Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the underlying bill, H.R. 38; or maybe that is the lead bill and there is an underlying bill that has been attached to it. I want to speak a little bit here about this process.

First of all, though, we have a concealed carry bill before us that is a good and an excellent bill, that has been hard-worked and well- vetted, and I want to thank Mr. Hudson for his diligent work on this for a number of years.

A year and a half or more ago we had this bill about ready to go before the Judiciary Committee. I raised an issue. My concern was that it didn't allow for the proper respect for the States--7 then, 12 now-- who have legitimate constitutional carry, which is: Since you have a Second Amendment right, you have a right to carry a weapon.

Under this bill now, having incorporated an amendment that I had prepared a year and a half or so ago that allows then for the residents of the States who have constitutional carry to then travel into other States; if they are legal in their home State, they are legal in another State, under this bill, without having to require the States that respect full constitutional carry to produce permits for their citizens and their residents to travel into neighboring States or anywhere in the country. I think that is a significant improvement, and I thank Mr. Hudson for his cooperation and work on that. Like I say, this is a good and solid bill.

I am, however, concerned about this process. When I hear the gentleman, Mr. Hastings, speak about this is the 54th closed rule that we have seen, I am for a lot of open rules. I am for open debate. I want to fight it out in committee and I want to fight it out here on the floor.

Our Founding Fathers understood that. They set this system up this way. They said to all of us: Go to your district, pull the best ideas you have there, generate your own good ideas, bring them here, and let them compete in this marketplace of ideas.

But if we don't have the window to compete with ideas, if we don't have that opportunity to have the debates, if we don't have the opportunity to force votes on amendments, then the best that America has to offer eventually doesn't show up in the law or to the President's desk.

This is one of those circumstances where we learned a bill that didn't have a number the morning that we marked this up in committee is now the Fix NICS bill. It got a number sometime that same day. There was not a full opportunity to vet the Fix NICS bill. I am very apprehensive about what it might do to this country.

I would like to have had hearings and learn what kind of American citizens, law-abiding citizens, will be disadvantaged by the Fix NICS bill. Whose names get on that and why? How do you get those names off when you need to be cleaning up the list?

I want to have everybody on the list who belongs on the list, but I don't want anybody on the list who doesn't belong on the list. I want to protect American people and I want to protect constitutional rights.

We didn't get an opportunity to look into this, and anybody who brought an amendment to the Rules Committee, it came to the floor under a closed rule. So I am concerned and I am apprehensive about this.

In fact, as I look through these provisions, I strongly support section 103, Vicky Hartzler's section in the bill. Section 104----

I support also the section of the judges, but offered an amendment in committee--too many Members weren't there; at least 10 Republicans were gone--to protect congressional Members of Congress in the same way as the judges. We didn't have that opportunity to actually have a hearing on it in the committee--a legitimate one-- and we didn't have an opportunity to bring that amendment to the floor, so I have this apprehension.

Mr. Speaker, I urge that we get back to regular order.

Madam Speaker, it is my honor to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives, and I have a couple of topics that I intend to take up for the folks here watching and listening.

Madam Speaker, I want to talk about the Heartbeat bill and I want to talk about the immigration bill and the tax policy all together. But there is an important issue before this Congress that I want to hear about before I take up these issues. And for that purpose, I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. DeSantis) to get this off of his heart.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for his presentation and certainly support and endorse every word that I have heard here.

I think about the leadership that George Washington provided, and a couple of things come to mind. One of them is, in my six trips into Egypt, I have met with President el-Sisi each of those times. He finds himself in a position in Egypt very similar to where Washington was in his first term, Madam Speaker, and that is now with a constitution that has a limitation of two 4-year terms for the President of Egypt. He was elected under that constitution, committed to accepting civilian leadership of the military--and that has been taking place--rebuilding the Christian churches in Egypt, establishing a parliament that reflects women as well as men, and religious diversity in allowing for a lot more religious freedom in Egypt. He has followed through on all of that.

The real test will be if President el-Sisi is re-elected in Egypt when he is up for that re-election, if that should happen, and I hope it does, then I am also listening very closely to what would be his second inaugural address. In that second inaugural address, I am calling upon him to announce that the second term will be his last term in keeping with the standards that are set by George Washington. That is how you transition into a republican form of government that is a representative form of government, a government of we the people.

I would also reflect, as I listened to Mr. DeSantis speak about the greatness of George Washington--and we understand that there has been, I think, an erroneous reading of history and a misinterpretation of history--that there is an effort to purge from and to revise our American history to conform with what contemporary values are. So now if we disparage and expunge from history the statues, the faces, the words, and the leadership of people--some of whom were slaveowners back in that time: Washington, Jefferson, and a list of others all the way up the line--then we fall prey to this weakness of wanting to judge our Founding Fathers and the people who went before us in each generation by the standards of this generation.

Yet we admire people like William Wilberforce and John Adams who stood for years to defend the battle against slavery. They made the moral arguments against slavery. We had people who were against slavery who owned slaves. If you were in Virginia, and if you owed taxes, then you couldn't free

your slaves. That was true for some of our Founding Fathers who found themselves in that position. They couldn't legally free their slaves. They opposed slavery anyway, but they just couldn't pay their taxes. That is a piece of history that isn't often discussed, Madam Speaker.

We need to judge Washington for what he did as the Father of our Country and judge him within the context of the values that they had then. We should remember that they tried to eliminate slavery in the founding documents of this country. They were not able to do so because they had enough representation in the South that prevented it.

So we were, then, less than a century later swept into a giant Civil War which was still the bloodiest war that we have been involved in in our 200-plus years of our history, and that was a bloody war of brother fighting brother, North versus South. 600,000 Americans--mostly White, male Christians--went to their graves to put an end to slavery. That is how huge that contest was.

That argument needed to be won here. It was debated here in the U.S. House of Representatives and in the United States Senate. It went through the Supreme Court.

I listened to the testimony of Star Parker who testified this past Wednesday morning on the Heartbeat Bill, H.R. 490. Star Parker is a magnificent witness. I count her as a real leader in this country and a good friend. She is also an African American who has had several abortions before she came to the conviction that she understood that life begins at the moment of conception and that human life is sacred in all of its forms. So now her voice is being heard--heard in this Congress and heard across the land.

As an African American, she compared slavery to the abortion issue today. I look back in the slavery era, the first half of the 19th century building up to the Civil War, and I ask myself, in looking back at my heritage and my predecessors and the things that they believed in and passed on down to me: Where would I have been? Where would I have been, Madam Speaker, if I had been, say, born in 1800?

Would I have had enough vision to step forward and oppose slavery in the same fashion that I oppose abortion today? I would hope I would have. I pray I would have. I would think that those same principles would apply as Star Parker drew that comparison and that juxtaposition in her testimony last Wednesday before the Constitution and Civil Justice Subcommittee.

Yet here we are today with a similar debate and a similar argument before us. Slavery was morally wrong. Today, I have never in my lifetime met someone who defended slavery, but there were many of them who defended slavery right here where I stand, Madam Speaker, and across the rotunda in the United States Senate where they stand. They defended it because it was the legacy of the culture and the civilization of their times that was included within every civilization throughout the world. Every nation had to figure out how to throw off that yoke of slavery and give all creatures created in God's image an equal opportunity and equal freedom. It cost a lot of blood to put an end to that--600,000 lives.

