last--during this administration. They're telling me that they have fewer interdictions at the border; therefore, that shows there are fewer border crossings. I suspect that if you just stopped enforcing the law you would have fewer interdictions on the border. They've never given me a real number of how many come across the border and how many are stopped in their attempt to cross the border.

But I do a lot of asking, and we do have testimony before the Immigration Subcommittee. We have numbers such as this, that we have as many as 4 million illegal border crossing attempts a year, as many as 4 million. Now, some of those could be people trying more than once. In fact, I know it is.

And when I asked the Border Patrol what percentage of those attempts are you able to stop? On the record, they'll say, We think about 25 percent. But when I go down to the border and I ask those who are engaged in this on a daily basis what percentage do you stop, they will look at me. And I'll say, 25 percent? They'll look at each other and laugh and they'll snicker and they will say--the most common number I get is it's more like 10 percent that we stop on their way across the border. And some will tell me it's 3 to 4 percent, but I've never had anyone tell me in private that they think they stop 25 percent or 20 or 15. I can't think of a number above 10 percent, but I can think that the number that I most often hear is 10 percent.

So if we have 4 million illegal border crossings a year and we stop 10 percent of that, that's not a very big number, Mr. Speaker. And it's not very good efficiency on what we need to be doing down there on the border.

We need to look at this from this standpoint: What would you do to stop the bleeding? Number one thing, shut the border off. It's not that hard to figure out. Why can't we do that? Someone said it's only 2,000 miles, as if that's a vast, undefendable territory, and it's not. Look at the territory that we're defending in places like Iraq and in Afghanistan, for example. A lot of that border is really easy to defend.

It's not very difficult terrain. It's wide open desert on both sides where you can see a long ways. And we are spending $12 billion on the southern border every year to protect it. That works out to be, a 2,000-mile border, $6 million a mile. That's when you add up the cost of the Border Patrol, customs and border protection, the Humvees and the pensions and the payroll and all the fuel and the gas and everything that goes into this, and a support network of helicopters, et cetera, it adds up to around $12 billion, and that's $6 million a mile.

Now I don't know the most current numbers that we've had on what it takes to build an interstate highway or a four-lane highway, but it's not $6 million a mile. The cost to defend the southern border, and I think it's probably less than half of that price, Mr. Speaker, at least in some of those older numbers that I've looked at, but for the cost of what we're spending to defend the southern border, we could pave a four-lane highway for 2,000 miles a year every year. This is every year. $6 million a mile.

Now I ask myself, if Janet Napolitano came to me and said, Congressman King, I want to contract this border control with you, and I'd like to give you a mile to start out. And it's just a mile that looks like the gravel road from my house west that nobody lives on for a mile, or it's a mile of open desert, and I'm going to give you $6 million to see to it that nobody crosses that mile for a year. Now on second thought, since the government does these budgets over a 10-year period of time, give me a 10-year contract to guard a mile of border and give me $60 million to watch that border for 10 years, a mile of it.

Mr. Speaker, I will submit, $60 million would be more than adequate to seal that border up so nobody got across my mile. I would guarantee it. I'd bond it. I'd be willing to watch you dock my pay if anybody got across and got away. And if I'm in the private-sector business industry, I'm not going to create this huge enterprise of hiring people and putting Humvees underneath them and all of the trappings that go along with that. Yes, you need some. We need some boots on the ground. We need to protect and defend them and give them good equipment. And we know that their lives are on the line every day. And we've got to respect them and appreciate them and pray for them. But, Mr. Speaker, building empire with boots on the ground isn't the only way to solve this problem. In fact I will submit it's not the most cost effective way. The most cost effective way would be to do what a businessman would do. If Janet Napolitano handed me $60 million and said, Guard that mile for 10 years, you can bet that I would put up, not just a fence; I would build a concrete wall. And I would put some wire on top of that wall, and I would have a road, and I'd have a wire fence behind that road, and I would have cameras and monitors and vibration-sensing devices. I would have all of the electronics necessary to send me signals if anybody came and tried to get over, under, around, or through that wall. And so would anybody else that would do a cash flow calculation on how best to defend the border. Well, anybody except Boeing, for example, who spent a lot of money down there, a lot of money convincing this Congress that they should accept a virtual fence and that virtual fence so far has been a bust. And as much as I appreciate and respect Boeing when it comes to airplanes and tankers, the job down there on the border, they've got some making up to do. We would have been better off if we had spent a couple million dollars a mile to build the concrete wall that I designed and put the wire on top of there and build the sensory devices and build a road behind that and then put a fence in there so that there would be a zone that if you got over the concrete wall, you took some other equipment to get over the fence that's there, and we could defend it. We could patrol it. That's what we needed to do. For a couple of million dollars a mile, we could set that system up. And that leaves $4 million a year left over.

Now it doesn't mean that I'm going to be able to do all that without hiring people and paying wages to guard that mile, but let's just say we spent $2 million a mile to put in a wall and a fence and a road and some sensory devices. That still leaves $4 million left over for that year to hire some help, buy a few

Humvees, get some radios, some uniforms, some pension plans, all these things that go into it.

So I will submit that it's cash flows, Mr. Speaker, to build a wall, build a fence, because it reduces the number of personnel necessary, and it's far more effective. It is far more effective from a cash flow standpoint, from an American taxpayer dollar invested standpoint, to put the infrastructure in place, to maintain the infrastructure.

And we had the Corps of Engineers come out with some wild number that it would cost something like $50 billion to maintain the fencing on the southern border. It was a ridiculous number. And there were no numbers to back that up, no numbers to support it. It was a wild number that they pulled out of the sky. I build things. We do Corps of Engineers work. Well, I have in the past. I am now out of that construction business. But I designed a concrete wall that one could put the footing in with the slip form and drop in precast panels and put the wire on top, lay the sensors in there and build that thing, and it wouldn't take us much to put together a crew that could build a mile of that a day.

Now that would be not the kind of all-hands-on-deck effort that you see in, oh, a Manhattan Project or a NASA project, or even the kind of effort that they're using to put out the leak in the gulf right now. This is just a little old construction company that would set the system up and toss those panels in, set them in with a crane, one after the other right on down the border. It's not that hard. And it's not that expensive. And it is very effective. And it lets the Border Patrol concentrate on those areas where they would be going through and going under and going around. And it would reduce that traffic dramatically, especially concrete, because you don't cut through that with a torch or a hacksaw; you have to have a concrete saw. And I don't know one that doesn't make noise or vibration, so we would have those kind of sensors that are there.

And to those people that will argue that if you show me a 20-foot wall, I'll show you a 21-foot ladder--oh, I think it was perhaps Janet Napolitano that said, if you show me a 12-foot wall, I'll show you a 13-foot ladder, that has got to be the weakest, most specious argument I've ever heard. I've heard people on both sides of the aisle that will make that argument.

And so I asked the question of the chief of the Border Patrol at a hearing at Ellis Island a few years ago; that if we can build an impermeable barrier from heaven all the way down to hell that no one could go under, no one could go over, and no one could get through it, how many Border Patrol does it take to man that impermeable barrier for our southern border? The answer that I got back was, It still takes boots on the ground. In fact, it still takes more boots on the ground, because that's the argument.

Well, I want enough boots on the ground. I want enough Border Patrol. I'm ready to put the National Guard down there again and guard that border. I'm ready to turn that southern desert into a training ground for Afghanistan and Iraq. We should have done that a long time ago. That all makes sense to me.

But if you follow what I've said, an impermeable barrier all the way from heaven to hell--that you couldn't dig under and you couldn't go over the top--the full length of 2,000 miles on our southern border, how many people does it take to watch that? I know. It's hypothetical and it's theoretical, but the answer within those parameters, Mr. Speaker, is zero. It takes nobody to watch the impermeable barrier that they can't go under and they can't go over. That means it takes zero personnel to watch something like that. That's the hypothetical answer that needs to come.

Now we know we don't have that kind of a barrier. We know we can't build that kind of a barrier. But my point that I'm making for those who would willfully deny the utter logic of this is that the better the barrier, the fewer the personnel. And I don't argue that we have to build 2,000 miles of border fence and control. We just build it where they are crossing the most and we keep building it, building the length of it, until they stop going around the end. If that's 2,000 miles, then it's 2,000 miles. If it's 854 miles as described by the Secure Fence Act, then it's 854. But that kind of barrier makes the personnel we have more effective; it allows us to get control of our border. It can force all traffic through our ports of entry, and that's what we've got to do. And we've got to beef up our ports of entry, beef up our surveillance and our technology at our ports of entry so that we can catch those drugs and the illegal people and the contraband that's going through those ports of entry. That's part of our job. We can do that.

Now under this plan that I've laid out, with the money we have, we could easily build all of the barriers on the border that we deem are appropriate and effective and useful and we should and must do that, and we still have money left over for the personnel that we have, and we'll be more effective in what we do. We can shut off the bleeding at the border.

The next thing that needs to happen, Mr. Speaker, is we've got to then shut off the jobs magnet. And some of that can be done at the same time. There's no reason we can't do it simultaneously. This effort on the part of the Obama administration to steer away from enforcing against illegal workers but go against the actual employers without bringing the illegal workers into this--when I say that the raids in Postville were inappropriate, unjust, maybe they'll argue that they're racially motivated. I'm out of patience with people that play the race card the first time. You can deal them out a deck, and out of 52 cards, somehow they will lead with the race card every time as if the race card is trump. Well, the rule of law has got to be trump, and the rule of law is justice is blind. Justice is blind and does not regard race as a factor. The Arizona law prohibits the utilization of race as a sole factor when it comes to evaluating reasonable suspicion. And these officers know what reasonable suspicion is.

I happen to have written the reasonable suspicion law in Iowa with regard to workplace drug testing. It's very similar to the Arizona statute and the definition that they are utilizing, which is Federal case law on reasonable suspicion. And in 12 years in Iowa, even though we're not using law enforcement officers to define a reasonable suspicion, what we're doing is asking the employer to designate an employee--the employer himself or herself or an employee--as their specialist in drug abuse in the workplace. And if they see behaviors that are erratic, that are indicators of drug abuse--maybe the look of their eyes, their pupils, the dilation of the pupils, maybe erratic work habits, showing up late, production going down, things of that nature, let alone accidents where people can get hurt or killed--they just simply say to that employee, I have a reasonable suspicion that you're using drugs, and you need to go into the nurse's office or downtown to the clinic right now and provide a urinalysis, and we will test it and find out if you're abusing drugs.

In 12 years, we haven't had a constitutional issue, we haven't had any litigation, I haven't heard a complaint about one person being unjustly targeted under reasonable suspicion for race or any other cause. Or even because of personalities. And you have to know, Mr. Speaker, that even in Iowa there are companies where that personnel who manages the ``reasonable suspicion'' definition, whose job it is under Human Resources to do that evaluation and make the call, that individual, yes, they're trained, but surely we would have one that would be a racist like all of these cops in Arizona have been described to be, by the people who oppose this Arizona immigration law. Surely there would be one that would have a personality disagreement with an employee, and they would like to get even with them by making them go take a drug test at will. But none of those objections have been raised.

So it's hard for me to accept the idea that trained law enforcement officers--it might be the janitor or the nurse or the truck driver that's pointing his finger at an employee and saying, You go take a drug test. That's what's going on in Iowa without complaints or objections. In Arizona, these are trained law enforcement officers whose training is being focused because of an executive order of Governor Jan Brewer,

and they are very sensitive to these issues. They understand this law, and they're going to understand it even more before it goes into effect in August. A lot of them are Hispanic themselves. And to presume that law enforcement officers are racist and racially motivated is a division among the American people that's caused and perpetrated by people who would sow seeds of discontent and distrust and untruth and dishonesty for political gain. That, Mr. Speaker, is what's going on in Arizona.

The law that they passed in Arizona is a law that mirrors Federal immigration law. It directs local law enforcement to enforce immigration law, and it also allows the citizens of Arizona--it gives them standing to sue if the local government is not enforcing immigration law to the standards defined.

Now, I understand that law enforcement thinks they're in a squeeze, that they might be sued because they will be accused of discriminating; and on the other hand, they might be sued because they didn't discriminate. That might be what we've already heard down there. But it's my experience that when you bring a law like this--and I've had that experience happen to me at least two times in other circumstances. One is the drug testing law that brought out people that were aggressively opposed to it and accused that it would be setting things up for discrimination based on personalities, race or any other reason.

And then when we passed the official English law in Iowa that took 6 years to get there--finally it became law--there were a lot of objections from some of the more liberal members of the Latino community. I sat with them, and I listened to their voices over and over again. But of all the fears that they voiced over all of those months and years, there hasn't been a single report that's come back since then that anybody was disparaged or discriminated against because someone said to them, Well, English is the official language of the State of Iowa.

And so these fears didn't come to fruition there. The same kinds of arguments that were made in Iowa as are being made in Arizona today on their immigration law, the same kinds of arguments over the official language of English, the same kinds of arguments that were being made in Iowa over the reasonable suspicion language on Iowa's drug testing law, none of those fears came to fruition under official English or under the drug testing reasonable suspicion in Iowa.

And I can't stand here tonight, Mr. Speaker, and allege that any of those fears will come to fruition in the State of Arizona, but I can with great confidence predict that there will be far, far less going on that reflects the fears of the objectors of the Arizona immigration law than are predicted by the people that are demonstrating in the streets.

I think that my friend and former colleague, Tom Tancredo, got it right when he said, You can judge their fear of the effectiveness of a law by the level of hysteria that they demonstrate. They're not demonstrating against an injustice or something that is really unconstitutional. They're demonstrating because they're afraid the law's going to work, that it will be enforced, and it will actually be effective, and it will clean up a lot of the illegal immigration in Arizona, the 460,000 that they say are there, and I suspect it's significantly more than that.

And when you have across this country some of the cities that decide they want to boycott Arizona because Arizona said we want to help the Federal Government enforce immigration law, that's a reason not to buy something from Arizona? That's a reason not to go down there for a convention? I think, Mr. Speaker, it's a reason to go. I think we ought to get together and take a bus and go to Arizona and spend some money. Don't have a boycott--have a buycott. I might go down there and pick up some items from Arizona and bring them home just to express to the Arizonans my solidarity and appreciation to them for stepping up to enforce a law that the American people support, this Congress has passed, it's on the books, that President Obama took an oath of office to uphold and still willfully refuses to do so through his subordinates, such as Janet Napolitano.

And I might also point out, Mr. Speaker, that tomorrow Attorney General Eric Holder comes before the House Judiciary Committee. And as he comes before the Judiciary Committee, there will be a whole series of discussions and questions that will be brought out, I am confident. Eric Holder took a look at the Arizona law, and I think was responding to a direction from the President of the United States to see if he could find anything unconstitutional about the Arizona immigration law or something that was unlawful about the Arizona immigration law. So that tells me that they didn't know the Constitution very well, and they probably thought there was something in there that made all immigration law the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal Government. Well, that's not true. It does say in the Constitution that it's the Federal Government's job to protect us from invasion, and it also says in the Constitution it's the Federal Government's job to set a uniform practice of naturalization.

Now, you can tell that I drew a bit of a hesitant blank there. But let me see, article I, section 8 says ``establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization.'' So that would be what it says in the Constitution, Mr. Speaker. Those are the two references that we have to immigration in the Constitution, but it doesn't make immigration law exclusive to the United States Constitution and the Federal Government. There's nothing in the Constitution that excludes the States from enforcing Federal immigration law or writing their own. It just can't supersede Federal law.

And there's a case that is U.S. v. Santana-Garcia that establishes the precedent that it is implicit that local government law enforcement has the authority to enforce immigration law in the United States. It's implicit in that decision U.S. Government v. Santana-Garcia. Santana- Garcia was that side of the case, up against the United States Government.

So anybody that puts on a gun and a badge and a uniform and provides for the safety and the security of the American people and has pledged to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States ought to know that when you take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, that means also the laws that are written within the parameters of that Constitution. It's implicit. When we take an oath here to this job as a Member of the United States Congress, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, as the President does--so help him God--it doesn't mean his interpretation of the Constitution as he sees it. It's not a growing, moving, changing document, as Elena Kagan believes. It's a document that is firm, and it's fixed, and it's rigid. And it's the text of what it says and what it was understood to mean at the time of ratification of either the broader document, the base document of the Constitution, and also the amendments as they were ratified.

The local law enforcement still has a responsibility to step up and help enforce immigration law. It isn't a hands-off thing. They don't sit there and look around and think, Well, let me see, the State Bank of Tucson was robbed, and I'm a State highway patrol officer. So I will chase down the bandits who robbed the State Bank of Tucson because that's my job. But, oh, I pulled him over, and I was wrong. It was a mistake. I didn't even have reasonable suspicion. They actually robbed the National Bank of Tucson. No jurisdiction here. I have to let them go. Let the Federal officers go collect those robbers who robbed the National Bank, but the State Bank, of course, might be their jurisdiction.