As a matter of fact, not that long ago, I was standing in the Lincoln Memorial. They call it the temple area there around where the huge statue of Lincoln is seated in his chair up in the Lincoln Memorial. Every time I have walked up those steps, I have walked over to Lincoln's left--it is my right as I face him--I read Lincoln's second inaugural address. I don't have the text of it precisely in front of me, but I will get the gist of it, Madam Speaker.

There in his second inaugural address--remember, the Civil War is not over yet, so we don't know how it is going to end. He said:

Until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid

by another drawn with the sword, as was said, so it is

written that the Word of the Lord is true and righteous

altogether.

Now, I stood there some time back and read that. Sometimes you can read things four, five, six, ten, or twenty times before you see the wisdom in it, but it hit me as I stood there, a drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by a drop of blood drawn by the sword; how many Americans died in the Civil War? 600,000. Lincoln could not have known that.

I thought I knew how many Black Africans had been brought to what is now the United States to be slaves and to be enslaved here; I thought I knew that number. I looked it up. It is without much contention, there is a consensus number out there, Madam Speaker--600,000. 600,000 Americans died to put an end to slavery, and 600,000 Africans were brought to what is now America to be slaves.

Lincoln could not have known either number. He could not have known those killed in action and those who died in the Civil War. He could not have known that 600,000. He could not have known how many were brought to what is now America to be slaves. A drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, so it is written, the Word of the Lord is true and right and just altogether.

It turns out to be 600,000 versus 600,000. Those are prophetic words that came from the mouth of Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural address, Madam Speaker. It is chilling to think about how prescient they were. It is impossible for Lincoln to have known, but the instinct that the hand of God that guided him, the guidance of providence that put those words in his mouth that day, turned out to be true this day.

I think of all that this Nation went through to put an end to slavery and all that we are going through to put an end to abortion. I look at the cases of Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and a Supreme Court that one might say was leaning very strongly to it as an activist court and the string of decisions that brought them to Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.

I would take us back through that, Madam Speaker. In about--I have got to guess at the years here again--about 1964 or 1965, there was a case that came before the Supreme Court called Griswold v. Connecticut. There, the State of Connecticut, being a strong Catholic State, had outlawed contraceptives in Connecticut because that was also the position of the Catholic Church. There was a couple that decided to sue to be able to purchase contraceptives. So it made its way all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court looked into it and decided, well, there is a right to privacy, and the State of Connecticut has no business interfering with the constitutional right to privacy that a married couple has in Connecticut to purchase contraceptives.

So they created this new right--this right to privacy--that didn't exist in the Constitution. It still doesn't exist in the Constitution. Now there are those who will argue that it exists in precedent and exists in case law, and, according to stare decisis--respect for previous decisions--it cannot be changed. We are stuck with this idea that the Constitution includes a right to privacy, a right to privacy that is applied to married couples who wanted to buy contraceptives in the State of Connecticut.

That was when the Supreme Court reached well beyond their bounds, and they needed to stay within the guidelines of the Constitution itself, hence this right to privacy.

Then there was the Eisenstadt case where the decision was that unmarried people had the same right to privacy as married people. So they extended that right to privacy to unmarried people as well, and now everybody could buy contraceptives everywhere at any time, and many other things were included underneath that definition.

So Roe v. Wade came together, and they decided that, yes, these rights existed, this right to privacy could be extrapolated into a right to abortion because this was all written in the emanations and the penumbras that are up there. To explain that, emanations and penumbras are like this: they are in the shadows of. So if you look up at the clouds during, let's say, a semi-cloudy day, then you will see that little shadow along the edge of the cloud. You can't quite see the other side of the cloud, but you see that fringe along the edge.

Someplace in there, those black-robed jurists could see constitutional rights that they couldn't actually find in the text of the Constitution, that they couldn't quite find in Griswold,

that they couldn't quite find in Eisenstadt, but they wrote it into Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton and decided: Okay, we are going to guarantee this constitutional right to have an abortion as long as the baby is not viable.

The viability, of course, is a pretty mushy definition. The Court has thrown some of our pro-life legislation back at us because they thought our definitions were a little too mushy, but they write some mushy ones themselves.

Then you have the Doe v. Bolton case settled at the same time, simultaneous with Roe v. Wade. There they write in the exceptions, which would be anything that might affect the life or health of the mother. The health of the mother can be determined to be the physical health, the mental health, or even the familial health of the mother. So what it means is any reason whatsoever.

When you couple those two cases together--and if you respect the Supreme Court decisions, which America did--it said abortion on demand for any reason whatsoever, whether it is a physical reason, whether it is a mental health reason, or whether it is a family issue, anything that is an inconvenience. We ended up with abortion as birth control and abortion on demand for everyone.

At that time, the Court could not have seen that we would be having partial-birth abortions conducted across this country in significant numbers to the 24th week and beyond.

That is such a ghastly process. This Congress did deal with that through legislation and wrote legislation to ban partial-birth abortion. It was defined. It was outlawed by this Congress. It was litigated all the way to the Supreme Court, as we would know.

When I arrived here, the Supreme Court had found that it was unconstitutional for Congress to ban this ghastly process of partial- birth abortion, of bringing a baby to birth through breach, feet first, and one inch before that baby could fill its lungs full of American air and scream for its own mercy. They would kill the baby while it struggled and squirmed, and they would collapse the skull by withdrawing from it the contents. That is the ghastly process. It went on over and over again.

The Court found it to be unconstitutional for Congress to ban--or any State, for that matter--that ghastly process. So we went back to work here in this Congress in the Judiciary Committee.

Under the leadership especially of Steve Chabot of Ohio, we held hearing after hearing after hearing, and we established and first wrote a definition for partial-birth abortion that was precise so that the Court couldn't argue that it was too mushy, too vague, not precise enough. We wrote a precise definition.

Then we held hearings that determined that a partial-birth abortion is never medically necessary to save the life of the mother. We outlawed partial-birth abortion again. Then it went through the litigation process.

Our statute that banned partial-birth abortion, that came from we the people, was shot down in three circuits around the country but appealed to the Supreme Court, and it finally survived on that final analysis of the Supreme Court. Even they couldn't bear the thought of what was going on in this country. It was too stark. It was too ghastly. It was too gruesome.

So here we are today, with this House of Representatives having passed legislation that bans abortion if the baby can feel pain at 20 weeks. It was a true and right and just thing for this Congress, this House of Representatives to do altogether, Madam Speaker.

We have sent that bill over to the United States Senate. The bill has a little bit of vagueness in it because we are saying 20 weeks. We would like to precisely identify the exact time that the baby can feel pain. But it screams at our conscience that a baby who is struggling for its own survival can be killed in the womb. If it could fill its own lungs, it would scream for its own mercy. It fights to get away from the abortionist's tools.

That is the bill that bans that, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which we sent to the United States Senate and now sits on Mitch McConnell's desk and probably doesn't move unless there is a Democrat who also agrees with us over in the House of Representatives.

It was bipartisan here in the House of Representatives, and I thank the Democrats who have joined us in the pro-life movement; but it has diminished significantly among Democrats in my time here, Madam Speaker.

I won't use the name of the Member. I will just say that a Democratic Member who is a pro-life Member whom I have served with for roughly a decade, but I went to him and said: Can you sign onto my Heartbeat bill, H.R. 490? Are you ready to do that?

He said: Not yet.

That left the door open for: Well, maybe.

I said: How many Democrats do you think we can get to sign onto the Heartbeat bill that bans abortion from the time a heartbeat can be detected, the baby is protected?

He said, without hesitation: Two. We can get two--which meant, I think, him and one other.

I said: How many pro-life votes were there in the House of Representatives among Democrats when you came here roughly 10 years ago, how many pro-life votes among Democrats?

His answer, without hesitation, was 60. Sixty Democrats would put up a pro-life vote. Ten years later, today, two, maybe three. I hope and pray it is more than that. I will work for all the votes that we can get.

But that, I think, tells us something about how polarized the political arena here is in this House of Representatives, in the United States Senate, and explains why Tom Perez, head of the DNC, can say there is no room for pro-life people in the Democratic Party. If you can't be a Republican, then transform the Democratic Party so we can save the lives of these innocent unborn.

That is what the Heartbeat bill is, H.R. 490, the Heartbeat Protection Act, which we held a hearing on last Wednesday. The testimony, I think, was stellar that came out of the panelists who were there.

David Forte delivered the constitutional arguments even more so in the Q&A than he did so in his presentation.

We heard from Dr. Kathi Aultman, who has been an abortionist and committed an uncounted number of abortions, and she has also had an abortion herself. She has delivered a baby girl vaginally herself. So she is a mother and an abortionist.

She said in her testimony: I realize that when I meet the young people whom I delivered--an OB/GYN who had a dual purpose of bringing babies forth in the world, protecting their lives with all the medical technology and skill set that can be developed on this hand, but over on this hand, kill them, and the dichotomy of that hit her after she delivered her own daughter.

She went back to work and her hands were still doing what they had been doing, but her conscience screamed at her, and she had to put the tools down and stop this ghastly practice of abortion. Now she has committed a significant portion of her life to putting an end to this.

But she said she realized, when she met young people, the joy that she had helped bring them into the world if she delivered them; but at the same time, she understood that there were a lot of young people who are not here because she aborted them. So it always tore at her conscience that way.

Another thing that I had not heard from anyone in this movement in the past, in all of our discussions, was this. She said: If I was going to abort the baby, I always referred to it, when I spoke with the mother, as a fetus. But if we were going to deliver the baby and give this baby a chance at life, I always referred to it as a baby.

I think that explains to us the difference in the disagreements we have here in the House of Representatives. Almost universally, over on this side, people support abortion in every form they can, with those exceptions whom I tip my hat to and those who will be converted, hopefully, by their conscience over time like Cathy Aultman was.

They say ``fetus''; we say ``baby.'' God knows it is a baby. God knows that it is a unique human being from the moment of conception. What we can't yet do, medically, is precisely tell the mother the moment of conception. We don't have a medical way to determine that moment, or I would be focusing our legislation on that moment. But what we do have now, with ultrasound,

is the ability to identify that heartbeat in that baby.

The legislation in H.R. 490, the Heartbeat Protection Act, says this. We require the would-be abortionist to check for a heartbeat before that abortionist would continue with an abortion. They have to maintain records on this: check for a heartbeat, and then if a heartbeat can be detected, the baby is protected. We know that is life. If an abortionist stops that beating heart, we know that has ended the life of that innocent baby.

As we brought this legislation forward, we found out that there is something about that heartbeat that speaks to the conscience and the hearts of America, Madam Speaker. We know that billboard after billboard--there must be thousands of them around America, many of them put up by the Knights of Columbus--saying: Abortion stops a beating heart.

When we see that billboard, maybe it only registers a little bit, but many of us have seen it hundreds and hundreds of times, and we associate the heartbeat with life. If there is a beating heart, we know there is life. If you stop that beating heart, you know that you ended a human life.

On the argument that a baby isn't viable, in the Roe v. Wade era back in 1973, the Supreme Court said maybe that is at 28 weeks. But now we have babies that survive at 22 weeks. That is a month and a half less than before.

I recall a circumstance in 1992 where I had an individual who was part of the administrative oversight on a construction project that I was on that fall. He was gone for 2 weeks, and I knew why. His wife had gone into labor and delivered a little baby boy prematurely.

This little baby boy was in the early part of 20-some weeks. And I am not certain, but I am just guessing earlier than 24 weeks, but certainly not 28.

They went to the city and stayed in that hospital with this little boy for 2 weeks and didn't leave. They stayed at his side and prayed for him and they did all they could. He was hooked up to all kinds of tubes.

When he came back to me after 2 weeks, he was relatively assured that this little boy would survive. He walked up to me and handed me a cigar that said, ``It's a boy.'' He wasn't handing out those cigars the first 2 weeks because he wasn't confident this little boy was going to live.

But he handed me that cigar--and I knew where he stood politically-- and I said to him: We would do anything to save the life of any little baby. Any little boy or girl, we would do anything to save their life. There is no amount of expense we wouldn't go to. There is no amount of medical effort we wouldn't go to to save the life of a baby, no matter how small their chance was to survive. We will do everything. We will spend $100,000, $200,000, $500,000 to save that innocent little life. We do everything we can do with all the medical technology that we have. We spare no effort from doctors or nurses. We will spare no effort on our knees praying to God this little baby can be born and grow into a full human being.

He agreed with me 100 percent. He said: I agree with you, and I am so glad that my little boy looks like he is going to be okay.

I said: Then are you going to go into the polls of next month--this is October of 1992--and vote for the man for President who will appoint Justices to the Supreme Court who are going to continue to enable abortion in America?

He looked at me and called me a name that we can refer to by the first letter of those three words, but he said it in such a way that it wasn't insulting to me. It said instead: You have drilled a point home.

After these 30-some years, I ran into him in the grocery store here several Sundays ago after mass. We are both Catholic. I hadn't talked to him in a long time. I asked him how that little boy was doing, and he told me.

He said: You straightened me out back then, didn't you? Do you remember that?

He asked me if I remembered it. Of course I did. I said: Yes, I remembered it, but I didn't want to bring it up. I did want to know how he is.

So that is a composite of the conscience of the Nation, Madam Speaker. I think it tells us that we all haven't come to the realization of the immorality of abortion yet, but America came to the realization of the immorality of slavery. We will get to the realization of the immorality of abortion. We are making progress.

Looking at this legislation, H.R. 490, we have a number of 69 percent of Americans supporting protecting any baby with a heartbeat.

That is, 55 percent of Democrats support protecting a baby with a heartbeat, and this legislation would save the lives of at least 90 percent of the babies that are otherwise being aborted.