And then the city police officers, what do they do? Do they refuse to enforce speeding laws that are not perhaps the city ordinance? Does the county sheriff only serve papers and refuse to enforce the ordinances of the city when they're blatantly violated in front of them? No and no. Our law enforcement officers in this country have always cooperated with each other throughout the levels of law enforcement to the extent that they can do that in order to produce an effective enforcement of the law. That is how it has been. That is how it shall be. That's how it shall be in Arizona.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County has been enforcing those laws for a long time now, and he's taken the heat

from Eric Holder, and that I think implicitly comes from President Obama. And Janet Napolitano, who knows him well, made remarks that would imply that she had come to a conclusion that there were biased violations of people's civil rights under the enforcement of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. There is no basis for it, but they stirred up enough furor that a few of the American people began to believe that there was a basis for it. I went down and took a look at Tent City down in Phoenix. And if I remember my numbers correctly--and this is from memory, not from notes, Mr. Speaker, so it's subject to correction--but about one- third of the inmates in Tent City were there because they were illegal, and about two-thirds of them were there for other reasons. A peaceful group of people. They're there in striped uniforms, and they do get some pink underwear. It's not the nicest place, and it doesn't need to be the nicest place. We don't want to advertise it as a place to come back to. It's a place to leave and not come back to. That's why we have jails.

But this situation in Arizona, we've got to stand with them. I stand with Governor Brewer. I stand also with Representative Pearce in Arizona for the work that he has done. And he is very, very articulate in stepping up to defend immigration law. I encourage and look forward to making a new effort to establish a new fence and barrier on the border, one that works out to be a cash flow.

And I also look forward to moving legislation in the aftermath of this November election that adopts the New IDEA Act. The New IDEA Act is the legislation that I have introduced in the last couple of cycles, and there aren't very many new ideas under the sun. It takes a little audacity to declare a bill a new idea, but I think it is a new idea.

But I think it is a New IDEA. And New IDEA stands for the New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act; New IDEA.

What it does is it recognizes that there are agencies out there that are pretty aggressive in enforcing their turf. I have noticed that the IRS is pretty aggressive in enforcing their turf, the Internal Revenue Service. So I asked myself, of all of these agencies, which one would be the most aggressive. It comes back to me that the IRS would be useful people. It is like when you go to have a pickup game and you start choosing up sides. I look across here and I think, Who do I want on my team if I want to get something done? If I am going to have to defend the border, give me the military first. They will get the job done. I don't want to get into the argument about the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, or Coast Guard. They all get the job done. So if I were to chose, I would say first give me the military. Let us go to the border and let's seal the border with the military. They will get the job done.

Then I would look around at who else would I like to pick for my team. Of all the government agencies, if I want somebody to help me enforce immigration law, would I pick somebody from the EPA? No. They would stand in the way. Would I pick somebody from the USDA? No, not likely. But of all of those agencies, maybe somebody from the Department of Homeland Security. Yes, but at the top they are not given a very defined mission. It looks as though their mission is being subverted by the Secretary, Janet Napolitano. So I would pick the IRS for my team because they are effective. They are good at doing what they do.

Here is how I would bring the IRS into this effort to help control immigration law. This legislation, the New IDEA Act clarifies and establishes the wages and benefits paid to illegals are not tax deductible for income tax purposes.

And so let's just say you have an employer that has been paying a million dollars a year out to a good number of employees at a rate of $10 an hour. That million dollars a year is tax deductible because it is a business expense like electricity, heat, fuel, or merchandise that is purchased for resale. All of those things are business expenses. New IDEA clarifies that the wages and benefits paid are not tax deductible. So the IRS would come in, and during the course of their normal audit, they would take the list of employees, punch the Social Security numbers of those employees into the E-Verify database, and if it comes back that they are not lawful to work in the United States, the IRS would take those wages and say, Sorry, employer, this million dollars is not tax deductible for you.

So it goes from the expense side, pushed over into the column that makes profit. If you calculate that profit, at the time I did this, it was 34 percent corporate income tax rate, and you add the interest and penalty, the effect of that million dollars denied as a tax deduction becomes an addition of about $6 an hour. So your $10 an hour illegal becomes a $16 an hour illegal because of the audit of the IRS. And, by the way, it is required to grant safe harbor to an employer who uses E- Verify in a legitimate, reliable way. So we give the employer safe harbor if he uses E-Verify. We give the IRS the authority to deny that deductibility if they are not able to work lawfully in the United States. And we put interest and penalty on there as well as the tax liability. Your $10 an hour illegal becomes a $16 an hour illegal. And what will happen all across this country is 8 million illegals will be looking for work, and there will be 8 million jobs that will open up for American workers, lawfully present people who can work in America with a green card or American workers.

That solves about half of our unemployment problem right there, and it legitimizes the employers and gives them something they can count on. There are some things that need to be cleaned up with that, in addition, Mr. Speaker.

Another one is E-Verify must be changed so employers can use it on legacy employees, that means current employees, and also use E-Verify with a bona fide job offer, rather than the law right now requires the employer to hire the worker and then find out whether they are legal or not. By that time, the employer has invested training in them and they have passed up somebody else to fill that job. So they will have somebody there for perhaps a week, they will have to pay them, and so the employer ultimately has to break the law to find out if they are breaking the law. They need to be able to use E-Verify with a bona fide job offer. They need to be able to use E-Verify to verify those legacy employees that work for them now, their current employees.

We can do all this. We can seal the border with a concrete wall and a secondary and a tertiary fence where it matters. We can put sensory devices there. We can build a road to patrol it. We can put cameras up and monitor it. We can man it effectively; in fact, more effectively with fewer personnel than we have if we build the barrier. We need to shut off the jobs magnet in the interior. We can do that by enforcing current law and by passing E-Verify to establish that the IRS is part of a team member that would be required to cooperate with the Social Security Administration and with the Department of Homeland Security. So the right hand, left hand, and middle hand all knew what the other was doing.

It is pretty simple to solve this problem. It has been solved in 60 minutes, Mr. Speaker, and if anybody has any questions, they can easily visit my Web site, Steveking.com, where I will be happy to answer any questions that might come up.

Meanwhile, I appreciate your attention on this subject matter, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 17 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, May 13, 2010, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to be recognized here on the floor of the House, and I appreciate my colleague from Texas

holding the ground until I come here to hold a little ground with him. I always stand on the same ground as my friend, Judge Gohmert. In fact, all of the way from wading to shore on a free Cuba to climbing a mountain in the Himalayas, and all that free country in between and a bunch of it that is not.

I came tonight to talk about a couple of subject matters. One of them that is on the front of my mind is the tax situation here in the United States. We are watching and we watched as the two Bush tax cuts were passed over the last 8 or so years, the 2001 and then the 2003 tax cuts. May 28, 2003, is when the effective ones were passed, the reduction in capital gains, dividend taxes and a series of things. And of course the language that is there on the estate taxes which are suspended for this year, and they go on in full force at the end of this year, and nothing has yet been done. Something does need to be done.

I am for a complete abolishment of the estate tax, Mr. Speaker, and I am for the reinstatement or the extension of the Bush tax cuts, if we can get them. But we have watched as the former chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, as he was coming in to be the chair, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel), traveled around through all of the talk radio circuits and the talk television circuits, and they asked him over and over again, Which of the Bush tax cuts would you like to preserve and which ones would you like to see go away or end?

There never was a definitive answer, Mr. Speaker, but the process of elimination brought people to a conclusion over the period of November 2006 until about February of 2007 that there really wasn't a Bush tax cut that soon-to-be Chairman Rangel would support. So we are watching now the eventual sunset of those very effective economic stimulating tax cuts that went in on May 28, 2003.

Capital understands when it gets more expensive and less of it gets invested. When less capital is invested, then there are fewer technological advances and the productivity of the American worker goes down and it makes us less competitive as a Nation. It is awfully hard to measure that, but what we can see from that period of time of November 2006 until mid- to late February of 2007, we saw industrial investment go down and the decline in industrial investment was precipitated, the economic decline that came about, about the time that Speaker Pelosi first took the gavel. We can see the data that indicated that there was less capital investment because in part--not entirely but in part--Chairman Rangel signaled to the investment world that taxes were eventually going to go up, and the cost of capital would go up. There would be less capital invested, and that means with less capital invested, it reduces the productivity of the American worker. Reduction in American worker productivity means we are less competitive as a Nation. That means other cultures, other economies, other civilizations would be ascending and the United States would either slow or diminish its ascent economically or decline. And then we saw the economic crisis.

The calamity that goes back into the seventies with the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act and then on the heels of that came, with the Community Reinvestment Act, the effort to encourage bankers to make bad loans in bad neighborhoods and deal them off on the secondary mortgage market to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who had underwriting requirements that were a little too stringent for some groups in the country, particularly a group know as ACORN. And so ACORN came to this Congress and lobbied for a couple of things in the early and mid- nineties under the presidency of Bill Clinton. They weren't having a lot of success under Ronald Reagan, but under Bill Clinton they were successful enough that they were able to get the Community Reinvestment Act rewritten that put even more requirements for the lenders to make more bad loans in more bad neighborhoods and prop up real estate whose asset value couldn't support the mortgage on it.

While that was going on, ACORN was also lobbying here in this Congress, by their view successfully, to lower the underwriting standards for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And they succeeded in doing that. Some in this Congress wanted to tighten the standards and wanted to move them toward complete privatization, which they used to be. And some in this Congress wanted to move Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to complete nationalization. There was a debate here on this floor. There were several debates on this floor. The one that comes to mind for me was October 26, 2005, when at the time Congressman Jim Leach from Iowa had an amendment on the floor to raise the underwriting requirements for Fannie and Freddie, raise the capitalization requirements for Fannie and Freddie so that they would become a more viable economic institution and to move them away from what appeared to be coming, which would be the Federal Government, the taxpayers, eventually having to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Well, that amendment that was offered by Mr. Leach and supported by myself and also Mr. Latham of Iowa and others, did fail here on the floor in the face of a very aggressive rebuttal that came to the floor in the form of the current Financial Services Committee chairman Mr. Frank, who said during that debate, if you are going to invest in Fannie and Freddie, don't count on me bailing them out, I will never vote to do a government bailout of Fannie and Freddie.

Well, ``never'' is a word that shouldn't be used by people in this business, Mr. Speaker. And I don't bring it up to be particularly critical of the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Mr. Frank. I point it out because ``never'' didn't last very long. It lasted maybe 4 years, moving on 5.

But when President Obama signed the executive order that finally swallowed up all of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and we had to go in and bail them out at the end of the Bush administration, that is true. The Executive order before Christmas swallowed up the rest of this, and the Federal Government, the taxpayers of America, took on $5.5 trillion in contingent liabilities with Fannie and Freddie. Now they are completely, no longer a quasi GSE, but they are completely owned entities within the Federal Government and the taxpayers are on the hook for all of it.

Now, let's presume that Fannie and Freddie could be operated at a profit. Gee, that would be nice. But we know how government works when it comes to profit. They don't have the right incentives, and eventually it can't work.

So the Community Reinvestment Act was passed in the seventies, refreshed in the nineties under Clinton which put more pressure on lenders to make bad loans in bad neighborhoods. ACORN lobbied for that. ACORN also lobbied to lower the underwriting standards so that Fannie and Freddie could swallow up the secondary market. Fannie and Freddie did that, and today the Federal Government owns more than 50 percent of all of the home mortgages in the United States and the taxpayers are on the hook for the default of those mortgages in the United States.

We also had mark-to-market accounting which was put in place during that same period of time. Mark-to-market accounting is a system whereby on your balance sheet you have to write down the marks and what the actual bids are for those commodities.

So, Mr. Speaker, I would put it this way. I happen to know a bank in the area, in the Midwest, that had $60 million worth of commercial paper. That commercial paper had always performed, it had always paid and drew a reasonable interest rate. It would be the equivalent of a very effective, well-established company that had an operating loan that they funded through this commercial paper. It had a market and a value to it, and the value was $60 million. And that was on the balance sheet of the lending institution.

But when we saw the downward spiral and the threat that could have been a crisis in credit in America, there was not--temporarily there was not a market for that commercial paper. So that lending institution, even though commercial paper had always performed, even though the company was viable and made their loans, the value of that had to be marked from $60 million down to zero, let me just say, figuratively speaking, overnight; $60 million down to zero. Now there is no asset value. We had lenders that were being pressured by FDIC regulators coming in to turn up the capitalization requirements to the banks and require

them to, let's say, solidify their balance sheets and to make up for the missing $60 million. It was a temporary situation.

And to make sure, Mr. Speaker, that people can understand what mark- to-market accounting is, I would use this example. I think whether you are a city person or whether you are a country person, whether you are a farm or some other type of economics, you can understand this. I come from corn country, and so let's just say that under mark-to-market accounting rules it would work like this: If a farmer had 100,000 bushels of corn in his bin, stored on his farm, dried, 15 percent moisture in good condition, he would look at that, and let's just say the market price for that corn was $4 a bushel. So in those bins on storage in the possession of this farming operation, there would be then $400,000 worth of corn. That is 100,000 bushels at $4 a bushel. That could go on the farmer's balance sheet at that amount, and you may want to mark it down less shrink and less the basis to the marketplace. But for simplicity sake, $400,000 worth of corn on the balance sheet, stored in the bin in good condition.

Now, that's all real fine, but along comes a flood, maybe a flood like we've seen in the tragedy in Tennessee, who the folks down there our hearts go out for, Mr. Speaker. But along comes a flood, and it washes out all the bridges all the way around the farm, and it washes out the bridges in the area. So the grain elevator where the bids were coming from at $4 a bushel is shut down. They're operating. They're in good shape. They've got their generators running, and their grain storage is okay. But no trucks can go to haul any grain. Nothing can move. And so magically, there would be no bids for the corn a day after the flood washed out the bridges, and there would be no bids for corn until the bridges were put back in place. That could take months, or it could take days, depending. Well, let's just say a couple of months before the bridges can be put back together. In that period of time, that corn would sit there. It would be in good condition. It would be worth $400,000 someplace else, but not $400,000 sitting there, because he didn't have a bid where he delivered the corn. He can't get it out. So this farmer that had $400,000 worth of asset value would have to write that down to zero on his balance sheet.

Meanwhile, the bridge is still open to go to the bank. You need to borrow money to operate from so you can pay your bills. But he couldn't borrow the money because his asset value had gone from $400,000 down to zero, even though that corn would have some value when the bridges were put back together. That's what mark-to-market accounting does. It accelerates the downward spiral with market trends going down and distorts them and takes us down into the economic decline, or it accelerates the upward spiral and distorts the markets that way, because when you get temporary upticks in the market, then the assets go up almost immediately in direct proportion, which increases the borrowing capacity of that balance sheet.

We need a better system. The mark-to-market accounting system was abolished in 1938. It came back on us again in the Clinton era, and when it did so, it helped set the foundation for the economic crisis that we have been in. And now here we are with the President having spent a couple of trillion dollars or more, taking over the economy of the private sector in the United States--not all of it, but certainly a majority of the private sector activities have been taken over. It started the end of the Bush administration, accelerated in the Obama administration, and we have three large investment banks--AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. You've got all of the student loans swallowed up in America, and General Motors and Chrysler were taken over by the Federal Government, with 61 percent of the shares of General Motors owned by the Federal Government. That's the taxpayers' investment.

And when General Motors is running an ad that says they've paid off their loans, yeah, they did that, all right. They paid off a loan. I don't remember the exact amount of that, but it was in the low few billions of dollars. Meanwhile, the taxpayers are still holding 61 percent of the shares. The Canadian Government's holding 12.5 percent of the shares. The unions were gifted 17.5 percent of the shares of General Motors. And we're watching ads that say that General Motors paid us back?

Well, then, why didn't Tim Geithner sell those shares of General Motors into the open market? Why doesn't he divest the Federal Government from their ownership in General Motors? If this administration doesn't believe that they should be in the private sector, why are they running banks, insurance companies? Why have they taken completely over Fannie and Freddie? Why are they running two car companies? Why did they take over the student loans? Why did they nationalize our bodies?

Mr. Speaker, that's not a misstatement, and it's one perhaps for those who have not heard of this before, they should pay attention a little to the description. But the most sovereign thing we have, the most valuable thing we have is our health, our physical body. And part of our freedom is to be able to buy a health insurance policy that suits our needs and make the demands of the insurance companies that there's a market for what we want to buy so they produce a policy that meets our demands.

Up until a month ago, there were 1,300 health insurance companies in the United States and approximately 100,000 policy varieties that could be chosen from. So if you're a consumer out there on the market, you could look around at those 1,300 companies and decide which one you'd like to do business with, weigh the merits of their policy, settle on the company, look through the variety of policies, and between all those policies, 100,000 policy varieties, choose your policy. That's a lot of choices. You don't have that many choices in the grocery store on how many different kinds of food you want to buy, but it sure looks like choices when you walk into the grocery store. Health insurance in America has a much, much larger selection--or it was--than you find seeing single individual items in the grocery store, because the markets had demanded those kinds of varieties and the companies were seeking to meet the demand.