So I want to thank all the people who have done so much work on this that brought us to this point. We are at 170 cosponsors. We have had a hearing. Next step, hopefully, is to get the markup before the Judiciary Committee. My goal is to bring the Heartbeat bill to this floor of the House of Representatives January 19 of 2018. That is the date of the March for Life here in this town, and that is the date we need to bring that legislation to this floor. If we can do so and send it over to the Senate, if the Senate can take it up and pass it, I am confident our President will sign it, and we can begin to put an end to this carnage.

To speak of the magnitude of the carnage of abortion: 60 million babies aborted since 1973 in Roe v. Wade.

I had a lady, who is a Democrat, say to me just over here a couple of months ago: Steve, why are you so worried about this? We have abortions down to where they are almost, or maybe even are below, a million a year?

Only a million abortions a year? How can anyone quantify that and say that is anything other than a bloody carnage and a loss of human potential and a denial of the gifts from God?

Sixty million babies aborted since Roe v. Wade in 1973. And how many babies would be born to those who were aborted? How many of those little girls that were aborted in the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, and even in the early part of this millennia--for a small part, the earliest part of this millennia--how many of those little girls would be having babies today? And how many would they have?

Just a back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that there are another 60 million babies that are missing because of the 60 million that have been aborted. And here we are, America. I am listening to people argue, and they will say: Well, you know there is work that Americans won't do, and we have a shortage of labor, so we have to go to some other culture, some other civilization and bring in hundreds of thousands or millions of people to do work that Americans won't do.

I wonder, if you would ask those innocent little voices that are in Heaven today, if they wouldn't mind laying a few bricks or maybe cutting some grass or doing a little bit of landscaping around or maybe cutting a little bit of meat. These are all things I do, by the way, even today, if I get the chance. Ask them if they wouldn't have liked to have had a chance at the right to life, if they wouldn't have liked to have an opportunity to live, to love, to breathe air, to laugh, to have their own children, to enjoy the greatest country the world has ever seen, and it is all denied to them.

It is denied to 60 million of them, and it is denied to perhaps another 60 million who didn't even have the chance to be aborted because their future parents were killed in the womb. So 60 million plus 60 million is 120 million missing in this country today. No wonder we have a labor shortage.

Oh, here is another reason why we have a labor shortage, Madam Speaker. If you look at the numbers of--according to the Department of Labor statistics in their website, there are 94\1/2\ million Americans who are simply not in the workforce. They are old enough to work. They are not in the workforce, 94\1/2\ million.

If you add to that the 7-plus million who are on unemployment today, you get up to right at 102 million Americans who potentially could be in the workforce, they are not looking for work or they are on unemployment, and I am listening to employers scream for more labor, more labor, more labor.

By the way, they are screaming for more unskilled labor. I look on that same website, and I see--where are the highest levels of unemployment?

In the lowest skills we have. We don't have a shortage of low-skilled laborers. We have a shortage of employers who want to pay a competitive wage.

So call it 102 million Americans that could be in this workforce. Then we took that number and we started chopping it down.

How about those that are too old?

We can't ask them to work, so dial that down a little bit.

And then how about those that are physically disabled?

They can't work, so dial that down.

What would it be if we were going to mobilize our workforce on the levels of, say, World War II, where at the end of World War II, we had the lowest unemployment in history? And often this is misquoted and people want to point to some other number. 1.2 percent was our unemployment rating at the end of the Second World War.

Women went to work. My mother did. Of course, my father was deployed. But if we mobilized on that level, how many would be available to go into this workforce?

We think about 82 million Americans are sitting there today. Some of them on a couch in their front lawn, some of them are riding around in their Mercedes, but a lot of them could be going to work.

In fact, everybody I mentioned so far should be at work contributing to our GDP instead of just consuming. Eighty-two million or so out there out of the 102 million that are not in the workforce, and they say: Well, we have to bring in hundreds of thousands or millions or tens of millions of people to do this work in America.

Around our family, Marilyn and I raised three sons. I started a business in 1975. I started a family in 1975. Those three sons got an allowance. They got paid for the work they did. In addition, the allowance was younger, paid for the work they did came a little later. But of those three sons, they all knew what they had to do.

Now, if one of those three sons--by the way, I am talking about one- third of our workforce is not in the workforce. They are simply not in the workforce. But one-third of the people who could be are sitting back on the sidelines.

So let's just say, around our operation, there is work that has to be done. You got to scoop the tracks out of the dozer. Somebody has got to change their oil. Somebody has got to mow the lawn. Somebody has got to take care of the other chores. Somebody has got to trim the trees, all those things that need to be done. They all got their assignments and they did them.

But if one of those sons said, ``Well, I am not working. I am going to sit on the couch and watch the ball game or sit on the porch and watch the rest of you work. I want to eat with the rest of the family. I want to put my feet under the table. I want good food. I want my clothes all clean. I want them ironed. I want them ready to go. Somebody else can clean my room, too, but I still want my allowance,'' you all know, if you grew up in the family, how long that would last.

If one of the siblings, a brother or a sister, said, ``I am not doing my work, but give me my allowance, and I still want the keys to the car,'' it wouldn't last one day.

In our house, it goes completely the other way. It is: ``Oh, you think that? Now you get all the work, and they get your allowance until you change your mind.''

We fixed that really quick in my household, and I think it would be fixed a number of different ways, but really quickly in every household in America. We don't tolerate a slacker sitting there taking up a room in the house that is demanding all the benefits of the work of the rest of the family.

But we have got 102 million Americans sitting there. Many of them are being bribed not to work by welfare checks. We have over 70 different means-tested Federal welfare programs in the United States. Over 70. Some say 87 of them. No one has even memorized the list. So that should tell you that no one understands how they interrelate with each other. No one understands whether there are disincentives or incentives for people to do the right thing and step forward and carry their share of the load.

So why wouldn't we dial the welfare down in America until the labor force magically shows up in the workplace?

That is what happened with John Smith. His experiment early on in America worked exactly like that. He said that there were--of all the royalty that was there, they thought, because they had blue blood--and that is, of course, the expression of royalty--that they didn't have to work and those commoners needed to work for the rest of time.

He said: I am not going to burn up the labor of these common people here so that a bunch of royalty can sit around with their feet up.

That is a summarization of the statement.

Everybody had to work, and they had the ``no work, no eat'' policy. Well, when you get to that policy, a lot of people decide that working is better than going hungry, but it doesn't mean we don't take care of the people who are needy. It doesn't mean we eliminate these programs. It just means, as I said, maybe we need 10 million more American workers. We can dial this welfare system down, ratchet it down.

It is now a hammock. It used to be a safety net, and this Congress with special interests has cranked up the level of the safety net to the level of the hammock, and now 102 million Americans, a good share of them, are in that hammock.

We just crank it back down. We could dial it down in proportion to the amount of labor that we need. Everybody that gets off the hammock and goes to work becomes a contributor. They grow our GDP--our gross domestic product--and they pay taxes and they take themselves off the welfare rolls.

So why wouldn't you do the twofer, instead of go to some other country and bring people here to do the work who don't speak our language, who don't understand our culture, and who don't embrace the American civilization in many cases, and who run down people in bike paths in New York, and who attack us at Fort Hood--the list goes on and on--Orlando, Florida; San Bernardino, on and on, the people who hate us?

As Louie Gohmert often says, ``We don't have to pay people to hate us. They will hate us for free.'' He was talking about foreign policy. We have got people on welfare who hate us. We don't have to pay them either. We need more people working. We need more people back in the rolls.

So I want to applaud Kevin Brady, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and I thank him for the very diligent work that he has done in order to bring this tax policy as far as it is today, and to roll it out with the coordination that they have, with the support from the leadership within the House, the Senate, and the White House, and that message has been clear.

Also, Kevin McCarthy, our majority leader, stood here today and defended it and explained it, I think, very well. He is an articulate voice for our entire conference and he does an excellent job, along with our Speaker and our whip.

By the way, our whip, Steve Scalise, maybe he doesn't have all of his moves back yet, but his heart and his head are back as strong as ever. His voice is as strong as ever. Steve Scalise has his mojo back, Madam Speaker, and I am awfully glad to see that. We need that. It is a gift to us to have him.

So what do we do with this need for labor?

I asked the question a little earlier in a tax conference downstairs: Of this tax policy, the bill now that was dropped yesterday, does it allow an employer to deduct as a business expense the wages and benefits that are paid to illegals who are in his employment?

The answer that I got was: We didn't address that in the bill, so whatever it is today is what it is.

What it is today, Madam Speaker, is every employer--let me put it this way: I will say virtually every employer who deducts the wages that are paid of them is often--if they have illegals working for them, they go on the schedule C, like any other employer.

So let's just say, if there is an employer there who pays $1 million out to illegals, that shows up in his schedule C as a business expense, wages. And those wages then are deducted as a business expense. Of course, you don't pay taxes on business expenses.

I don't pay taxes on fuel. I don't pay taxes on parts. I don't pay taxes on the wages our company pays in 42 years in the construction business or on the benefit packages that we have there. And--but--so employers are deducting wages and benefits paid to illegals, and that is supposed to be against the law.

But they don't address that in this tax bill. And the way the IRS has addressed it is that--it says this--according to section 162(e) of the Internal Revenue Code, it denies a deduction for ``illegal payments.''

But even though it denies a deduction, under the statute for illegal payments, the IRS has interpreted this a little bit differently. So it says here in this document: even though it is illegal to employ unauthorized alien workers, the IRS has ruled that section 162(e) does not apply to the wages paid to those aliens--and I would call them aliens--even if the employer knowingly broke the law.

Well, there is a problem with IRS interpretation, but I also know they are not very likely to change that interpretation, unless Congress should crack them over the knuckles with some legislation.

I have, for a number of Congresses, introduced legislation known as the New IDEA Act. Today, the New IDEA Act is H.R. 176. It does this: it clarifies. It amends 162(e) of the Code, and it clarifies that wages and benefits paid to illegals are not tax deductible for Federal income tax purposes. It gives the employer safe harbor if he uses E-Verify to verify his employees.

In other words, if you hire people, you have got people on your payroll, you run them through E-Verify. We know all about this program. The Judiciary Committee passed a mandatory E-Verify bill out of the committee here a couple of weeks ago. But you run them through E- Verify. If you are the employer and they have qualified to be legal to work in the United States through the E-Verify program, then the IRS cannot touch you with regard to hiring illegals. So it is a safe harbor that we build into the bill.

So tax, wages, and benefits paid to employers are not tax deductible. The employer gets safe harbor if he uses E-Verify.

We also require the IRS to exchange information and build a working committee with the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security so that the right hand, the left hand, and the middle hand know what each other is doing.

This is the Federal Government, after all. And how can we have departments within this government working at cross purposes with each other?

So the IRS' job should be to collect taxes. They should not be allowing the deductions of wages and benefits paid to illegals. They are not legal to work in America.

If you are buying illegal drugs, do you get to deduct your illegal drugs?

If you pay off somebody to commit an illegal activity, do you get to deduct that?

No. In none of those cases, we don't allow deductions for illegal activity. That is partly what the legislation said. But the IRS has their practice.

By the way, before I wrote this bill, I was looking around for what department within any branch of government do the people respect fear the most. As one who has been audited thoroughly a number of times, I notice that the IRS is the one that we respect the most--probably fear the most--and the last organization that we want to show up at our door that is going to check to see if we are hiring illegals.

So what would happen under this bill is the IRS would show up--we don't accelerate any audits. The IRS would show up to do a normal audit under normal terms of identifying businesses that they would normally audit, and, in the course of that audit, they would run the Social Security numbers and the identifying information of the employees off of the I-9 forms that have been required since 1986 and punch them into E-Verify.

If they could verify that all of the employees could work legally in America, then, fine, no problem, and that employer only has his other tax issues to worry about. But if E-Verify kicks any of those employees out--one or more--then the employer has 72 hours' notice to cure, like they would under any other circumstance, to correct any records that might need to be corrected. Otherwise, the IRS could look at that and say: Okay, this million dollars that you wrote off as a business expense is not a business expense. That goes back into the gross receipts and shows up at the bottom as net taxable income.

If we do the math on this and break it down, what is the impact? Well, the impact works out to be this:

If you have a $10-an-hour illegal and the audit comes in and says you can't deduct that $10 an hour, then the impact of it is that the employer then would be billed for interest and penalty and the tax liability that we calculated, I think, at around 35\1/2\ or 36 percent. That turns your $10-an-hour illegal into about a $16-an-hour illegal.

Now, if you are going to have to pay $16 an hour, maybe you could actually hire an American to do that work. You wouldn't have to hire somebody that is sneaking around and that snuck into America. That is one way to look at this is it raises the cost.

There is also a 6-year statute of limitations. Nothing goes backwards. There is no ex post facto in this. It would only be from the day of enactment. From that point forward, there could be a 6-year cumulative liability.

So the first year that the bill would pass--hopefully, in this tax package that we have in front of us that is coming to us next week-- from the first year the bill would pass, you have 1 year of liability.

And say the IRS doesn't audit you the first year. The second year, now you have 2 years of liability. That risk accumulates then for the period of 6 years, that statute of limitations. So, each year, the employer would see that they had a contingent liability: the IRS. If the IRS shows up and audits, they are going to go back at least 4 years, I am going to guess, maybe longer.

That means that they are going to work to clean up their workforce. They can do it incrementally or they can do it all at once. But nobody is going to want to sit there with a 6-year statute of limitations hanging over their head.

Madam Speaker, I include in the Record an article that is written by the Center for Immigration Studies, dated August 31, 2017, titled: ``Raise More than a Quarter Trillion Dollars of Tax Revenue by Ending Tax Subsidies for Unauthorized Employment of Illegal Aliens.''

[From the Center for Immigration Studies, August 31, 2017]

Raise More than a Quarter Trillion Dollars of Tax Revenue by Ending Tax

Subsidies for Unauthorized Employment of Illegal Aliens

(By CIS)

Aliens enter the United States without authorization for

many reasons, but for most of them the goal is to secure

employment at much higher wages than are available in their

native countries. While breaking the law provides very

significant economic benefits to these illegal workers and to

the businesses that hire them, it comes at a cost to American

workers. According to Harvard economist George Borjas, recent

empirical research indicates that American workers suffer a

reduction of $99 billion to $118 billion in annual wages

because of illegal immigration.