But now under ObamaCare--in effect, by the year 2014, every health insurance policy in America will be effectively canceled by this government. They will all have to be refreshed and requalified, and there isn't a single policy that exists today that the President of the United States can point to and say, Joe, Sally, your policy, the one I told you, Don't worry, you get to keep it, you can't say that you get to keep it.

Have you noticed that? Have you noticed, Mr. Speaker, there hasn't been a single policy that's been pointed to by this administration, let alone the President of the United States, that they can say to any consumer out there, This is your policy, and you can keep it. And even if they could find a policy that they could tell you you could keep, they can't tell you that it's going to not cost you any more money. They can't tell you that the premium's not going to go up. And when I make that statement, they will throw up their hands and say, Well, obviously we can't because health care costs are going up. It's a natural thing for them to go up double digits while inflation is going up single digits. But the followup to that is, Yes, you can throw up your hands and say that.

But the other thing that cannot be stated by the President's spokesman or by the President or by this administration or by Speaker Pelosi or Harry Reid or anyone else, no one can make the statement that health insurance policies are not going to be increased because of ObamaCare's passage. Yes, they will be. They certainly will be.

We see a community rating of seven to one today. That means that the cheapest policy is going to be one-seventh the price of the most expensive policy. This pushes it into three to one. That means that that young person that's paying for a health insurance policy that is-- let's say, if it's $100 a month, the most expensive policy out there would be $700 a month by that comparison. But with this new legislation that's there, for the $100 a month, the highest then can only be $300 a month. So we know what happens. The person down on the lower side with the

cheaper premiums that is a lower risk will pay a lot more for their premium because the upside of this thing has got to be ratcheted down some.

We saw some numbers, and I can only go to a generalization now because it's far enough back in my memory. These are numbers that had to do with Indiana. We saw a 23-year-old healthy young man's insurance go up almost triple, and we saw the family of four at age 40, two kids and a mom and a dad, we saw their insurance go up a significant amount, and the only people that had a lower premium would be the couple in their early sixties with marginal health that would see their premiums drop off perhaps 11 percent, which is a number I do have confidence is a correct one. So the people with the highest premiums might see an 11 percent reduction. The people with the lowest premiums might see as much as a 300 percent increase in their premiums, and that's why the President can't point to anybody's policy and say, We're not going to increase your costs.

And he can't, either, guarantee that you're not going to lose your policy, because a lot of companies are going under in this. There will not be 1,300 health insurance companies doing business in the United States 5 years from now or 10 years from now. And if the President had his way, there wouldn't be anybody doing business in health insurance in America except the United States Federal Government. And if you wonder if that's a stretch of the imagination, Mr. Speaker, I can give you two examples. One of them is the Federal flood insurance program.

In the early sixties, all the flood insurance in America was private sector. Property and casualty, if you wanted to insure yourself against a flood, against the river waters coming in and filling up your basement, you went to a private property and casualty insurance company that would write you up a policy and set a premium. But this Congress, ``in its wisdom''--and I say that in quotes that this Congress, ``in its wisdom,'' decided that the premiums were too high and the varieties of policies for flood insurance in the early sixties were not great enough, and so they decided to set up a Federal flood insurance program that would provide one more alternative for the consumers to put some competition into the property and casualty business with regard to flood insurance.

Does that sound familiar, Mr. Speaker? I'll submit that it clearly does, because the President said he wanted one more health insurance company to provide competition for the other health insurance companies. He said we didn't have enough competition in health insurance. I don't know why he's forgotten about that. I have not, and I will not. So when the President of the United States says, We just want to add one more competitor, we don't have enough competition, and that competitor will be the Federal Government, as soon as you inject the Federal Government into the private sector--or what was the private sector in this case--then you have an unfair competitor with a comparative advantage. They don't have to be profitable. The Federal Government doesn't have to be. If they run up short, they just tap into the pockets of the taxpayer, and we run up an IOU that might be raiding the Social Security Trust Fund in Parkersburg, West Virginia, where every single dollar has been raided by this Congress. It might be borrowed money from the Saudis or the Chinese, provided they are willing to loan it to us and jack up the interest rates. They will. But the Federal Government does not have to be profitable. And they wouldn't have to be profitable with health insurance, which is an unfair comparative advantage that would drive some of the health insurance companies out, probably lots of them, and take this where the President wants it to go, single payer.

The President, as a candidate, consistently argued that there should be one entity that paid for all health care in America. That would be the Federal Government taking over all of those 1,300 health insurance companies and those 100,000 policy varieties and those hundreds of millions of Americans that have legitimate health insurance programs. Eventually, the President wanted to take it all over, but he had to fall back on an argument of just providing some competition because the American people rejected that.

So we're supposed to believe that the idea of wanting the Federal Government to sell insurance was just an innocent thing that was designed to provide more competition. Well, we rejected that. And by the way, the United States Senate rejected that. So we didn't end up with an ObamaCare package that has a Federal health insurance component to it other than they're regulating every single policy in America, canceling every policy in America, deciding which ones they want to renew, setting up community ratings that go from seven to one down to three to one and driving up the premiums.

But what comes from all of this, Mr. Speaker? I'm taking you then back to property and casualty insurance. The private sector that used to insure all flood insurance in America saw their competitor come in. I think the year was 1963, plus or minus a year. I'm real close. And 1963 is going to hit it, actually.

In 1963, the Federal Government came in and provided us one more flood insurance company to provide a little more competition to level the playing field for the people who lived in the floodplain that didn't have enough alternatives. That sounds exactly like the argument that we have today. So the Federal Government got into that business. And over a few years, the property and casualty companies, those private sector insurance companies that reflected the risks and the market in the premiums that they charged--and yes, they're in it for a profit. Thank God for profit. It's done more for the world than all the missionaries that went anywhere. As much as I believe in faith and the Lord's hand in everything that goes on on this planet, free enterprise capitalism has been a wonderful contribution to the well-being of all humanity, and it was a contributor in the flood insurance and property casualty insurance.

But the Federal Government got in the business in 1963, and over a period of time--and not a very long period of time--slowly those private sector companies realized they couldn't compete with Uncle Sam because they had to make a profit and they had to charge premiums that reflected the risk. So they dropped out, and for a long time, and certainly today, we cannot--no one in America can go out and buy flood insurance from the private sector. It all is sold by the Federal Government.

The Federal Government has taken over the flood insurance program in America lock, stock and barrel, root and branch, all of it. Every single vestige of flood insurance is all controlled by the Federal Government today. They set the premiums not by risk. They set the premiums by whatever bureaucrats think they ought to be, and they don't have to be profitable.

So that would explain why they are $19.2 billion in the red in the Federal flood insurance program, and it would explain why in my district, FEMA has come out and has a new ruling that broadens the floodplain dramatically. It's just breathtaking to look at the map of the floodplain that was in blue--and, by the way, national banks that are making loans on mortgages that go into these floodplains require flood insurance to be paid and premiums to be paid.

So when they're in the red $19.2 billion and they can't figure out how to charge premiums that reflect the risk and be able to get by with it because people probably can't afford those premiums, but they've expanded and developed their real estate in the floodplain based upon those premiums, having trouble raising the premiums on the people that owe the national banks money that had to buy them, so FEMA puts out a new map, a new map that widens the floodplains dramatically. These tiny little narrow areas become wide areas in the whole river valleys. And in one area, just one area within one of my 32 counties, there are 2,200 individual real estate parcels, most of them rural, that are now in a new floodplain created by FEMA's map and ruling, 1,100 property owners, 2,200 new properties, all of them now in a situation where they're going to have trouble expanding and building.

A lot of them are going to have to pay increased premiums for flood insurance that they didn't even have to buy before because they were out of the

floodplain, and the Federal Government cashes in. If I take this plan that they're trying to implement in my district and if I multiply it across all the real estate in the United States where it is awfully hard to use, the model that they use goes clear back to the early 1970s. It's nearly 40 years old, this model. The technology that they use is nearly 40 years old, so I can only guess.

If I use what they have in one of my counties as a measure, it looks to me like FEMA will be able to collect enough premiums that they can, maybe, recover their $19.2 billion and more. Maybe FEMA will make so much money off of this that they'll be able to help subsidize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Don't hold your breath, Mr. Speaker, but this is 40-year-old technology.

We know this: anybody who has ever filled any sandbags and who has fought a flood knows, first, that the adrenalin rushes up in your blood. As the water is coming up, your adrenalin boils up in you, too, and you work harder and more feverishly as the water comes up. Many times, those sandbags along there are just, maybe, high enough, an inch or two, because you're stacking them on there as the water comes up. They're maybe 5, maybe a half an inch or a half a foot, maybe 5 inches or a half a foot--or even a foot.

Do you know, Mr. Speaker, that the FEMA model is so imprecise and of such ancient technology that their accuracy is within plus or minus 10 meters? That's 10 meters. Now, I didn't do the precise multiplier on it, but let's just say it's 30 feet, plus or minus. Let's just say they're right on the average. Let's just say I stand on this floor, and they say, Well, the flood might be here or it could be 10 meters up. Well, in looking at the ceiling of this Chamber, they could be that far off. They could be off more than 30 feet on the elevation of the water that they're predicting.

Meanwhile, we have the Corps of Engineers, which has hydraulic models that can tell us whether we can build in a floodplain and what the flow is and how we might have to construct our structures so that we don't constrict the flow when we have a flood. They can tell us where the 100-year flood event is and where the 500-year flood event is.

Yet who should be surprised that FEMA and the Corps of Engineers can't get together on this and use modern technology? I'm wondering if they have the will or if it happens to be that someone decided that they could just use this 40-year-old model that is plus or minus within 10 meters and impose flood insurance premiums on a whole bunch of Americans, who are unsuspecting and who are probably unable to pay these premiums, to make up for the $19.2 billion in loss that they've got in flood insurance.

Now, I tell this long story to describe what is in store for us if ObamaCare is not repealed 100 percent--every single bit of it--and done in the shortest order possible at the will of the American people. Though, before I get to how ObamaCare will transform out, it is really worthwhile for us to look back and see how the Federal Government swallows up other formerly private entities.

Back during that period of time when the Federal flood insurance was passed, it was also true that education loans were private sector. If you wanted to go off to college, you went and borrowed the money from the private sector. Then they set up the student loan plan as a means to provide other alternatives so that private lenders weren't handling all of the student loans. The Federal Government came in and did that, by my recollection, at about that same period of time.

What is predictable about this? What is predictable is, if the Federal Government gets into a business to compete, they have an unfair advantage, an illegitimate comparative advantage. They don't have to have profit. They don't have to balance their books. They don't have to be good at it. They just have to drive the competition out. They do what a monopolist would do. If somebody is trying to become a monopoly, they try to drive all of their competition out by underpricing, and they distort it to the point where nobody else can stay in the business. Then they're the only one in the business. Then they start to jack the prices up again.

Well, it took the Federal Government a long time, but in the dark of the night, in the heat of the ObamaCare battle--in the recision legislation that slipped through this Congress without an opportunity to evaluate it--there was the sneaky piece of legislation that converted what was left of the student loan plans from the private sector into completely the maw of government, itself.

So, in this period of time that I have described, we have seen the transformation of a completely private, independent-standing property and casualty flood insurance that faced a Federal Government that wanted to provide just one more competitor into the marketplace so that people had more choices and a Federal Government that swallowed it all up and that drove everybody out of business and a Federal Government that has done so, the same thing, with the student loan program in the United States. They had to hitch it onto ObamaCare to do it.

What a bunch of cynics that they couldn't do something like that in broad daylight in front of all of America. No. They had to stick it in when they had the major diversionary tactic of another swallow-up of the private sector--remember, a month ago or 6 weeks ago, whatever that date was--of all of the health insurance in America.

Some will say that there are exceptions--Medicare, for example. Medicaid would be another. Then you can argue whether those are insurance policies or government programs to pick people up when they're destitute and to take care of them when they reach retirement age. But for those folks who are under Medicare eligibility or who have incomes outside of Medicaid, we didn't see a Federal health insurance program except for SCHIP, which is the State Children's Health Insurance Program. This was another effort to try to close this gap.

There has been effort after effort for the liberals, for the progressives--for the people who just simply deny the liberty of the American people--to take over the health care in America.

Bill Clinton stood here, I believe, on September 13 in about 1993, and he gave his health care speech. He wanted to take it all over then. He turned Hillary loose with HillaryCare, and Hillary began meeting in private and in public. She actually had more public meetings, I think, than we had this time around. Although, we were quite critical of the private meetings she had, too. She wrote a bill, and that bill was the government takeover of health care. Well, they couldn't get that done. Bill Clinton came back, and he said, You know, we can't get this done, but we're going to do it incrementally.

I believe in that September 13 speech he actually made the proposal-- and I know I can find it in his speeches during that era--when he wanted to lower the Medicare eligibility from 65 to 55. That's when they brought the idea of SCHIP, the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which is set up to buy very, very cheap health insurance for kids. They put that out through the States. In Iowa, it is known as Hawkeye with a little better than a 2 to 1 Federal match.

So, when you're sitting in a State legislature, the Federal Government says, You know, help out with some of these cheap health insurance premiums for these kids who can't afford them. Otherwise, here's what we'll do. If you'll put $1 down out of your State tax coffers, we'll put $2 and change down. Let's see. I think it's 70 percent funding by the Federal Government and 30 percent by the States.

The States adopted it because it was--do you remember the phrase?-- free money, Mr. Speaker. Well, nothing is free. We know that, but it was viewed as free money by the State legislatures. They adopted SCHIP. In Iowa, it was Hawkeye.

Then at the same time that Bill Clinton would have liked to have dialed the Medicare eligibility age down to 55, you can see what's happening. If you reduce the age of eligibility for Medicare and if they're seeking to expand Medicaid--and they've been doing that and have been lowering the standards for eligibility to Medicaid from the lower income side of the scale--and if you make these kids eligible for SCHIP, you're squeezing this from the outside, from the middle. You're lowering the senior age to 55, and you're making sure you're insuring the kids--pick your age--well into their 20s.

We had States that had as high a percentage as 66 percent of people who were not kids but adults who were on the SCHIP program. Wisconsin would be one of those States. There was another State that went higher than that. It may have been Minnesota. They had a number that went up into the 80s. I think it was 87 percent. So they were using SCHIP to expand it where they could provide health insurance premiums for people because they wanted to have a single-payer plan eventually. That's what was going on with the strategy of trying to establish this single-payer plan.

In the middle of all of this, you know, the Republicans came in, and we fought some of that back. Then Nancy Pelosi was finally elected as Speaker of the House. What did she bring to us here on this floor but an SCHIP program, which had been set at 200 percent of poverty so that a family of four at 200 percent of poverty in my State would be set at about $52,000, in order to turn it up to 400 percent of poverty. It passed the House at the insistence of the Speaker, and I was the only member of the Iowa delegation to oppose it. It would have gone to 400 percent of poverty, which would have meant that a family of four in Iowa who was making $103,000 a year would have had the health insurance for their kids paid for by some taxpayer who would probably not be making that much.

While that was going on, there would be people who would have to pay the rich man's tax, the Alternative Minimum Tax. There would be 70,000 families in America who would be paying the rich man's tax, the Alternative Minimum Tax. I have trouble saying ``AMT'' these days. It's the Alternative Minimum Tax. There would be 70,000 families who would be paying the Alternative Minimum Tax who would still be eligible for the SCHIP funding for health insurance for their children.

Do you see where this goes? If you have the subsidy at the means testing side of this where lower income people are multiplied from 100 percent of poverty, to 200 percent, to 300 percent, to 400 percent--and by the way, we ratcheted it back down to 300 percent--and allowed $3 billion or more worth of Medicaid funding to go in and fund illegals into the market of all of that, it squeezes it against the middle.

Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, someone who would be about 45 years old who would watch the eligibility of the Medicare age drop down to 55, who would watch somebody who is collecting SCHIP who is now 35 years old and who would watch those at 400 percent of poverty--families with $103,000, families of four--having their health insurance premiums paid while they would still be paying the Alternative Minimum Tax? People are looking at this, thinking, Well, the people 10 years older than I get free health care, and the people 10 years younger than I get free health care. I'm the one who's working, who's paying for my own premiums and raising my own family, and everybody else is, too. Why do I try? Do I do that because I'll have higher quality health care?

Yes, that would be a good answer. The people who are responsible should live a little better than those who don't in this country. We have got to leave incentives in place.

That was the strategy--to squeeze the middle, to put such a load on the people who were still paying for their own or who were earning their own health care, their own health insurance at their workplace or wherever their deal might be, that they would just capitulate, throw up their hands and say, Give me the European model. I've got it anyway. I'm paying for it for everybody else. Why am I buying my own with after-tax dollars? That is the strategy.

It is so cynical to crush the spirit of people, to take away their constitutional rights and to impose upon them a national health care act. It was rejected during the Hillary era. They called it HillaryCare. They rejected it in Massachusetts, Mr. Speaker. The people in Massachusetts rejected ObamaCare. Still their hearts were hardened, and still they were determined to come down here and impose the policy on the American people.

Well, I'm not letting it go. I will not let it go for a whole series of reasons, but the constitutional reasons are the most important ones.