The economic rewards of unauthorized employment of aliens

are not limited to the higher wages of the illegal workers

and the lower labor costs of their employers. Unauthorized

alien workers and their employers also enjoy multi-billion

dollar tax deductions and tax credits that were enacted into

law for the benefit of law-abiding workers and businesses.

When Congress returns from summer recess on September 5, it

is expected to focus attention on a major reform of the

federal income tax system, including a combination of lower

rates and other tax incentives to families and to businesses.

The largest challenge facing tax reformers is finding

sufficient additional revenue to pay for the tax cuts and tax

incentives they promised to the people who elected them. In

fairness to the American families and businesses to whom

these tax cuts have been promised, and in particular to the

American families whose household incomes have been

diminished by illegal immigration, Congress should consider

eliminating unwarranted tax breaks to unauthorized alien

workers and their employers.

Each of the following reforms--one that eliminates a tax

subsidy for employers of unauthorized aliens and the other

that eliminates a tax subsidy for the unauthorized workers--

comes with an estimate of the additional revenues that would

be raised by the reform Together they could raise $296

billion over 10 years--more than a quarter-trillion dollars.

1. No Deduction for Wages Paid to Illegal Aliens. Section

162(e) of the Internal Revenue Code denies a deduction for

``illegal

payments''. Even though it is illegal to employ unauthorized

alien workers, the IRS has ruled that section 162(e) does not

apply to the wages paid to those aliens, even if the employer

knowingly broke the law. On January 3, 2017, Rep. Steve King

and eight other members of Congress introduced H.R. 176, the

New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act, Section 2 of which

would amend section 162(e) to clarify that no deduction is

allowed for wages paid to unauthorized alien workers. H.R.

176 provides employers a ``safe harbor'', allowing a

deduction to employers that used the Department of Homeland

Security's free, online E-Verify system to confirm the

employee's eligibility to work.

The amount of wages paid to unauthorized alien workers

cannot be known with certainty. One of the most extensive

studies of unauthorized immigrants in the United States was

conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center in 2009. According to

that study, there were approximately 8.3 million undocumented

immigrants in the U.S. labor force, a figure that Pew more

recently estimated had fallen to 8.0 million. Pew estimated

the median household income of unauthorized worker families

to be approximately $36,000 and that there were approximately

1.75 workers per household, implying median per-worker

earnings of $20,571. Multiplying Pew's estimated number of

unauthorized alien workers by the earnings-per-worker

estimate yields an estimated total of wages paid to

unauthorized alien workers of approximately $165 billion.

Many unauthorized workers are employed in the ``underground

economy'', i.e., by households and other employers that are

not reporting or paying payroll taxes and presumably are not

deducting the wages. A 2013 report by the Social Security

Administration estimated that, of approximately seven million

alien workers in various irregular work statuses in 2010,

approximately 3.1 million (44 percent) had Social Security

numbers (mostly false or fraudulently secured), while

approximately 3.9 million (56 percent) were working in the

``underground economy.'' On the assumption that employers

reported payroll taxes and claimed wage expense deductions

only for the 44 percent of unauthorized workers who could

produce an SSN, and that most employers deducted wages at or

near the corporate tax rate of 35 percent, we estimate that

disallowing a deduction for wages paid to unauthorized alien

workers would increase federal tax revenues by approximately

$25.4 billion per year (35 percent x 44 percent x $165

billion), or $254 billion over 10 years.

2. Deny Refundable Tax Credits to Illegal Aliens. Section

24(a) of the Internal Revenue Code allows a $1,000 per-child

tax credit for taxpayer's whose earnings fall below a

specified threshold. The Child Tax Credit is refundable to

the extent it exceeds the taxpayer's tax liability, in which

case it is referred to as the Additional Chad Tax Credit or

ACTC. A 2011 report by the U S. Treasury Inspector General

for Tax Administration explained that aliens authorized to

work in the United States are required to obtain a Social

Security number (SSN). For aliens who need to file U.S.

federal tax returns for other reasons, such as to claim

refunds of withholding tax on dividends, the IRS issues

Individual Tax Identification Numbers (ITINs). Unfortunately,

according to the inspector general, the IRS had been

permitting aliens to claim ACTCs on returns that reported an

ITIN rather than a Social Security number.

The payment of ACTCs to illegal aliens is arguably a direct

violation of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity

Act of 1996 (``PRWOA''), which expressly provides that an

illegal alien ``is not eligible for any Federal public

benefit.'' The IRS has applied the PRWOA rule to prohibit

payments of Earned Income Tax Credits to ITIN filers, but

based on a questionable interpretation of the law has allowed

ITIN filers refunds of ACTCs.

According to the Inspector General, ``[b]ased on claims

made in Processing Year 2010, disallowance of the ACTC to

filers without a valid SSN would reduce Federal outlays by

approximately $8.4 billion over 2 years,'' i.e., $4.2 billion

per year. Although the inspector general's figures are based

on 2010 fiscal data, Treasury Department tax expenditure

estimates indicate that the total child tax credit

expenditure was virtually unchanged between 2010 and 2017.

Accordingly, based on the inspector general's report, we

estimate that limiting the Child Tax Credit to taxpayers with

Social Security numbers would increase federal tax revenues

by approximately $4.2 billion per year, or $42 billion over

10 years.

The bulk of this article addresses my bill, H.R. 176, the New IDEA Act, the New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act. They go through the calculations here, and I will just touch on some of them.

This is data from a Harvard economist, George Borjas. It is his empirical research. He shows that the workers in America, because wages have been suppressed by an oversupply of unskilled and illegal laborers, that American workers are suffering somewhere between a $99 billion and $118 billion loss in annual wages because they haven't gotten a raise in a long time. Nobody gets a raise as long as there is cheaper labor there that keeps that down--no effective raise. So between $99 billion and $118 billion. That is the Harvard economist, George Borjas. That is the annual wages loss because of illegal immigration.

If we go to the next page on this, it lays out the conditions, and we are seeing this. This is a number from the Pew Hispanic Center in 2009. It says that there are 8.3 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. labor force. They recently estimated that number is actually ratcheted down to about 8 million. It doesn't say why. But if they estimated the median household income of unauthorized worker families to be approximately $36,000 at 1-\3/4\ average workers per household, that is roughly--let's see. It says, ``implying median per-worker earnings of $20,571,'' they estimated that the earnings-per-worker estimate yields $165 billion a year. This is some of the magnitude of the money that is going out of our economy. Also, added to that, roughly $60 billion is being wired out of America.

So those who say, ``Well, we really need these illegal workers because they stimulate our economy, they grow our economy,'' they are siphoning this off. They are holding down the wages for the working people in America to the tune of $100 billion or more a year. They are earning something like $165 billion a year, and they are sending at least $60 billion of that south of the border, about half to Mexico and the other half to Central America, South America, and the Caribbean.

So all of these are economic impacts.