It is unconstitutional to require any American to buy a product that is either produced or approved by the Federal Government under penalty of law. It has never happened in the history of this country. It is a violation of a series of components within our Constitution--and don't think I can't come up with them, Mr. Speaker. Certainly, I know what they are. They are four places.

It is a violation of the Commerce Clause because there will be and always have been babies born in States who didn't advantage themselves of any kind of health care whatsoever. They didn't participate in any commerce when it came to health care, and they maybe didn't travel outside of their States at all, so there wasn't even the risk of their going out to be eventually, potentially, picked up by ambulances in other States. The risk didn't exist, so they didn't use health care in the States they lived in. They didn't go outside the States they lived in. They lived lives long or short, healthy or not, and passed away into the next life never having engaged in interstate commerce that had anything to do with ObamaCare, which means it's a violation of the Commerce Clause, swift and certain, without a lot of hard analysis required.

If the Commerce Clause doesn't apply to say that the passage of ObamaCare is verboten under the Constitution, if the Commerce Clause doesn't apply on ObamaCare, then it doesn't apply whatsoever for anything imaginable, and it's no restraint whatsoever. You would believe that if you were an activist judge. I reject that.

The second part is that it's not in the enumerated powers. There is nothing there in the Constitution that defines any power to impose an obligation by any citizen or any person in the United States to buy a product that is produced by the Federal Government or approved by the Federal Government. That's the second thing.

The third thing is that it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

We're going to go to four here, Mr. Speaker.

The Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution says that all citizens whatsoever shall be treated the same regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin or the color of their skin, which is the whole list of the things that are there within title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Well, people are treated differently in the States. The Cornhusker kickback notwithstanding, still the legislation treats people differently in Louisiana than it does in the rest of the country, Florida than it does in the rest of the country, several other jurisdictions or something like eight to 11 different areas in ObamaCare that treat people differently depending upon the geography of where they live. That's forbidden under the equal protection clause of the Constitution.

Fourth thing, and this is where we get to, it's a violation of the 10th Amendment. Not only is it not in the enumerated powers to impose this ObamaCare on Americans, but those powers that are not specified in the enumerated powers of the Constitution are reserved for the States or to the people respectively. And this is a violation of the separation of powers doctrine, which is in the 10th Amendment.

Four places, Mr. Speaker. It's not in the enumerated powers; it's a violation of the commerce clause; it's a violation of the equal protection clause; and it's a violation of the 10th Amendment. This Supreme Court will see these cases eventually, and when they do, an honest reading of the Constitution compels the Supreme Court to overturn the ObamaCare legislation. And I understand, and I have not read every word in there, that there's not a severability clause in that. And if that's the case, any component most likely that's found unconstitutional throws the whole business out.

I wish we had a provision that would put all of that paper back in the tree, Mr. Speaker, and give people back their liberty because that's what this bill does. It violates the Constitution and it takes people's liberty.

It takes our freedom to buy a policy that we want. It nationalizes our body. It takes over the most sovereign thing that we have, that's our skin and everything inside it; and the Federal

Government manages when we get the tests, what policies we will be able to buy, what the premiums will be. They'll regulate the premiums. They will decide what's offered in the policies, and the Federal Government will impose mandates on those policies that we don't even see in the legislation.

There will be mandates there for contraceptives. There will be mandates there for mental health. There will be mandates there for drug treatment. There will be mandates there probably for physical therapy. And we see also an effort to tax your pop if it's not diet pop, tax your soda if it's not diet soda. They want to tell you what you can eat and what you can drink. The next thing they'll be doing in this super- uber nanny state is run us across the scales and tax our fat. That will actually be the simplest way. If they're going to tax our diet, I wish they would just let me alone, run me across the scales and tax me by the pound.

But I want the freedom to eat what I want to eat, buy what I want to buy, live the way I want to live. And I want to be able to make my own decisions on whether I am going to exercise or whether I am going to go to a health club. And if my insurance company wants to set up an incentive for that because it's cost effective and they can offer me a lower premium, I'm quite likely to take advantage of that, and I think many Americans would do the same.

But this Federal Government cannot be allowed to continue on becoming even more of a nanny state than it already is. We've got to reject that, Mr. Speaker. We've got to abolish ObamaCare. We've got to pull it out root and branch so that there's not one vestige of it left behind, not one particle, not one cell, not one DNA particle of ObamaCare left in this Federal code because if we leave it, it's the equivalent of going in and removing a malignant tumor and leaving part of it there. It still is at great risk of metastasizing; and when that happens, it's the death knell to freedom and liberty in the United States of America.

We are not some other people. We are not the mirror of Europe with the stirring in of the later generations of more newly arriving immigrants, legal and illegal. We are a unique people. We have a unique character and a unique quality about us where we stand alone, apart from the rest of the world, for a lot of reasons, Mr. Speaker. Some of those reasons are self-evident, and some of those reasons are in the Declaration, and some of them are in the Bill of Rights. Some of them are actually in the Constitution in a broader sense.

But just to enumerate some of those reasons for American exceptionalism, and it's not politically correct to remind people but it's necessary that we do this, that we talk American exceptionalism, a number of them are these: we have the rule of law. The foundation for that is the Constitution. The philosophy for the Constitution is in the Declaration. We have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And life is the paramount right, and it is paramount to liberty, which is more important than the pursuit of happiness.

So working from the bottom of the scale up, Mr. Speaker, it works like this: someone in the pursuit of their happiness cannot infringe on someone else's liberty because liberty trumps pursuit of happiness. And, by the way, pursuit of happiness, it was understood by our Founding Fathers to go back to the Greek meaning, which the Greek word for pursuit of happiness is eudaimonia, which in its definition speaks to a search for knowledge, a search for truth, and it implies both the physical and the mental. So to be sound in body and mind and in a search for truth and a search for knowledge, that's the pursuit of happiness because they believed that out on the other end of that scale that ultimate knowledge would provide that ultimate level of happiness. And there's some wisdom in that philosophy. It's Godless, but there's some wisdom in the philosophy of achieving ultimate knowledge. Pursuit of happiness was eudaimonia, that search for knowledge.

But someone in their search for knowledge, in their pursuit of happiness/knowledge, cannot travel on someone else's liberty. Liberty is more important than the pursuit of happiness. And someone in the search for their liberty cannot use that liberty to take someone else's life. Individual life is too precious. It cannot be taken by someone because they say they have a liberty. Neither can someone who is in pursuit of their happiness take someone else's liberty because it makes them happy. Our liberties are guaranteed here, and the infringement upon them is that we have to respect life more than liberty. We have to respect liberty more than the pursuit of happiness. Those are prioritized rights that are self-evident that come from God, endowed by our creator.

And here we sit in the United States with that philosophical foundation in the Declaration that was basis for our Constitution and the rights that are there that made America a great country--freedom of speech, religion, press, the right to peaceably assemble and petition government for redress of grievances, the right to keep and bear arms. Moving up the line, the right to be free from double jeopardy and to be tried by a jury of your peers.

And the right to property in the Fifth Amendment, which has been amended now in the Supreme Court of the United States in the Kelo decision where they struck the words ``for public use'' out of the Fifth Amendment, which says ``nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.'' Now the effect of the Kelo decision was that Fifth Amendment has been usurped by the last nine people that should be amending the Constitution, the Supreme Court Justices--it wasn't nine, by the way, and I applaud those that opposed it. But now the Fifth Amendment reads: ``Nor shall private property be taken without just compensation.''

Mr. Speaker, I know mentally you put ``for public use'' in there, but they took it out. Local governments now occasionally, and I hope not routinely, confiscate private property, individual private property, and they give it over to other private property owners because they think they will get more tax dollars out of it.

But property rights are a foundation of the success in America. And along the way, free enterprise capitalism is another foundation for the success in America.

So you can buy a piece of property and it's yours. As long as you pay for it and pay the property tax on it, you get to keep it. And that can be the basis for your equity that you engage in starting businesses, setting up factories, building homes, expanding farms. Those things that have been the basis of our prosperity are rooted in the rule of law, the right to property, free enterprise capitalism. Also the moral foundation that came over for the freedom of religion rooted in our Judeo-Christian values, which are the thread of our culture today. All of those are reasons why America is a great country.

Another reason is because we have skimmed the cream of the crop off of every donor civilization that has sent legal immigrants to the United States. The cream of the crop, the people with the vigor and the vitality and the dream. And they found a way to get onboard a ship or whatever means they could to come here and enter into the United States through a legal port of entry to chase their dreams.

And some of them came with a significant amount of capital to give it a go. And a lot of them came with the clothes on their back and the possessions they had in their bag, like my grandmother. And as they arrived here, they began to carve out their American Dream with the kind of vision and the kind of vigor that gave them the idea to come here in the first place. This America, this land of almost unlimited natural resources, a land that has the very foundation of liberty and freedom as the essence and the core of its being, welcomed legal immigrants here who were called by that clarion call of liberty and freedom and property rights and unlimited natural resources and unlimited opportunity in a moral society that was rooted in Judeo- Christian values. And they came here and built a Nation in the blink of a historical eye, settled the North American continent, expanded manifest destiny from sea to shining sea. And all of this has attracted people to come to America.

Now, we are either the first generation immigrants that came here, hopefully legally, with that vigor of that dream or the second, third, fourth,

fifth, or multiple generations, the descendants of that same dream, imbued with American self-confidence and American can-do spirit and a confidence that we can face any challenge, we can bear any burden. That's the American spirit.

And we cannot be capitulating to the European utopian version that's going to have a social program to fix any ill. We can't be trapped into this idea that we can sit down and produce some kind of a policy that will solve every problem. All we need to do is have our default system come back to the Constitution, come back to free enterprise, come back to individual responsibility. If we do all of those things and adhere to the Constitution itself, free enterprise capitalism, maintain our moral foundation, nurture the family unit as the means through which we pour all of our values, if we do all of that, America will be just fine.

But Jimmy Carter, when he was running for President and as he was exploring the first-in-the-nation caucus and establishing that as a viable route to the Presidency in Iowa, I read in an interview back in those years in the mid-1970s where Jimmy Carter said the people that work should live better than those that don't. Now, I don't know that Jimmy Carter ever actually acted on that, but that's what he said, and it caught my attention. It was a very simple way of describing this. The people that work should live better than those that don't.

Well, that's not the prevailing philosophy in this Congress any longer. It is the people that don't work need to live as well as anybody. So we have 72 different welfare programs, according to Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation. In the mid-1990s when we reformed welfare--I wasn't here--but when this Congress reformed welfare in the mid-1990s, there wasn't the dramatic drop in the cost in welfare. It reduced it a little bit and then it stayed on a plateau and then it climbed again. The welfare has been climbing at a rate that's comparable to or greater than the rate that it was climbing going into the mid-1990s. And we have accepted this. I don't accept it but this society has.

This society has also accepted rampant drug abuse so that there's a huge demand for illegal drugs coming out of Mexico, from or through Mexico. That is the core of the problem that we have with the border today and the violence on the border today, and whatever we do to help the Mexicans and seal our border, we need to do that. We need to stop the bleeding, but as long as there is a powerful demand in the United States for tens of billions of dollars in illegal drugs, then there will always be the illegal traffic coming across the border.

Mr. Speaker, this is a bit of a rendition on where America is today, a little bit on how we got here, a little bit about the economics of it, a little about the history, a fair amount about what's going on with ObamaCare.

This is my statement and my commitment, that I will not rest. I will continue to turn the pressure up to get the passage of the repeal for ObamaCare that I have introduced in this Congress and now should have, if I can add this up, 66 cosponsors on this legislation today.

Mr. Speaker, the number of the legislation, should you choose to look it up and sign on is H.R. 4972. That's the legislation that will one day, at least the language of it if not that particular bill number, arrive at the President's desk, where this President would veto it. But with a new majority in 2011, we will have the votes in here to shut off any funding of ObamaCare so that it cannot be enacted.

It doesn't become fully enacted until 2014. So 2011 and '12 this Congress, has to start all spending, by the Constitution. We say, no, there won't be any funding for the implementation of ObamaCare, so we will put it on ice for 2011 and 2012. While that's going, we will put the repeal on President Obama's desk and make him veto it. And when he vetoes it, we can take a look and see if we can override it. That will be very hard, but it's not completely impossible.

But in 2012 we elect a new President and a new Congress. And that new President and new Congress need to take the pledge that I have taken, which is plank number one, full 100 percent abolishment of ObamaCare, all of it, without any hesitation, without any caveats.

And let's put that on the desk of the new President, Mr. Speaker, that will be sworn in January 20 of 2013. And while he stands on the west portico--we will gavel in on January 3, 2013, in here. That's what the Constitution says we do. We will be thy then in a position where we can pass the repeal of ObamaCare, have it sitting there so that when he takes his oath of office January 20, 2013, and puts his hand down as the President of the United States, his first act, Mr. Speaker, can be to put his pen to the bill that repeals ObamaCare and sign that legislation on the spot at the podium on the west portico of this Capitol building and give America back our economic freedom, but more importantly, give us back our human liberty.

That's the goal that we have to follow if we are to achieve the greatness that America has ahead of us. If not, we will be trailing in the dust the golden hopes of men and forever diminishing our opportunities, forever diminishing our potential, taking away human potential, discouraging individual entrepreneurs, people that would never realize their dreams because they would be growing up in a nanny state that has taken over the banks, the investment companies, the insurance companies, the car companies, Fannie and Freddie, the student loans, nationalize our body, our skin and everything inside it, and, by the way, put a 10 percent tax on the outside if you go into a tanning salon. All of this taken over and the financial institutions. I want it all back. I want it back for the American people, the American workers, and the American entrepreneurs. I want our spirit back.

I am going to work to get it back, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate your attention.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 17 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the

House adjourned until tomorrow, May, 7, 2010, at 10 a.m.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to be recognized to address you here on the floor, and I appreciate the gentleman from Texas' previous hour and his discussion on health care.

By the way, the gentleman from Texas, Congressman/Dr. Burgess' contribution on this health care debate that has gone on now for months and months and months, his intensity doesn't let up. He understands the issue. He is here on a cause, and this cause is to do what we can to salvage the system that America has had and improve that system and not capitulate to this system of ObamaCare.

Madam Speaker, I will take us to that, and I will cross a number of lines into different subjects here this evening. But with regard to the ObamaCare that we have heard about for the last hour and for the last 9 or so months, we have seen a Congress that has passed legislation that on the day it passed the House, it couldn't have passed the Senate. On the day it passed the House, we don't know what kind of bargains came in that brought about just barely the votes to get it passed, but we knew the President would sign it. He wanted anything that he could put his name on.

By the way, the President of the United States is the one who gave the moniker to this legislation, ``ObamaCare.'' He called it ObamaCare February 25 at the Blair House at that conference on health care that seemed to have given the ObamaCare its legs.

I am for 100 percent repeal of ObamaCare. There isn't any part of that that I want to keep, that I want to hold, that I want to sustain or expand or continue into the next year or generation.

Most of it is not enacted until the year 2014. There are some small pieces that are enacted right away, and then slowly over time. The tax increases, by the way, are enacted pretty soon so they can collect this money for the first 4 or more years and then charge only 6 years of expenses against 10 years of revenue and argue that it saves $132 billion.

Now we find out that high-ranking people within the administration and possibly the President himself understood that the numbers that came in were not accurate, that ObamaCare is going to cost a lot more than they represented it to cost on the day that the legislation was passed.

Now, I don't think that is the reason to repeal ObamaCare. I have always thought it was going to cost a lot more than they said it would. The reasons to repeal ObamaCare are great in number and more varied than that.

But we're not going to get down to a financial calculation. In the end, there are enough people in America that think somehow they're going to get a free lunch, that they're not going to support the repeal of ObamaCare for that. But they understand this. They understand when the government runs things, there are lines. There are lines at TSA to get into the airport. There are lines to get your driver's license. There are lines outside of Federal buildings. There are lines outside the Cannon, the Longworth, and the Rayburn Building of just citizens that want to come in and watch their government function.

Free people don't stand in line. Free people, Madam Speaker, will go to the next place of business. If the line is too long at McDonald's, they will go to Burger King. But when they're dealing with government, it's a monopoly. That's why the line is there. The government doesn't have any incentive to expedite the passage of people through that service, except to turn down the noise of the squeaky wheel, because government doesn't have to compete for its customers. The government has a monopoly. So free people, they don't stand in line. They go someplace else. But our freedom is diminished every time the government takes up a task that the private sector can do, and health care is certainly one of those.

So, Madam Speaker, here's what I'm watching happen. This has taken place over the last year and a half. A little bit of it began under the Bush administration. But I'd start with this: $700 billion in TARP spending, half of that approved under the Bush administration, essentially down the lame duck era of his term. The other half of it-- that was right before the election, if I remember right. The other half of it was approved by a Congress that was elected in November of 2008 and signed in by a President who was elected in November of 2008. That was President Obama. At the direction of Speaker Pelosi and the majority leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, $700 billion in TARP spending, most of it, in my view, wasted.

And while this is going on, we had three large investment banks that were nationalized, taken over by the Federal Government. That means Federal ownership or control, management influence and control, three large investments banks. AIG, to the tune of about $180 billion. Then we watched Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac swallow up billions of taxpayer dollars to recapitalize them for their losses. Then we saw, right before Christmas, the President issue an Executive order that takes on all the contingent liabilities of Fannie and Freddie and completely nationalizes Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, all of the markets that are the secondary loan market of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac taken over by the Federal Government.

Then we saw General Motors and Chrysler taken over by the Federal Government. At General Motors, the Federal Government stepping in with 61 percent of the shares, bought up the share value of 61 percent; the Canadian Government, 12.5 percent; and the unions got handed 17.5 percent, even though the secured bondholders got iced out. They had the secured collateral and they still were iced out in the leveraged negotiations that took place.

And so we've seen one-third of the private sector activity taken over by the Federal Government, and along came a $787 billion economic stimulus plan, and then a along came the resurrection of the dead ObamaCare. The dead ObamaCare was brought to life, barely squeezed out of it, on life support, limped out of this Congress, put on the President's desk in a fashion that it could not have passed this Congress on the day because the Senate would not have approved it, Madam Speaker.

And so we saw one-third of the private sector profits swallowed up in the banks, the AIG, Fannie, Freddie, General Motors, and Chrysler, and another sixth of the economy swallowed up in ObamaCare, where the most sovereign and private thing that we have, which is our own bodies, our skin and everything inside it, taken over by the Federal Government, called ObamaCare. Our skin and everything inside it, the most sovereign thing that we have. We manage our lives, we manage our bodies, and now the Federal Government tells us what we can and can't have for tests, what we can and can't have for insurance policies, what insurance policies will be approved and what insurance policies are not approved.

Every single insurance policy in America under ObamaCare will be cancelled by 2014. Yes, many will be reissued. Some will be similar to the ones they have. But there isn't a single policy that the President of the United States can point to and say, This one will be a live, viable policy in 2015, and it won't have to change. Every one gets cancelled.

They've nationalized our bodies. And they've done so, the very people that stood here and--before 1973, but at least 1973--said that, because of Roe v. Wade, they said that government has

no business telling a woman what she can or can't do with her body. Remember when you said that? Remember that debate? Remember those arguments? You'll make them again. You'll make them again to the end of the Earth because that's the bumper sticker discussion. But it's not rational thought. It doesn't substitute for thinking people. A woman should have an unlimited right to elective abortion because government has no business telling her what she can or can't do with her body, while at the same time, now the very same people, men and women who have argued since 1973 that the government has no business telling a woman what she can or can't do with her body, now are arguing that the Federal Government has every business and every right to tell everyone in America what we can and can't do with our bodies and have taken over and nationalized the most sovereign thing that we have--our own personhood.

Our skin and everything inside it managed now by the Federal Government, by the people who said that government had no business telling a woman what she can or can't do with her body. The men and women, most of you sitting on this side of the aisle, have made the argument, and you don't have a rebuttal for this argument. Not one of you has risen to rebut this argument that I've made. I've put up the contradictions here. I pointed out the hypocrisy. I made it clear on the dichotomy. If you've got an argument to rebut the one that I've made, please stand up. I'll recognize you. I'll yield time to you. But you don't. You will sit there and you won't respond because you know you're wrong.

It reminds me of the statement made by Art Laffer on economics when he said, They are rebutting arguments that they know to be wrong in order to curry favor with their political benefactors. Well, Madam Speaker, that's what's going on. You have people here that realize where their power base is in order to curry favor with their political benefactors. They're making arguments that are completely irrational. And when they're caught in those irrational arguments, they slink away out of the Chamber with their hands in their pockets, afraid to face the rationality of it, afraid to face the debate, knowing all the while I'm happy to yield to, but no, you're gone. You won't stick around this Chamber. You won't come to a microphone because you're rebutting arguments that you know to be wrong, because that's what gravitates towards your political power base, and it's disingenuous to make those illegitimate arguments in that fashion.

So here we are now. We have come all through this continuum jump of the nationalization of one-third of the private sector activities and you add about 17 or 18 percent of health care on top of that. Now we've gone over 50 percent of our private sector economy taken over by the Federal Government, including 100 percent of the student loans. And where are we next? Well, the financial services industry. Why didn't I see that coming?

If someone had given me the job to, in an Orwellian way, write the screenplay to a movie of how America could be taken over by a socialist agenda, I could not have imagined some of the things that have happened so far. I might have gotten half of these things. I don't think I could have gotten the scenario down. I might have been able to envision that the banks could be taken over. That was kind of an obvious one. I'd have been able to envision the takeover of the car companies because that's actually on the socialist Web site. It's actually supported by the Progressives, 77 of whom serve in the United States Congress. They are the arm and the voice of the socialists in America.

If you just Google Socialists in America, you will go to the Web site called DSAUSA.org, the Democratic Socialists of America, Madam Speaker. They're proud to be Socialists. They start out and they say, We're not Communists. There's a difference. Well, to start out with your advertisement that you're not a Communist, and there's a difference-- Socialists aren't as bad as Communists is what they're saying. So they'll argue they don't want to nationalize all the real estate, all the real property in America. They don't really even have to nationalize real estate in America. They just want to take over the Fortune 500 companies. That's on the Web site. It's not a manufactured thing. It's there. It's on the Web site. Then they say, We don't have to do this all at once. We can do it incrementally. We can take over the Fortune 500 companies and these other companies that are profitable. We can take them over incrementally. We don't have to do it all at once.

Well, look what's happened. Bank of America, Citigroup. All together, three large investments banks--AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General Motors, Chrysler. All of them at one time were all private sector entities, all now swallowed up and managed by the Federal Government. Fannie and Freddie, $5.5 trillion in contingent liability. Swallow all that up.

Well, they can control them, a large sector of the economy. And I wondered, why would you want to take over Fortune 500 companies and manage them for the benefit of the people affected by them? What would be the motive to do that? What would this be? Well, it's power for one thing, and it creates a dependency class for another, and it expands the dependency class. The Democrats in this Congress believe that if they expand the dependency class, they will also at the same time be expanding the constituent base that will get them reelected over and over and over again. Never mind that it's a direct assault on our Constitution, a direct assault on our liberty, but it diminishes the vitality of Americans, it saps us as a people and makes us more dependent, European socialism, something worse than that.

The argument that comes from the progressives in this Congress that want to nationalize the oil refinery industry in America--Maurice Hinchey--who wants to nationalize the petroleum industry in America-- Maxine Waters--75 other progressives, the socialists and their website say, we don't run people on the socialist ticket; we don't have socialist candidates on the ballot, we have Democrats on the ballot who are progressives. They are our legislative arm, Madam Speaker.

So I continue to read through the socialist Web site, the Progressive Web site. And we will see the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison) come to this floor pretty regularly--maybe not every week, at least every other week--and he puts up a blue poster that says ``Progressives''--grijalva.com, or whatever that particular Web site might be--and he's proud of the progressive agenda. But the progressive agenda, if you go read it, you find it on the socialist Web site; they're proud of it, too. And they're proud of the progressives claiming the agenda that the socialists drive. Those are facts. They're not refutable. And I can flip the pages out here and put them on posters on the floor of the House without too much difficulty.

Now, Bernie Sanders, who served in this House, a self-evolved socialist, argued many times at these microphones--and I debated with him occasionally, although it was nothing particularly memorable that I can think of--was elected to the United States Senate a few years ago and became the first socialist in the United States Senate. Bernie Sanders, progressive. He's the only progressive in the United States Senate--that's listed at least on the Progressive's Web site. He's proud of that. He's proud of being a socialist.

And the argument about where the President stands is not an argument about whether the President is a socialist because the President voted to the left of Bernie Sanders, the self-avowed socialist. The argument, if it was going to be made, should have been made by the President. He should have made the argument that Bernie Sanders isn't a socialist; he's just masquerading as a socialist.

Maybe a true socialist does something different. Maybe a true socialist nationalizes even fewer businesses. When I see the President do his glad-handed, double-armed handshake with Hugo Chavez, and I see that that same week Hugo Chavez had nationalized a rice processing plant that belonged to Cargill, a proud Minnesota company that was taken over by Hugo Chavez, while that was going on, General Motors and Chrysler were being taken over by President Obama. And I thought, when I saw those two together with the big grins on their face, that

Hugo Chavez is a piker when it comes to the nationalization of business. And the question isn't, is the President a socialist? The question is, he votes to the left of Bernie Sanders, so what's a better description than the one that some are using? What's a better description than the one that Bernie Sanders, the one he uses on himself, the socialist?

The President votes to the left of a self-evolved socialist in the United States Senate; I think that's a matter worth note. It's a matter of fact; it's not a matter for debate. It is a matter for consideration, Madam Speaker. And I think it tells us something about America and about where America is being dragged and about where America will go if we don't turn back around and take this country up to the heights that are destined for us, that are based upon individual liberties, rights that come from God--free enterprise capitalism, the religious foundation and our religious faith--not just the freedom to worship freely, but the core of our faith that gives us the moral values that diminish the need for law enforcement to be looking over our shoulder and sapping our energy.

I have seen a lot of energy sapped out of this country in the last year and a half of this Obama Presidency, Madam Speaker, and I don't know how much more this country can sustain. But I do believe that we have a chance, and we're going to step forward on that chance to turn this around and take this country back to the heights where she was intended to be. That's going to mean an election result in November that's entirely different than the one we had the last couple of Novembers. And it's going to mean that this Republican party in this Congress, by golly, better get the planks down on where we want to go. We had better be unified behind them. And we better step this Nation forward so that when the election comes people will know what they're voting for, and they will be able to get behind those things that we say we're going to do.

I will submit, Madam Speaker, the number one plank in the Republican agenda has got to be 100 percent repeal of ObamaCare, not 99.9 percent or 99.8 or 98 percent; 100 percent repeal of ObamaCare. And if there are Republicans that equivocate on that, if they're afraid that they don't want to take on the debate, that they don't want to put a Federal mandate in to provide for and require all insurance to be extended to age 26 for college kids, for example--I want my kids to grow up; I don't want to keep them dependent. I don't want to make their bed when they're 26. I want them on their own well before they're 26.

The law has dealt with it this way: That you are responsible for a child until they're 18 years old unless you've been divorced, in which case you might be responsible for that child until they graduate from college. I think that's a bit of an inequity. But to go to age 26 and put a Federal mandate in, I'd turn this question back the other way: Where in the Constitution does it grant the authority for the Federal Government to establish a mandate that would require that insurance companies offer health insurance to age 26 as part of every policy, which certainly raises the premium and means that health insurance is less affordable rather than more affordable?

Many of these things will take place and unfold in the upcoming next 2 to 3 years, but here's the timing in the sequence in the repeal of ObamaCare. First, a maximum number of co-signatures on my legislation, on that of Michele Bachmann's, and others. We are somewhere around 63 or 64 cosponsors, Madam Speaker. And there isn't a good reason why anybody that voted ``no'' on ObamaCare can't step up and cosponsor legislation for repeal of ObamaCare. When we net enough signatures on that, we'll put a discharge petition down here at the well. A discharge petition with 218 signatures on it requires a bill to come to the floor for debate and vote without amendments. If we could do that, we could pass out of the House, and if the Senate could do that we could pass out of the Senate a repeal of ObamaCare that could then go to the President's desk. And President Obama would certainly--well, almost certainly--veto the bill.

Some will argue it's an exercise in futility, but I put on my Web site--the kingforcongress.com Web site--a polling question that asks this question: Do you believe that 100 percent of ObamaCare is more likely to be repealed, or do you think that the Cubs are more likely to win the World Series? And do you know, we were 2-1, 2-1 of people answering the poll for predicting that it was more likely that ObamaCare would be repealed than the Cubs would win the World Series.

Now, I'd be happy to see the Cubs win the World Series. I'm not coming here, Madam Speaker, to stir up any Cubs fans. I'm just pointing out that the Cubs went to spring training this year. They're playing ball. They're throwing, catching, hitting, running; they're practicing, they're in shape, they're getting their pitching up. They're focused. And why? Because they believe that they're positioned to win the World Series this year. They didn't go out with their dobber down. They didn't think it didn't pay to practice. They didn't skip spring training; they went to the field. Even though now they know that most Americans think it's more likely we will repeal ObamaCare than the Cubs will win the World Series, they're still playing ball. And they're not out of this at all. It's early. They're not even out of it when it's late. Until it's mathematically impossible, the Cubs are always in it. But it tells you the degree of difficulty here. If the Cubs are only one out of three likely to win the World Series, we can do this, it's not that hard. It's not as hard as winning the World Series. We can accomplish this. We can repeal ObamaCare.

By the way, if the President vetoes a discharge petition or we come back after the elections and Republicans have the majority, we can perhaps then pass a repeal of ObamaCare, and maybe the Senate will get that done too--and Senator DeMint is working on this mission over on the Senate side. And so we set it on the President's desk, and he vetoes it, and we wouldn't likely have the votes to override a presidential veto. Fair enough, that's reality. But here's how the function of this goes: All spending bills start in the House. A Republican majority in the House with a deep conviction to repeal ObamaCare in its entirety can shut off all funding to ObamaCare so that it cannot be implemented.

No part of it could be implemented or enforced if we say so in appropriations bills here in the House. And if we do that in 2011 and 2012, we will elect a President in 2012 whose number one plank in the platform needs to be that the first bill he will sign as President is full repeal of ObamaCare.

So I just envision this: the inauguration of the President of the United States out here on the west portico of the Capitol building, standing there taking the oath of office. And once he is sworn in as President of the United States by the Chief Justice John Roberts, he can take his hand down. And the first act as President of the United States, he can get out his pen, because we will gavel in January 3 of 2013, we can pass the repeal in the House and the Senate. We can set it up not on the President's desk, let's put it on the podium on the west portico so when he swears in he can have the pen in his hand for all of me, put it down, sign the repeal of ObamaCare, and it's gone from history. Pulled out root and branch, lock, stock and barrel, with no vestige, not one particle of DNA of ObamaCare left behind. Because that toxic stew has now become a malignant tumor, and we need to pull it out by the roots before it metastasizes.

That's our duty to the American people and one of the things that I came here to do and one of the things that I will work on. And I will challenge anybody that can make a cogent argument that we have got to repeal ObamaCare before we can move forward because it is an agenda that you can find at dsausa.org. That is Democratic Socialists of America. You can also find that agenda at the progressive Web site that is advertised so many times by those 77 that are the ones that are run on the ticket that the Socialists say they support.

That's what's up, Madam Speaker. I wanted to get that out and lay it out and get it off my chest before I asked my friend, the judge from Texas, if he had anything on his mind. And if he does, and he has never been without

anything on his mind, he was born with things on his mind, but I am very happy to yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas, Judge Louie Gohmert.

If I could temporarily reclaim my time, I would just appreciate an opportunity to comment on what you said, Mr. Gohmert. This phrase comes to mind: Birds of a feather flock together.

That's why it's unusual to see some of those birds that are not of a feather there in the flock of the Tea Party faithful. Why would that be?

I think we've seen it here, occasionally, on the floor of the House of Representatives when we generally sit in a segregated fashion-- Democrats on one side and Republicans on the other side. Yes, we walk through and we talk to each other and we do business; but generally speaking, it's Democrats there and Republicans here. Yet on occasion-- and especially on the occasions of the State of the Union addresses and of addresses of the joint sessions of Congress by President Obama--we have Democrats who will come over to this side of the aisle and who will sit in a scattered fashion throughout over here so that, when the standing ovations begin or when they don't happen, they're blended and integrated in a different way.

That's by order of the Speaker of the House. It isn't infiltration-- it's public--but it is clearly by order of the Speaker of the House. They didn't just spontaneously decide to come over and sit here and try to start standing ovations and, more or less, change the image of the State of the Union address.

Also, we know that the left has infiltrated or has at least announced that they were seeking to infiltrate the Tea Party groups. Some of those subversive tactics come to mind especially in the times that we've had these rallies--they're really press conferences--over on the West Lawn of the Capitol. We went out and took pictures of the lawn. I know on one occasion I asked people to be careful and to pick up their litter, but I don't know of anybody else who has ever made that request. I'm thinking of three occasions when the lawn was spotless. We took pictures. We were trying to find some litter. We were trying to find a cigarette butt--anything out there on the grass. It was all picked up and carried away.

The cleanest group of people is the Tea Party group that comes here. They have the Constitution in their shirt pockets or on their hearts. They love this country, and they wouldn't desecrate any of the symbols of our liberty or any of the symbols of our freedom.

Though, if you looked at the other folks, at the people on the other side of the aisle, at the people who make common cause with the folks who generally sit over here, on the same day of that major gathering of opponents to ObamaCare, there was a pro-amnesty rally. The differences were they were wearing the same T-shirts; they were carrying signs that came off the printing press one after another, and they left litter all over this city.