But the CIS, the Center for Immigration Studies, drew this estimate that, should my bill, the New IDEA Act, H.R. 176, become law--and the perfect place for it is in this tax policy--they estimate that it would score at, the number would be, $25.4 billion a year. If we do a 10-year estimate, that means a $254 billion score, a quarter of $1 trillion poured into our budget at a time that we are cutting taxes and we have a red ink tax policy--which I want to see passed, by the way. We have got some solutions here, and I want to see those solutions become law.

H.R. 176 is one of the unique tools that has been here for some time. It is thoroughly vetted. It has had a good number of cosponsors on it over the past years. I knew Barack Obama would never sign it, but Donald Trump will. It was on his website.

Early on, when he first launched his Presidency, the support for the New IDEA Act was on his immigration policy that was posted then. I haven't checked it now in quite some time, but I don't have any doubt that, if we send a tax bill to Donald Trump's desk with H.R. 176 in it, it will score better, to the tune of probably a quarter of $1 trillion.

It will put an end to the illegal workforce in America, or at least an end to the deductibility of wages and benefits paid to illegals, and it brings together the Social Security Administration, Department of Homeland Security, and the IRS to exchange information so that, if there is a Social Security number that is overused, they need to tell the DHS and they need to tell the IRS. If the IRS comes up with employers that are hiring illegals--and they will--they need to tell the Department of Homeland Security so ICE can come in and enforce the law.

So each one of these agencies needs to cooperate with each other. This way, we open up jobs for American workers, and we give the American workers a raise.

Now, what could be better than giving the American workers a raise and giving the American workers a tax cut all at the same time, while we nearly guarantee an economic growth cycle for the next decade of an average of over 3 percent per quarter? We can do that. It is all sitting here in front of us. And my hope, my prayer, and my effort is that we can all work together to reach all of those goals.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Colorado for organizing this Special Order and recognizing me to address it.

I would like to say at the start of this that the folks that had the Special Order ahead of us had not read the bill that they were expounding upon, and it would be impossible for them to have done so. So I want to remind the body of that, Mr. Speaker, and then address the No Sanctuary Cities Act.

It is this: that we saw what happened in San Francisco when the murderer of Kate Steinle had been deported five times. He was a seven- time felon, five-time deportee. He still came back, and he came to San Francisco because he knew that it is a sanctuary city, and if he got crossways with the law for whatever it might be, sleeping on the street or shoplifting or any of the additional felonies that were brought against him, they were not going to notify immigration officials. They were going to turn him back loose on the streets of San Francisco. If he was taken care of as an indigent, they would turn him loose on the streets of San Francisco.

So Kate Steinle now lies in her grave, her family grieves for her loss, and America felt that pain.

San Francisco is a sanctuary city, and now the entire State of California has declared themselves a sanctuary State.

I think, Mr. Speaker, about the hole in the wall. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, they had a spot in the canyon there where you had to ride through a notch to get in there, and they posted a guard there. All the bad guys that wanted to get along with the other bad guys in the West went in that place, and if law enforcement came, then they would line up against them and block them from coming in to enforce the law.

That is essentially what we have got going on in city after city all over America: sanctuary cities operating under the erroneous idea that because their cities are so full of illegals, that if they would ever allow Federal immigration enforcement officials to work and cooperate with local law enforcement, those folks might not be in America.

Well, I met with some people today at the Remembrance Project. These are the families who had their family members killed by illegal aliens who are in America. Many of these illegal aliens who killed Americans and killed other illegal aliens and killed people who are here and lawfully present in America, many of them had criminal records. Many of them had been interdicted by law enforcement, but the local jurisdictions decided it wasn't politically correct to cooperate with Federal law.

Well, the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land, and it is an enumerated power that Congress establish an immigration policy. We do that, and we direct that those laws be enforced. The executive branch's job is to do that.

All throughout law enforcement, it has been seamless throughout all of my growing up years. I grew up in a law enforcement family. There was no separation. There was no segregation between city police and county law enforcement officers, the sheriff's department, and highway patrol and DCI and FBI. When there was a crime that was committed, everybody worked together seamlessly.

How is it that these cities and now the State of California have carved themselves out an exception to what has been a timeless, time- honored, established cooperation between all levels of law enforcement?

So the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act, which was my bill, is now sitting on Mitch McConnell's desk with the scores of other bills that the gentleman from Colorado has addressed, and it is one that says there will be no sanctuary cities any longer and that we will be cutting off funds going to these cities until they get the message.

I think it is about time that the Justice Department moved on all of the jurisdiction that they actually have, but we need to help them here in Congress. And it is about time that this bill, along with Sarah's Law and Kate's Law, be moved off of Mitch McConnell's desk to the floor of the United States Senate.

That is just a small piece of the broad picture we are addressing here tonight, Mr. Speaker. We need some action over in the Senate. If they would get rid of that filibuster rule, we would see more action than we are seeing today.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me, and I encourage him to continue this effort. I am going to stand with him on this. I thank him for all he is doing.

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives and to discuss the topics that are on my mind. Hopefully, you will consider these arguments as well, Mr. Speaker. I know that people across this floor and across the country have a lot of these same considerations in mind.

I want to come to the floor and address the DACA situation and take you through a little bit of the history of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals which was implemented by Barack Obama in an unconstitutional fashion. He knew it, and all of America knew it. We know that Barack Obama, 22 times, said that he didn't have the constitutional authority to implement a program that granted the equivalent of amnesty--at least temporary amnesty--let alone a work permit which he added to the program by executive edict, fiat, or order. Instead, it requires legislation in order to enable such a policy.

A President can't grant amnesty. A President can have prosecutorial discretion. Prosecutorial discretion is a legal term for what the Justice Department does when they are determining whether the resources they have to prosecute crimes are adequate to enforce against the most serious offenders. Barack Obama, President Obama, did implement some of those relatively prudent policies with prosecutorial discretion. He prioritized the most violent and evil criminals that he could identify, at least by policy. He turned a lot of them loose too, by the way, onto the streets of America in the course of all that. So it was a very confusing policy that emerged without consistency under President Obama. However, he exercised a legal prosecutorial discretion when they looked at each case on an individual basis.

But I recall when his Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, came before the Judiciary Committee to testify about this program on DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals--or some might say the deferred action for children of aliens. Her testimony and the memos that came down, the Morton memos, set up four different categories of people who would be granted a quasi-amnesty underneath the President's policy.

There, Secretary Napolitano testified over and over again, and it reflected the document itself which, seven times, referenced on an individual basis only--on an individual basis only--seven times. I can repeat it for the Record, Mr. Speaker, but that is what was going on, which told me, as I listened to her testimony and had read the documents prior to the testimony, that they knew what the law said. They knew it required--that it required--an individual basis only and a prioritization of applying the law to bring about the best effect of the utilization of the resources of the Justice Department.

Yet Barack Obama, President Obama, around the country multiple times, in the 1\1/2\ or 2 years building up to his implementation of the DACA policy, multiple times he said that he didn't have the constitutional authority to implement the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Multiple times. It turned out to be at least 22 that we have a videotape on.

The most recent that I recall was in a high school just outside of the Capitol here in Washington, D.C., where he was speaking to a high school group.