While the Tea Party groups and the anti-ObamaCare groups were here, they had homegrown signs. They didn't have any commonality of dress. They wore what they had of their own. There was some red, white, and blue out there and plenty of yellow hats and flags, but they were not at all an army that was uniformed, coached, or bussed in. They came in by their own transportation. They made their own signs. They wore a whole variety of different clothes. They made up chants on the way, and they were making signs on the fly. When it was all over, it was as clean as a whistle. It was as if it were a park that they owned because they believed--and they do--that they owned that park.

I am proud of the peaceful people who came here. I don't have respect for the folks who tried to infiltrate that and who caused trouble. When I saw the rallies against the Arizona immigration law, when I saw the bottle bouncing off the head of a police officer, when I heard the stories about refried beans being smeared on the State buildings in Arizona, and when I heard about a swastika that was, perhaps, painted there, those are the kinds of activities you would never see happen on the other side with the Tea Party groups. There is no violence there. The violence is perpetrated by people on the other side.

The allegation that the ``N'' word, that the ``F'' word, or that spitting took place could not be substantiated, and I am coming close to the conclusion that it was fabricated, not substantiated.

As I feel a little better having vented myself on that subject, I would yield back now to the gentleman from Texas.

I thank the gentleman from Texas. I was deeply engaged in that presentation, and much of it I reflect upon, having stood there many times at the Lincoln Memorial and read the second inaugural address. It has been too long since I have been back down there. I need to go back.

As the gentleman from Texas talked about Voltaire, another statement of his, even though he was a bit of a Utopianist and not necessarily one whose teachings would fit the beliefs that I follow, there is one of his quotes that stands in mind for me, and I think it is appropriate here in the United States.

I've watched us turn from a nation of rugged, can-do, highly spirited people to a nation that is slowly, and I shouldn't say slowly, dramatically turning into a nanny state.

I grew up in a society where we understood we had freedom, and we exercised that freedom, and the prohibitions were was there a law that prohibited us. The gentleman from Texas and I have exercised that American freedom, that American freedom, pretty interestingly, in the country of Tibet, when it was the idea of Judge Gohmert that we should climb a mountain in the Himalayas.

So we set about from Lhasa, Tibet, to go do that. But we had Chinese minders. The Chinese minders' job was to mind us, to make sure we minded them; that we didn't get out of line; we didn't go do things they didn't want us to do; that we didn't see things that they didn't want us to see; and we didn't hear Tibetans or Chinese tell us things that they didn't want us to hear. So they presented themselves often as the interpreters, the protectors.

So when we said, we are going to go climb a mountain in the Himalayas

here, they said, well, no, you can't. You are not authorized to go up there, and so you can't.

Well, China and Tibet is a society where it has to be permissive for you to act. America has been a society where you have got permission to do everything that is not prohibited. We don't ask the question, do we have permission? We ask the question, is there a law against it?

So we told the Chinese minders, well, you may say we are not going, but we are Americans. We are going to go climb this mountain in the Himalayas. And that is what we did, because we didn't realize, I don't think, we were in a country where you had to have permission, because we have got the American spirit.

We went to the top of that mountain. And it is something that I will never forget, that experience going up, being there, looking at that vista of snow-capped peaks all the way around the horizon, the huge glacial lake down below, that spot on the globe. I am so glad we stepped forward and did that.

I don't know if there are any other people on the planet that would have just gone up to the top of the mountain, because that is what we do. We don't wait for permission. If there is not a law against it and we think it fits within our moral standards, we go.

Well, this can-do America that we are has been an America that came in, and by the sweat of our brows we built a nation for hundreds of years, that can-do entrepreneurial spirit with free enterprise and freedom and the liberties that are laid out that come from God, that are in the Declaration, most of them, not all of them.

Voltaire said back during that period of time, History is the sound of hobnailed boots storming up the stairs, and silver slippers coming down.

That describes a lot of what goes on. The ascendency of history are the people that work hard, that are industrious, that produce, that are competitive, and sometimes, Madam Speaker, combative. And when people get a little too soft and they are sitting on the silken pillows and they have the waiters bringing the grapes to them and popping the grape in their mouth while they fan them a little bit, like Ahab the Arab, the sheik of the burning sand, that is kind of the image of what happens when a person lays back on the silk.

What has happened with the Voltaire statement was hobnailed boots storming up the stairs, silver slippers coming down. And a lot of the French elite, the aristocracy, were the silver slippers, and they came down the stairs, because they got too lazy and they got too laid back without being competitive. They lost their sense of where they were going or why.

I don't want to do that as a nation. I don't want to watch the hobnailed boots come up the stairs. I don't want us to be the silver slippers coming down. I want us to step forward and compete. I want free enterprise. I want freedom, I want liberty, I want a strong national defense. I want to have a tax policy that stops punishing productivity, and it can tax consumption, because that is an incentive for more consumption. I want that strong national defense, as I said. I want school choice, so kids can be raised at the will and the wishes of their parents with real American history and real American values.

If we can do all of those things, we can take this Nation to the next level of our destiny. And should we fail, we will trail in the dust the golden hopes of men.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 36 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, May 5, 2010, at 10 a.m.

I thank the gentleman from Washington for yielding and for leading on this issue.

Mr. Chairman, I want to just add to this discussion and deliberation that what really happens here is that if this should pass today, and I rise in opposition to H.R. 2499, Mr. Chairman, but it sets up a momentum, it sets up a level of expectations, and the sequence of events being the question that would go before Puerto Ricans and those who were born in Puerto Rico that would live in any of the other 50 States presumably, do you want to stay the same or do you want to change? And once that decision is made, then there is no going back.

The momentum then washes over the dam. And the next question that comes back is, now you can't be what you were before. Now you have to decide between being an independent country or a free association, whatever that might be, or statehood. And when we get to this question of statehood and I look at the standards that have been there in the past, I disagree with the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young). I can go up there and English is the language that is used in government and business and everywhere you go.

Yes, every language you can imagine is spoken of in every State, but the practice in Puerto Rico is Spanish, not English. Eighty-five percent of Puerto Ricans will self-profess that they are not proficient in English. They have very little understanding of English.

In fact, I will introduce into the Record the Latin American Herald Tribune, dated April 26, where the Secretary of Education in Puerto Rico, the Governor's Secretary, said, English is taught in Puerto Rico as if it were a foreign language and 85 percent aren't proficient in it.

I will also introduce into the Record a letter from U.S. English, Incorporated. Among it is a statement I think that's very important to consider here in this body, which says: ``No State has ever been allowed to come into the Union when its core organs of government operate in a foreign language, and Puerto Rico must not be an exception.'' And, Mr. Chairman, it points out that Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma had those conditions as conditions coming into statehood.

I just would make this point, that I wouldn't rise here today and take this position here today, since 1917 or even the last 50 years. If the practice of education and government in Puerto Rico had been the unifying common language, we would be unified as a people. Let's start that path and have this discussion in a generation.

Congressman Doc Hastings,

Ranking Member, House Natural Resources Committee, Longworth

House Office Building, Washington, DC.

Dear Congressman Hastings: On behalf of 1.8 million members

of U.S. English, we oppose the current version of H.R. 2499,

the Puerto Rico Democracy Act. H.R. 2499 fails to address the

serious language questions pertaining to Puerto Rico's

status, and compounds this error by pretending to address

these issues. This vote will be featured prominently in the

legislative scorecard we distribute to our members.

As you are aware, Puerto Rico's current policies with

respect to language have never been allowed for any incoming

state.

While English is mandatory in Puerto Rico's public schools,

it is taught as a foreign language, and instruction rarely

exceeds one hour per day. Unsurprisingly, just 20 percent of

Puerto Rico's residents speak English fluently. California

has the lowest proficiency rate among the 50 states, and its

rate is 80 percent.

Puerto Rico's local courts and legislature operate entirely

in Spanish, with English translations available only upon

request.

No state has ever been allowed to come into the Union when

its core organs of government operate in a foreign language,

and Puerto Rico must not be an exception.

Yesterday, the Rules committee defeated amendments offered

by Rep. Paul Broun that would have brought Puerto Rico's

policies in line with the other 50 states as a condition for

statehood. Instead, the committee reported an ``alternative''

English amendment by Rep. Dan Burton.

The Burton amendment, while purportedly offering a Puerto

Rican state equal treatment, actually offers special

treatment by allowing statehood with these historically

unprecedented policies intact. Burton's insistence that

Puerto Rico will be subject to federal official language

policies is meaningless, since the United States has no

official language. Further, Burton's ``sense of Congress that

English be promoted'' has no legal force.

The Burton language is contrary to Congress' uniform

historical practice when the language of government of a

potential state was in genuine doubt. Congress required--not

``promoted''--English to be the language of instruction for

public schools in Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma as a

condition for statehood.

I urge any member who cares about English's role in our

national unity to oppose this version of the legislation.

Sincerely,

Mauro E. Mujica,

Chairman of the Board, U.S. English, Inc.

Madam Speaker, it's my privilege and honor to be recognized by you to address the floor tonight.

I am standing here trying to decide whether I want to support or rebut the statements from the gentleman from Colorado. I support a good number of the statements that he has made, and I may well try to rebut some of the other statements that he has made.

But the statement ``replace a broken system with one that works,'' it's an interesting comment. I think it's clear that our immigration system is not working. Well, let me say that the system doesn't work, but I am not certain that the laws are incorrect. And that's the point that I would make is that I roll back to 1986 when Ronald Reagan was straight-up honest and failed me when he signed the amnesty bill of 1986. And the intent was that about a million people would be granted a path to citizenship and that would be it, it would be the end, and there would never be another immigration bill ever as long as any of us lived, and we would preserve the rule of law, and we'd learn to respect the rule of law, but we would allow for the million or so that were here illegally to have their path to citizenship in order to put this away, package it up, and be able to move on.

Well, it wasn't 1 million. It was closer to 3 million people, and there was fraud and there was corruption and there were counterfeit documents that were used that was part of that tripling. We might not have counted it right. It might have been more than a million. It might have been 1\1/2\ million. It was unlikely to be 2 million. But it turned out to be 3 million because people were gaming the system.

In my particular office, I took applications in and I made sure they filled out their I-9 forms, and I took copies of their documents and made sure my files were complete and considered their applications because I was sure that INS would be into my office to go through my books and make sure that I followed the law because it was going to be enforced by this newly robust Federal Government. That was the commitment. Amnesty now, enforcement forever, never amnesty again.

That was 1986. And here we are all these years later, 24 years later, and we have had by each succeeding administration--I'm not particularly happy with the enforcement we saw in the Reagan administration, and I was less happy with the enforcement that I saw in Bush 41 and less happy with what I saw under Bill Clinton and less happy with what I saw under George W. Bush, and I'm less happy with what I've seen under President Obama. Less and less effective enforcement.

And they do find a way to put together the data so that they can point to their enforcement and allege that in this particular administration, the enforcement against employers appears to be marginally stronger than it was under George Bush, but the enforcement against illegal workers is significantly less than it was under George Bush, and I wasn't happy with what George Bush did.

So is the system broken? I think the enforcement of the system is broken, Madam Speaker. I think that we have had a succession of Presidents who didn't demonstrate the will to enforce our immigration law, and because of that, there has been a growing disrespect for our immigration law. And even people that respect the law have seen that their competition who would hire illegals have a comparative advantage against them if they are going to adhere to the intent of the law. So the competition pushes other employers to violate the intent and the rule of law sometimes and hire the illegals to give them that comparative advantage against their competition. And slowly the respect for the rule of law and their adherence and compliance with the law has been diminished in this country to the point where I have people in my neighborhood that will say, Well, if you don't think I should hire an illegal, then who is going to fix my leaky roof? Who's going to paint my house? Who's going to do these other things?

That's not my job, Madam Speaker. My job is to stand up for the rule of law. And, yes, if I think there are laws that are unjust, then I should join with my colleagues and we should find a way to change them.

I don't happen to believe that our immigration laws today are unjust. I believe they are unenforced. And I think they are founded on good and just rule of law foundation.

Not having the documents in front of me, but I will reach into it a little bit. I've seen some documents that illustrated the laws that Mexico has with regard to their immigration laws, which are if ours are considered Draconian, theirs, in fact, are Draconian. And President Calderon has been arguing against Arizona law while he is enforcing more Draconian laws in the nation of Mexico against people who would come into their southern border. Crossing the border illegally is a felony, punishable up to 2 years in the penitentiary. That's one of the examples that we have.

So I would, Madam Speaker, just remind the American people that we have grounded these laws in just and rational cause. And now Arizona has seen that the Federal Government has been unwilling to enforce the laws, and they are watching a crime rate that, if you look at the data over the last 10 years, has increased in almost every category over the last 10 years. In order to be objective, not probably to the extent that has been articulated by many of the pundits, but it has been a gradual and significant increase in the crime rates in Arizona in the areas of murder and rape, violent crime, and certainly about the only thing, except illegal border crossings, which have diminished marginally over the last couple of years.

And a year ago last August, there was a report that there were as many as 1\1/2\ million that have been in the United States illegally that reversed their travels and voluntarily deported themselves back to Mexico and points south. Most of that is attributable to the decline in the economy rather than the increase in enforcement.

But it doesn't mean that there has been a diminishment of illegal drugs coming across the border or a diminishment in illegal activity along the border. In fact, those numbers are up. The violence numbers are up. The illegal drugs are up. The contraband crossing the borders are up. And the numbers of just individual illegal people by interdiction data that's delivered to us by Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, are marginally down.

Now, it may or may not be that there are more illegal border crossings. It might well be that they are just simply interdicting fewer coming across the border and there is less enforcement. Although I do believe that there are marginally fewer illegal border crossings but more illegal drugs, more violence, more kidnappings. The State of Arizona has the highest kidnap rate in the Nation. In fact, some of the cities there have the highest or second highest kidnap rate in the world. That's because of the drugs and it's because of the cartels that are doing business in that area.

So Arizona passed a law, and this law does a number of things. It sets up a situation where law enforcement--it requires all of the political subdivisions in Arizona, the counties, the cities, the other political subdivisions, and the State, to enforce Federal immigration law. It sets it up so that an individual has standing to sue the political subdivision, local government, if they fail to enforce immigration law. And it provides for reasonable suspicion for a law enforcement officer to pick up an individual that's out in public if they reasonably suspect that that individual is unlawfully present in the United States. Those are good things, and they are all that I have described within the parameters of existing Federal law today.

The argument that has been made and the demonstrations that are queued up for May 1, and that will be this coming Saturday, they are trying to establish demonstrations all over America of people rising up to demonstrate against Arizona's immigration law. Well, look at what has happened. The Federal Government hasn't enforced immigration law.

I would say that our immigration laws are true and just and right altogether. And our problem is not because our laws are wrong. Our problem is not because we need to replace broken laws. It's that we need to take this system that--``broken'' is not the right word for it, I would say to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis). I think instead it's a system that is not being utilized because we lack the will to enforce immigration law in the United States. And that will has been diminishing over the years. The greater the number of illegals, the more people get to know their neighbors that may be in the United States illegally. They don't see that when you contribute to or allow or tolerate people who are unlawfully present in the United States in your neighborhood, when you hire them, you're contributing to the problem. People don't see that.

They just understand that we're all God's children. They like the people that came in. They see that they work hard, and so, therefore, they become their advocates. It's a natural thing to happen. But at the same time, while our laws are being broken and our laws are being disrespected, there's an undermining of the American system.

There's a reason that the people want to come to the United States. There isn't a country in the world where there aren't significant numbers of people that don't want to become Americans. And the reasons for that fall into a lot of categories, but one of them is we have respect for the rule of law. Our traditions honor the rule of law. Lady Justice is blind. When you think of the image of Lady Justice standing there blindfolded with the scales of justice balanced, without consideration for race, creed, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, or disability. That's the American creed.

We have equal justice for all, and justice is blind with regard to those characteristics. So people want to come here. They want to come to the United States from countries, countries that do not have that tradition of honoring the rule of law. They want to come to the United States from countries that have a corrupt tradition where you have to pay to play and it's who you know and how you pay them off or you curl up and you try to avoid the scrutiny of government and interactivity with the government agencies.

Here in this country, we're straight up, open, and honest, and, for the most part, moral and ethical, and we respect the law. But if we grant amnesty to 12 or 20 or more million people because it's described as an insurmountable problem, that the argument that's often made that we can't deport 12 or 20 million people, in fact, we could. We could do that. It's not logistically impossible to do so.

I went over to London a little over a year ago to deal with the immigration issue over there. And I listened to them talk about the numbers of illegals that they have, and I have forgotten the exact number, but let's just say that we are in that 12 to 20 million category, and population ratio-wise, they are down in that 1\1/2\ million category, perhaps, of illegals in England. And what is their argument? You can't deport 1\1/2\ million people. It's too many. It's an impossible thing logistically.

Well, interestingly we're here with 12 to 20 million. We're making the same argument. Well, then, how many could we deport? If it's not 20 million and it's not 12 million and the British say they can't deport 1\1/2\ million, could we depart 1\1/2\ million if we chose to do that, or is it 1 million or \1/2\ million or 100,000 or 10,000 or one? What is our capability logistically to deport people that are in the United States illegally?

And I will suggest that it's in direct proportion to our resources and our will to enforce the law. Our problem is not that we can't do so logistically. Our problem is we lack the will to do so from a moral standard because we're listening to both sides of this argument. The argument that people are here, that they just want to work. They want to earn for their families. And for the most part, that's true. And we disregard the argument that is this point that I need to make, Madam Speaker, and that is that 90 percent of the illegal drugs consumed in the United States of America come from or through Mexico, 90 percent. It's a consistent number that comes from the Drug Enforcement Agency, and it's been consistent throughout several years.

And the illegal drug distribution chains in America, magically, and this is a Drug Enforcement Agency response, magically if every one of the people that are in the United States illegally, magically tomorrow morning woke up in their home country where they were legal to live and reside, if that happened by magic wand overnight, there is at least one link in every illegal drug distribution chain in America that would be severed because at least one link has an illegal alien that's part of that drug distribution chain.

And so if it was in our endeavor to shut off the illegal drug distribution in America, we would simply make sure we enforced our immigration laws. And that would be a very temporary fix, and it might only last for hours or days, not much longer than weeks and perhaps not months, but it would sever the distribution of all illegal drugs in America, however temporarily that might be.

So when we look at what happens when we have 12 to 20 or more million illegals in America, what are the effects on our society? First, they are delivering 90 percent of the drugs from or through Mexico. And some of them at least touch the delivery of every illegal drug that's delivered in the United States of America while that's going on.

What is accompanied by the illegal drug trade? Violence, murder, theft, rape, all of those things that go along with crime are wrapped up and associated with the illegal drug distribution. And the people that are illegally distributing drugs that are in the United States illegally are also, however inadvertently, the channel of their work is enabled by, and not always willfully, and sometimes even unknowingly, it's enabled by the illegal community in the United States. It becomes an underground railroad for illegal people and illegal drugs that are pouring through, from and through Mexico into the United States. And it is something that brings about a high amount of death and destruction and diminishment of human capital, human resources, and human potential. That's why we outlaw those illegal drugs in the first place.

It doesn't mean that all the people that are involved in that are willfully evil or willfully trying to undermine our society. It might be inadvertent. But they are part of the problem. And if we are to have the rule of law, we have to enforce the rule of law. And to imagine that when law enforcement comes in contact with people who are here illegally that we would be unwilling to put them back into the condition that they were in at the time they broke the law is unconscionable for a rule-of-law Nation to think such a thing.

Think in terms of this: if someone walks into the bank and robs the bank and would walk out of that bank with all of the loot, and we would interdict them with our law enforcement and decide, well, you really only want to provide for your family, so we are going to let you go on here because we don't have the will to stop you at this point. Or our immigration laws, simply deporting people is the equivalent of putting them back in the condition they were in before they broke the law. It's the equivalent of taking a bank robber and saying you don't get to keep the money, but we are going to take you out of the bank and set you outside the door and let you go. That's the equivalent of deportation.

It is we put people back in the condition they were in before they broke the law. It's like taking a bank robber out of the bank, not letting them keep the loot, and you set them outside the door and say, okay, go. You are free to go. It's as if you never broke our law. That's what deportation is. It is not Draconian. It is not harsh. It is not cruel and unusual punishment. It is de minimis that we can do if we are going to enforce the law. And if we are not willing to put people back in the condition they were in before they broke our immigration law, then we cannot have enforcement of our immigration law whatsoever.

It doesn't work to set a standard of amnesty that's been advocated by President Bush, President Obama, by many of the leaders over here on the left side of the aisle that we should give people a path to citizenship, make them pay a fine, force them to learn English. That seems a little odd to me, how you force somebody to learn a language and require them to pay their back taxes. Those are the minimum standards for somebody who would come into the United States legally in the first place.

If you want to become an American citizen, get in line. Get in line in a foreign country. Don't jump the line. Don't jump the border. And when you do that, and you go take your citizenship test--first, you have to pass the test that asks the question what's the economic system of the United States of America? And the answer is free enterprise capitalism. That's a little heads up there, Madam Speaker, on that one.

But when people come into the United States legally, they are required to learn English. If they want to become a citizen, if they want to go through the naturalization process, they are required to learn English. They are required to demonstrate proficiency in English in both the written and the spoken word. They have to understand our history and understand those principles that made America great. And we are not going to naturalize somebody that didn't pay their back taxes.

And the idea of a fine for being in the United States illegally, and that's the only other condition that we would add, whether that would be pay a fee of $1,500--I remember when it started out to be $500. And then $500 seemed like a pittance, so they raised it to $1,000 and then $1,500. And under the Bush administration we had the discussion and the argument that their position was, well, it's not amnesty if they have to pay a fine. Oh, really? If the fine is cheaper than what you have to pay a coyote to sneak into the United States is it really a fine? And does the fine replace the penalty that exists for violating Federal law? And I say no.

If you grant people the objective of their crime, it's amnesty. To grant amnesty is to pardon people for the violation of the law and grant them the objective of their crime. That's what amnesty is. And so if we are going to have amnesty, let's be honest about it, Madam Speaker. Let's ask the people in this Congress, the President of the United States, the executive branch of government, and the people in the United States Senate that are now crafting up legislation are you for or against amnesty. If they want to support amnesty, it's fine with me if they will just admit that. And then we can have a debate as to what degree of amnesty they are going to advocate.

But it's offensive to the American people to hear United States Senators or Members of the House of Representatives, Congressmen and - women, or the President of the United States, or his spokesmen or - women, argue that amnesty isn't amnesty when we know very well what amnesty is. Pardon immigration lawbreakers and reward them with the objective of their crimes. That's amnesty.

President Reagan understood it. He admitted amnesty was amnesty. He signed the amnesty bill in 1986. Yes, he let me down, but he was honest about it. And we haven't been honest during the second half of the Bush administration, and we certainly aren't honest during the Obama administration, this first third or so of the Obama administration about amnesty or immigration.

And so here are my concerns, that 90 percent of the illegal drugs that are consumed in the United States come from or through Mexico. Of all the violence that pours forth from that, it costs American lives dozens and dozens, in fact by the hundreds, every year Americans that die at the hands of illegals that are here in the United States of America illegally. That's the definition. And if we would be effective in enforcing immigration law, those people who died at the hands who are here illegally would still be alive.

When the school bus wrecked in southwest Minnesota and we lost four or five young girls there because it was caused by an accident by an individual who had two or three times been interdicted by law enforcement in the United States but was turned loose again, those girls would be young women today. They would be alive today. And their parents know that. It happens over and over hundreds of times. In fact, it's happened thousands of times since we failed to enforce our immigration laws.

So what do we do? We put together the will to enforce our immigration laws. The American people rise up and make the argument that we are going to have the rule of law, that we are going to shut off all illegal traffic at the border. We are going to force all that traffic through the ports of entry.

It's been a little while since we have talked about the necessity of building a wall and a fence on the southern border. Someone said to me we can't build 2,000 miles of fence. Yes, we could. We could build 2,000 miles of triple fencing. We could put sensors on it. We could put lights on it. We could build roads in between. We could patrol it. We could enforce it. We can fix it so nobody gets through all that. Yes, we can. And for the people that will argue if you build a 20-foot fence I will show you a 21-foot ladder, that's got to be the silliest and the weakest and the most specious argument I have heard here on the floor of the United States Congress. I have heard the Secretary of

Homeland Security say build a 50-foot fence and I will show you a 51- foot ladder.

Madam Speaker, what in the world could that mean? All right, if you build a rocket that will fly to the Moon, I will show you a rocket that will fly a mile past the Moon. So what? What does that mean? They are not going to be building a 51-foot ladder. And if they do, we are going to be sitting there with our sensory devices, our roads, our monitoring, and we are going to make sure if they can get over that fence they don't get to the next one. And if they get over that one, we are going to make sure they don't get to the next one.

I have designed a concrete wall. And it is not the only barrier; it is not the only tool. And when those of us that talk about the necessity for extending the fence and the wall on the southern border and building double and tertiary fences and walls, the argument against it becomes this silly argument of, well, that's not going to solve the problem.

None of us believe it's the total solution. None of us believe that building an effective wall and fence is the only thing we would do. It's among the effective things that we could do.

So, Madam Speaker, here are some things that the American people don't know. The President doesn't know. His actuaries don't know. The Speaker of the House doesn't know. Harry Reid, the majority leader in the Senate doesn't know. And the committee Chairs don't know. And I may well be the only one in the United States Congress that knows this. And, Madam Speaker, now the whole world is going to know. Here are the numbers. About 2006 we were spending $8 billion on our southern border. Now we are spending about $12 billion on our southern border. All together. These aren't numbers that come out of the administration except one piece at a time. And you have to add them up and calculate it out and calculate it back to the numbers of miles of border that we have. $12 billion when you add up all of the expenses necessary for ICE that are operating down there near the border in that 20- to 40-mile, maybe 50-mile range of the border.

You have to pay the personnel, their health care package, their benefits package, their retirement funds, their equipment, their vehicles that they drive, guns, uniforms, all those things that they do. And you add to that Custom Border Protection, our CBP people, our Customs personnel, our Border Patrol personnel. And all of the forces that are there lined up that are part of that coordinated effort to defend the border are right in the area of $12 billion. $12 billion for 2,000 miles of border. That is $6 million a mile, Madam Speaker.

Now, think of this. Most of us can think what a mile is. For me, I live on the corner on a gravel road in Iowa. And a lot of those corners you can stand out there in the middle of that intersection and you can see a mile in each of four directions. It is not the case in mine, but I know how far a mile is. Most of us do.

Now, when I stand on my corner and I look to the west that full mile, a mile west, which is the clearest vision that I have, and I think would the Federal Government pay me--if that were the border, would the Federal Government pay me $6 million to guard that border for that mile? Could I do that for $6 million? Would I be willing to take on that contract and control that border for $6 million for that mile? And that's the average for 2,000 miles. Some of it's barren and desolate. Would I be willing to do that, Madam Speaker, for $6 million? You betcha. You betcha, to pick up on a phrase. I would do that for $6 million a mile.

And, furthermore, I would be willing to guarantee nobody would get across that mile. I would guard it, I would protect it, I would hire the personnel necessary. And, in fact, rather than paying a lot of people that were boots on the ground, I would have some, and they would be in mobile vehicles, and we would have sensors, and we would have some lights, and we would have radios, and we would have warning devices and ground-based radar. We would do all that stuff.

But we would also build a fence and a wall as a barrier to slow that traffic down and make it hard enough that they wouldn't come through my mile at all. In fact, I would shut down all the traffic in that mile for $6 million. And if you award me that contract, I would be willing to let you dock me from that contract. I would guarantee it. I would bond it. I would let you dock me. If they got across my mile, then subtract from my contract every illegal crosser that is there. Then you would put the incentives in place to actually succeed in what we're doing as opposed to just simply doing--it's not catch and release back into America anymore. It's catch and release at the port of entry and turn them back in to Mexico, and then they come back around with a smirk on their face. And I have watched them do that, Madam Speaker.

Another tool that we need to have is the New IDEA Act. New IDEA is legislation that I have introduced in the last three Congresses. The New IDEA stands for the New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act. That's the acronym, New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act. It comes from this part. If you look around, across the agencies of the Federal Government and think about those agencies and how aggressively and how effectively they do their jobs, we have the Department of Homeland Security, which has really pledged that they're not going to deport illegal workers in America.

In fact, they picked up some illegal workers by accident in Boston some months ago back in December or January. They found out that they were illegal. They processed them. These workers were on their way up to Gillette Stadium in Boston. So ICE, after they processed them, hauled them up to work. They gave them chauffeured transportation up to their job to be groundskeepers at Gillette Stadium in Boston, a complete lack of focus on their job.

I mean, you talk about open borders. Jump across the border, come in here and sneak in and get yourself a job and have your documents being invalid, falsification, whatever it might be, misrepresents your status. And if we run across you by accident because our ICE people are out there doing what they do, we will take your fingerprints and your names, and then we'll give you a chauffeured ride on up to work at Gillette Stadium. That is bizarre. It is so far away from an understanding of what it takes to enforce the law.

I take us back to a time in the fifties when my father was a manager of the State police radio stations, and he also was the mayor of a small community. The local town cop came across an illegal who happened to be traveling through the community, and I don't know how they interdicted him, whether it was his license plate light that was out or whatever it was, but he was arrested. He was incarcerated. He was held up in the city jail, and they had to process him. And my father, as mayor, was the justice of the peace as well. There never was any consideration about turning him loose because it was too hard to enforce the law. The only thing that could come from that was the person that was illegally in the United States was going to go back to their home country. And by my recollection, that's what happened.

But the New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act recognizes that the Department of Homeland Security hasn't shown a complete will to enforce immigration law. They have got good officers out in the field. They want to do so. They want to deliver on a mission and accomplish a mission statement. They want to accomplish their mission statement, but the lack of will from the White House down through the Secretary of Homeland Security prevents them from being as effective as they can be.

So there's your agency. Department of Homeland Security is not as effective as they can be, enforcing against employers because politically that's more palatable but refusing to enforce against illegal workers because they have decided that those illegal workers can be Democrats. I stand on that statement, Madam Speaker. They've decided those illegal workers can become Democrats, so they want to pander to them.

We've got the Social Security Administration that has a database that should be feeding information to the Department of Homeland Security. Whenever you have duplications of those Social Security numbers, you

can bet that as soon as the second one shows up, if it's outside the neighborhood in the driving range of the first one, that you have one illegal there at least that's working off of that Social Security number--and maybe both of them are illegal.

The Social Security Administration is willing to take the checks that come from the payroll taxes of those millions who are working illegally in America, paying their payroll taxes because it's withheld from their paycheck, but declaring the maximum number of dependents so that they pay Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, but not State and Federal income tax. The Social Security Administration's willing to take those checks from those illegal workers and not explore the duplications on those Social Security numbers because the money's going into the account which is being spent by this Congress but is kept in an accounting process in Parkersburg, West Virginia, in a filing cabinet. And bonds that are worth no more than this piece of paper was, a print on top of it. I happen to have one in my filing cabinet as well. $3.54 billion in bonds in the Social Security account. It's an IOU from the government to the government. They put them in a filing cabinet in Parkersburg, West Virginia. But illegals pay into that out of proportion because they're not going to file a tax return. And so the dollars that are contributed on that Social Security number go into that filing cabinet along with those bonds.

And we have the Department of Homeland Security who is not willing to enforce the law to the extent that it must be against illegal workers. They may be willing to enforce the law in even an increasing degree over the Bush administration against employers who are hiring illegal workers. The Social Security Administration is cashing the checks of people who have fraudulently misrepresented their identity, and so neither agency has demonstrated the will to enforce the law.

So I brought this legislation called the New IDEA Act which clarifies that wages and benefits paid to illegals are not tax deductible for Federal income tax purposes, and it establishes that there will be a cooperative working effort between Social Security, Homeland Security, and the IRS. The IRS, who has demonstrated they do have a desire to enforce the law, they have been vigorous in enforcing the law, and they would be very useful in stepping into the enforcement of illegal immigration law, and they happen to be in just exactly the right position to do so.

And so under my bill, should it become law--and in fact, my bill has been advocated by the Democrats in the Senate who are proposing immigration legislation, Senator Schumer and others. They didn't define the title of the bill, but they defined the bill within their talking points, so I can commend them for recognizing the need.

New IDEA, the New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act, clarifies that wages and benefits paid to illegals are not tax deductible for income tax purposes, and it directs the IRS to go in under the normal course of their audits, run the Social Security numbers of those employees through, which will show up on the tax forms, run them through the E- Verify program. E-Verify is the Internet-based program that can verify the identity of the employees. It identifies a person who can lawfully work in the United States, and it has a very, very high degree of success and accuracy.

So the IRS would come in in an audit, and they would audit corporation A, and say corporation A has 25 employees. Their Social Security numbers will be listed in their tax forms. They will punch those Social Security numbers in to E-Verify. If it comes back that they can lawfully work in the United States, fine. No problem. If it comes back that they can't verify, then the IRS can give the employer an opportunity to cure those records, to straighten them out and to correct them. But failure to correct those records then can be concluded by the IRS, under the New IDEA Act, the New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act, the IRS can then deny the tax deductibility of the wages and benefits paid to the illegals.

When the IRS denies that, then those wages--let's just say that it's $1 million worth of wages that are paid, are deducted as a business expense like you would deduct, oh, let's say, fuel or any of your overhead that you might have, input from produced products or whatever it might be. That business expense would be denied. And when it's denied, presumably, it goes over into the income column. So $1 million worth of wages are denied as an expense because it was paid to illegals and denied by the IRS. It would go over here to the other column on the profit side.

And I did this calculation at 34 percent corporate income tax, and it might well be 35 percent today, and I think it's more accurate to say so. But at 34 percent, your $10 an hour illegal, by the time you add interest and penalty and the 34 percent tax, becomes a $16 an hour illegal. The IRS steps in then to enforce immigration law by denying the deductibility of wages and benefits paid to illegals, adding the interest and the penalty, and the $10 an hour illegal becomes a $16 an hour illegal. Employers will understand that instantly, and they will set about cleaning up their workforce, using E-Verify.

And, by the way, we give that employer safe harbor if he uses E- Verify, using E-Verify to clean up his workforce. And an employer that can't function with the illegal staff that he has may make the decision to incrementally transition over into legal employees over a period of time. Whatever it takes. It's not draconian. It isn't stark. It isn't something that shuts businesses down, but it is something that sets up an incentive for businesses to comply with our immigration law. Should they choose not to do that, then they can pay the Federal Treasury the difference of $10 an hour up to $16 an hour.

We need to fix E-Verify, and we do in my bill. We set up E-Verify so that an employer can use E-Verify to verify the employability status of the applicant upon a bona fide job offer rather than having to hire the individual. Under current E-Verify law, you can't use E-Verify to determine if a job applicant can lawfully work in the United States. You can only do that after you actually hire them. So if you hire an individual, and you run their data through E-Verify and it comes back that they can't confirm that they can lawfully work in the United States, then you have to turn around and fire them.

And I'll take the position that American employers should not be compelled to hire illegals in order to find out that they're illegal. They should be able to say to the individual, Sam, John, Larry, Sally, whoever you are, I'm offering you this job, and the job that I'm offering you is contingent upon your data being approved through E- Verify. I will do that now if you're willing to accept this job. If they say yes, you run the data through. You've got, at a maximum, a 6- second delay to get this verification done. If they don't meet the test, you don't put them on the payroll. I think that it's immoral to hire people that are illegal, and I don't want to be compelled to do that because we've got a flaw in our E-Verify law.

So I appreciate the statement that Mr. Polis from Colorado made that he's for zero illegal immigration. I don't know how you get to that unless you're willing to enforce the law. I think we need to force all traffic--legal and illegal--and all products--human and other products--through the ports of entry on our southern border. I think we need to go ahead and build a fence and a wall. And at the expense of $6 million a mile, that's the maintenance of our border. What will it cost us to build a fence and how much will it cut in the cost to maintain the enforcement of that? If we can, for a couple million dollars a mile, build some very effective barriers, that means that we can cut down on the cost to the boots on the ground to enforce those sections and focus our boots on the ground that we have in the areas where we have trouble with enforcement. That's a logical thing to do.

Look around the world. Look at the barrier that they have in Israel, for example, where they had suicide bombers coming through over and over and over again. They built a barrier there, and it's set up to protect the Israelis from the people that would come and do them harm. Is it immoral for them to protect themselves from that kind of damage to their lives and to their limbs and to their treasure? I suggest it is not. And those that would argue that a wall on our border is comparable to the Berlin Wall just completely and intentionally and willfully miss the

most important point, and that is that a wall to keep people out is morally and fundamentally different than a wall to keep people in. The Berlin Wall was about keeping people in. You don't hear the same people argue against the Great Wall of China because they know the Great Wall of China was designed to keep people out, not in. We know that the barrier in Israel has worked. We know that our barriers on our southern border where we have them have worked.

We have tertiary fencing down there in San Luis, Arizona, that is, as near as I can determine, that section of fence--however short it is-- it's three layers of fencing. As near as I can determine, it has not been defeated by anyone. It's easier to go around the end than it is to go over, around, under, or through. I don't suggest we build 2,000 miles of wall and fencing with sensors and monitoring and patrol roads. Madam Speaker, I suggest that we simply build a fence and build a wall until they quit going around the end. If we do that, it may take 2,000 miles. It may not. We may just be building the 784 miles that are required by the Secure Fence Act. We would need to have a smart immigration policy.

And here we are, down into the depths of this downward spiral of our economy, this economy that's been referred to a good number of times as the ``great recession.'' And we're talking about, what, granting amnesty to people, perhaps moving pieces of legislation through this Congress that would legalize 12 million to 20 million people in an economic environment where we have 15.4 million unemployed Americans that fit the category, that fit the definition, another 5 million to 6 million Americans who no longer fit the definition for unemployment because they quit trying. So we have over 20 million Americans that are looking for work or should be looking for work or have given up, and we have at least 8 million illegals that are working in the United States, taking up jobs that Americans could and should be doing.

The argument that there is work that Americans won't do, we haven't heard much of that argument in the last year or so, since the economy went into the downward spiral. They haven't said that as often. I have always argued that there isn't work that Americans won't do. We do everything. There is no job in America that is not being done by Americans. No matter how many legal or illegal immigrants might be doing that work, there will always be Americans standing there doing that work as well.

When we travel around the world and look at the work that is being done, work that is characterized as work that Americans won't do, I see that work being done by every nationality in every country. There is no work that Americans won't do. When John McCain talked about he would pay $50 an hour for people to come and pick lettuce, I am not sure that he ever wrote that check; but I was quite concerned that I would lose my construction crew, who might all migrate down to Arizona to pick lettuce for $50 an hour.

It isn't a matter that there is work that Americans won't do, it is a matter of there has been a flood of underskilled labor that are mobile. They are more reactive. They can beat Americans to that job because they are not as tied to real estate. They don't have those kinds of possessions. They have a cell phone network, and if they need 25 people to pick the lettuce in Arizona, that network brings a lot of illegals in there to do that. It doesn't mean Americans won't do it. There is no work Americans won't do.

I mentioned John McCain, and it isn't for the purpose of being critical of the positions he has taken in the past, I say my hats off to the people who have served this country. He is an authentic American hero. He has gone through a tremendous amount of torture and pain and suffering, and he has not lost his resolve to defend this country in a fashion that be believes as a United States Senator.

I would just suggest, here are some real facts. I have asked this question, and I come down to a bottom line consensus: What is the toughest, dirtiest, most dangerous job that we ever ask Americans to do? I will suggest that it is not in the United States. It has been and perhaps will not be again in that particular location, but it is rooting terrorists out of places like Fallujah, or places in Afghanistan, where we ask our soldiers and our marines to put their lives on the line to do that, sometimes in 130 degree heat with 70, 80 pounds that they are carrying. They go in and root those terrorists out of Fallujah. They root them out of Afghanistan. They do that, and if you calculate them at 40 hours a week, for about $8.09 an hour.

If Americans will do that, if they will take on the toughest, the hottest or the coldest, the dirtiest, and the most dangerous jobs in the world for that kind of money, there is no argument to be made that there are jobs that Americans will not do. We work hard and are willing to take a risk. We stand up for freedom and liberty and the rule of law. The people who put on the uniform to put their lives on the line are very much about defending the pillars of American exceptionalism, the principles that made American great, and they are not about defending someone having a path to citizenship being granted through amnesty.

We owe the honor to the people who have defended our liberty and freedom to stand up for the rule of law. The rule of law has been reestablished by the statute in Arizona, the immigration legislation that they have passed and has been signed into law by the governor.

These immigration laws in Arizona are laws that reflect the Federal immigration law. They fit within the umbrella of the Federal immigration law. Yes, there is a standard called Federal preemption, and that means if the Federal Government passes a law, provided it is constitutional that supersedes that of the States, that is Federal preemption. But we don't have any statutes that preempt immigration law in Arizona because they have drafted their immigration legislation to fit within the umbrella of the Federal immigration law.

And they have set up some clear standards, clear standards that there shall not be racial profiling used as the only criterion when it comes to interdicting or stopping an individual.

Now that happens to fit consistently with Federal case law. We have a responsibility and a duty and an obligation and a legal standard that allows our law enforcement officers to use a profile provided their race isn't the only criterion. And reasonable suspicion includes a whole lot of other criteria in addition to race. We don't want to be foolish or stupid about this.

I recall an incident that took place in Urbandale, Iowa, 15 or more years ago. It is a community that at the time was not populated by minorities in any significant percentage. There was a Cadillac being driven down the street in a higher income residential area by an African American. The law enforcement officer saw that and wondered, and maybe it was actually Windsor Heights, come to think of it, but it was one of the suburbs of Des Moines, and the officer saw that and thought, That doesn't quite fit what goes on in this community. It could have been the same police officer in an African American community that would have made the call if it were perhaps a white person in that community.

But it turned out to be the other way around. He ran the plates on the car and the car was registered to a Caucasian female who lived in the neighborhood. So the officer suspected something was out of order, pulled the car over, and found out that the African American driving the car was the husband of the Caucasian lady whom the car was registered to who lived in the neighborhood.

Okay, it wasn't what you would normally see as typical. One could argue it was racial profiling, but I would argue it was police work picking up the things that were inconsistent and trying to pick the populous. In any event, the settlement was $60,000 paid to the driver of the car, the husband of the lady who owned the car and was a very legitimate resident of the community and as far as I know, was a very well-respected Iowan.

But sometimes you get caught in the anomaly, and you have to give the police officers their due. They are picking out those things that are out of order and don't fit the normal practice in the neighborhood. And I know the difference. I live in a rural neighborhood. When somebody drives down my road,

we generally know who they are and where they are going. If I drive down the road, they know me. It is part of our own built-in security system.

Where I reside out here in D.C., I know who stands on the street and what the flow of traffic is, and you see those things that are outside the normal flow. That's what police officers do. It isn't and should not be targeting people because of their race. But race can be a factor in a legitimate police activity as long as it is not the only factor. That is what the Arizona law says.

I want to presume that those police officers are operating to enforce the rule of law and protect society and to use the tools that they have to protect the people. That's what they are. They provide security all across this country. Having grown in an law enforcement family, I respect the job that they do and the risk that they take and the judgment and the education that is necessary for them if they are going to enforce the law.

In Arizona, the executive order by the governor ensures that they are going to continue to teach and train their officers so that they stay within compliance of Federal law, Arizona law, Arizona Constitution and the United States Constitution. And if there are deviations from that, I am very confident that the people who are driving wedges between us as Americans will find a way to litigate.

I regret and it saddens me, and in fact it infuriates me, Madam Speaker, that we would see the people who are race baiters who are seeking to drive wedges between the American people, trying to capitalize on this and scare the American people and make it out to be something that it is not. What it is is, it is a law that sets up and honors the Federal immigration law that uses the Arizona law enforcement people to enforce an immigration law that is now a State law that is the mirror of the Federal law. We need to understand that in the case of U.S. v. Santana Garcia, and several others, that there are Federal precedents that local law enforcement implicitly has the authority to enforce immigration law.

Regardless of whether there is a 287(g) agreement, local law enforcement has the authority to enforce immigration law, and there is a Federal law that prohibits sanctuary cities. It has been exploited by many cities in the country, including San Francisco and Houston, a number of cities that want to boycott Arizona, the violation of the Federal law from prohibiting cities from becoming sanctuary cities has been a circumvention, and it says the series of requirements that are in there that prohibit local cities from, let me say, protecting illegals in their communities, and have they found a way to pass memorandums of understanding or city ordinances that direct their police officers to not gather information, because the statute that was written wasn't tight enough and requires that once they have the information, they have to transfer it on to Federal law enforcement officials, so they just prohibit their local law enforcement officers from gathering information on illegals.

And so they become sanctuary cities and the streets of the city fill up with people who are here illegally. They are taking jobs from Americans. They are among the 8 millions taking jobs from Americans; and as the streets fill up, they are also turning a blind eye to the illegal drugs and the violence and the abuse that comes out of that community in its entirety.

Madam Speaker, I go back to 12 to 20 million illegals living in America, at least 8 million working in America, 15.4 million unemployed, another 5 to 6 million that quit looking for work that fit that category except they are not trying any longer, over 20 million Americans who need a job, 8 million illegals that are occupying jobs that would all go to people who are either Americans or lawfully present in the United States, in an economy that has been declining and shrinking.

And by the way, we have 1.5 million green cards that are issued on an annual basis. If you look at the workforce in America, 10 years ago the workforce in American was 142 million, now it is 153 million.

It has increased about a little over 1 million a year over the last 10 years. And if you would go back and look, the numbers of green cards has accelerated from about three quarters of a million in that period of time--and that actually is a guess, Madam Speaker--on up to about 1.5 million a year now. Almost the sum total of the expansion of our workforce has been attributable to the legal immigration green cards that are a component of this. And so our economy has to grow and create 1.5 million new jobs a year just to accommodate the legal immigration, let alone the illegal immigration. Those are the facts of what we're faced with today.

So, Madam Speaker, I'm going to make this statement, that we have to put a stop to the illegal immigration in America. We've got to direct all traffic through our ports of entry where we can stop the traffic of illegal drugs, contraband, and people coming into the United States. We need to enforce our immigration law. We need to adopt the new ID Act so the IRS can help us enforce immigration law. And then, while all this is going on, we've got to take a look at the legal immigration in America and make a determination as to how many jobs we want this economy to create to accommodate those who are coming in here legally, and we have to have an economy that's going to be robust.

Furthermore, according to Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, a household that's headed by a high school dropout costs taxpayers in America an average of $22,449; $22,449 over 50 years of heading the household, a $1.5 million cost to the taxpayers to help sustain this household because we have become a welfare state. When my grandmother came here before the turn of the previous century, she didn't come here to a welfare state. She came here to a meritocracy, and they wanted to ensure that the people that came through Ellis Island were physically and mentally fit and could sustain themselves. And even though they were screened in Europe before they got on the ship, 2 percent of them were sent back from Ellis Island because they didn't meet the standard.

And so here we are today, 1.5 million legal immigrants who are granted work permits in the United States consuming all the new jobs in America and expanding the workforce when we have many more Americans that we could tap into to do this work that we haven't tried. That's 15.4 million unemployed, plus 5 to 6 million who no longer meet that category, 20 million altogether. And if I would put them into this category, those Americans of working age are in the area of 80 million Americans of working age who are simply not in the workforce. So if we would just simply hire one out of 10 of those, we could replace all the illegal workers by hiring 10 percent of those who are not in the workforce, but are of working age; and about 20 million of those are looking for work.

So, Madam Speaker, we have an economy we need to heal up. We've got a rule of law we've got to reestablish. We have demonstrations that are likely to come across America that are designed to just pit Americans against Americans, race-based, race baiting for political purposes, when what we're really looking for here is the enforcement of the rule of law and a robust economy that's going to employ American workers.

We are the most generous country in the world when it comes to allowing legal immigration, roughly 1.5 million a year. No other country comes close to matching that. We need to take a look at our economy, the rule of law, the culture in America, enforce the rule of law, stand with Arizona--who has not done anything except define their Arizona immigration law to reflect that of the Federal law. And the President of the United States, who has directed the Justice Department to examine Arizona law, I think is finding out that it's constitutional, it's statutorily consistent, it cannot be and should not be preempted by Federal law, and it should be honored and respected and supported, not investigated, nor litigated. And I encourage and I thank the people in Arizona for having the courage to step up and pass their legislation.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 16 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, May 3, 2010, at 10 a.m.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to an outstanding public

servant and proud Greek American, Mr. Dean G. Popps. Dean most recently served our Nation as Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, and on April 16, 2010, he stepped down from his position to return to civilian life. This brings to a close a 7-year tour in the Department of Defense that started with his volunteering for a 179-day rotation in Iraq as part of the Coalition Provisional Authority, where I first had the pleasure of meeting him.

Since then, Dean has served our Nation under two Presidents, two Secretaries of Defense and three Deputy Secretaries of Defense in a variety of increasingly senior roles. His visionary approach to his most recent position brought sorely needed business acumen to the Army's bureaucratic acquisition process. By calling on his years of experience as a businessman and entrepreneur, he reinvigorated his staff, reshaped rigid business practices and advanced the Army's acquisition objectives. Through this work, Dean has made invaluable contributions to multiple aspects of Army operations in his years of service.

Among Dean's many contributions to the Army and the Nation was his leadership role in the Army's modernization program, in which he successfully defended resources and secured funding for many projects that have strengthened the capabilities of our Armed Forces as they carry out missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere around the world. Dean also oversaw the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund for three years, running what became the largest construction effort since the Marshall Plan. This project saw the completion of more than 3,400 reconstruction projects that have had a profound impact on the restoration of key elements of the Iraqi infrastructure as the country rebuilds and establishes a democratic system.

A committed leader in every position he has held, Dean effectively ran the U.S. Elimination of Chemical Weapons Program as well, which has become a model for achieving the safe destruction of stockpiled chemical weapons. By the end of his time at the program's helm, the program had successfully completed over 50 percent of our national goal to eliminate stockpiled chemical agents in accordance with the Chemical Weapons Convention, and it will continue to serve as an outstanding model for similar programs elsewhere in the world.

Foremost in Dean's mind has always been a commitment to the welfare of each soldier serving our Nation, a concern that he has upheld throughout his tenure as he helped various projects overcome a myriad of obstacles. He has constantly held himself to exacting performance standards and his visionary leadership and unselfish commitment to duty are truly admirable. The Nation will miss Dean's service but I'm confident his wife Lise, sons Stephen, Jason, and George, and his daughter Christina, will be happy to have him back after his extended loan to the American people. I hope my colleagues will join me in wishing him well in all his future endeavors and hope that those who follow in his footsteps will continue his legacy of selfless dedication to our great Nation. Good luck and godspeed.