He said: You are smart students. You know that there is a separation of powers. I don't have the authority to grant this legal status to people who are here illegally even if their parents did bring them in or even if they came in on their own under the age of 18. I don't have the authority to do that. That is Congress that has the authority.

I should remind everyone, Mr. Speaker, that President Obama taught constitutional law. He was an adjunct professor teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago has a good reputation for understanding the Constitution, and Barack Obama demonstrated that when he said: You are smart students, and you know that we have three branches of government, a separation of powers. Congress is Article I. They make the laws.

He said: I am Article II, the executive branch. My job is to enforce the laws. And Article III is the judicial branch of government. They interpret the laws.

So when the courts interpret the laws that Congress writes, the executive's job is to carry them out. He knew he was violating the separation of powers because he defined that to America multiple times. But he did anyway.

I believe that President Obama made a calculation, a political calculation. The political calculation, in my estimation, was that he could get away with it. He wanted the policy, but Congress wouldn't pass the policy because we have great respect for the rule of law, and we don't want to reward lawbreakers. That happened in 1986, and we are paying the price for that amnesty act of 1986. He couldn't get the DREAMers legislation through Congress, so he calculated that he could get away with implementing that as a policy even though he knew it was unconstitutional.

So some of us went to work to initiate lawsuits to have the courts strike down the executive edicts of Barack Obama that was the foundation for DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

As it wandered through the courts. The lead in the primary case was Chris Crane, the president of the ICE, Immigration Custom Enforcement, union. His name was on the case first. It was Crane, et al. v. Napolitano, et al. in the beginning. It went through the courts, and by the time you follow it through a circuitous route, you find out that Crane, et al. v. Napolitano, et al. got shifted off to the side. It was declared to be a decision that had to do with the administrative rules that if he had a grievance, he had to take that grievance through the administrative rules process rather than through the courts to address the policy itself. So it got parked off on a side rail, so to speak.

Then we saw a parallel case come forward, the DAPA case, the Deferred Action on Parents of Americans was how the President described it. I would have said parents of aliens myself. But that

case was found by Judge Andrew Hanen down in Texas to be unconstitutional. It was a very similar and parallel case. The President couldn't grant amnesty to parents of children who were here, and the President couldn't grant amnesty to children who came here. That same constitutional principle applies to both.

We know that Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, and others with about 9, 10, or 11 other State attorneys general, had prepared to file a suit to litigate the DACA case in parallel fashion that DAPA was litigated successfully. They set a date of September 5 and said to the President: If you don't end DACA by September 5, we are filing this case.

So that is about the day and probably exactly the day that President Trump came out with his decision on DACA.

I moved too fast forward, Mr. Speaker, and I need to back up to what happened. Barack Obama, President Obama, finished out his term while growing the DACA recipients by hundreds of thousands. By the time he finished his term, that number was estimated to be over 700,000 recipients who get a little card that says: You get to stay in America for 2 years, and there won't be any immigration law enforced against you as long as you don't commit any of these serious crimes, felonies, or a nasty combination of three different misdemeanors.

Then also he created out of thin air a work permit. Now, Congress isn't going to grant work permits to illegal aliens, but Barack Obama did. Congress isn't going to grant a ``come out of the shadows and stay on the streets of America'' permit for DACA recipients, but President Obama did. He went outside.

This Congress should have had its back up. I am frustrated. I am frustrated with the lack of conviction on the part of the Members of this Congress. Mr. Speaker, you stand in here once every 2 years, and you take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That includes acknowledging that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It includes the requirement that you understand the difference between Article I, Article II, and Article

Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to address the House of Representatives on this issue, as I seek to do on each pro-life issue that we have come before this Congress.

This is a powerful piece of legislation that has had a lot of hands on it to produce good work; and the difference in this debate that you hear here, Mr. Speaker, is anecdotes on this side, looking for exceptions that might sway, somehow, the people on the side that understand the rule is this: life begins at the moment of conception.

Human life is sacred in all of its forms, and these little babies that are 20-weeks mature can and have and do survive outside the womb, and they can feel pain inside the womb. And doctors that are doing surgery on pregnant mothers give anesthetic to those children because they don't want them flinching in the womb and suffering while they do the surgery.

How can we support a ghastly procedure of abortion on demand to end the life of the miracles that we need to put this country in the right condition?

Sixty-five percent of the babies 22 to 26 weeks old survive that are born premature. As I said, we know they feel pain.

So I applaud everyone who has done the work on this. I stand solidly with the entire pro-life movement we have in this country. We have a long ways to go to get to where we need to be, but this is a step in the right direction.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for yielding to me, and I appreciate the years that we have sat elbow to elbow on the Judiciary Committee and on the Constitution and Civil Justice Subcommittee and have done the battle for life. What I am reflecting here, tonight, is the sequence of pro-life leaders that I have had the privilege to walk these floors and halls with.

When Trent Franks and I arrived at this Congress, Henry Hyde had the lead, and he did so many glorious things to lay the foundation for life now. Chris Smith was there at his side the full time that I was here, and then Joe Pitts.

I want to remember Joe Pitts, as well, and Trent Franks. So I put those four gentlemen in a category of the leaders in this movement here on the floor of the House of Representatives. I remain counting those moments precious that I have to serve and work on this cause with each of you.

This bill that we will bring to the floor tomorrow on a rules vote and a final passage vote will pass this floor of the House of Representatives--I have every confidence that it will--and it will be messaged over to the Senate. There is a lot of work that has been put into this, the 16 States that have passed the legislation that is similar to H.R. 36, Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

I just add that, when Mr. Johnson mentioned the seven countries that allow for an elective abortion after 20 weeks, of course, the United States; the other six--he mentioned a couple of them--North Korea, China, which will impose forceable abortions on mothers, that cruel and heinous activity, Vietnam, Singapore, Netherlands, and Canada. I think Canada might have been affected with the United States along the way. The Netherlands is one of the more liberal countries in the world.

And this list is not a list that I want the United States of America on. I want us out. I want to be able to send this message that a baby who has a chance at survival at 20 weeks of development from conception, that at 20 weeks, that precious little baby that Vicky Hartzler so well described in her presentation here, 65 percent of premature babies born in the range of 22 to 26 weeks will survive--65 percent.

We all know one or two of those little babies who are walking around. I ran into a friend after church a couple of weeks ago at the grocery store who I hadn't seen in several years, and I asked him how his son was doing.

And I am not going to use names here on purpose.

I asked him how his son was doing. He said: Oh, he is doing fine. He is 30 years old now. He has got a great job out there. He has got a family. I have got grandchildren.

All things were wonderful. He knew why I asked him, because we were doing a job that he was on back then when that little premature boy was born 21 or 22 weeks old. When he came back from 2 weeks of sitting next to that child where he could come back home again and go to work because he now had a good chance that that little boy would be able to survive, I said: We will spend all kinds of money, won't we? We will do anything. We will go to any length to keep a child alive who is born premature.

A child that is born at 20 weeks, 21 weeks, 22, 23, 24, 26 weeks, there is no expense that we will spare ourselves from because that life, we know, is so precious.

Well, the life in the womb is as precious as the life out of the womb, and the pain that that child feels at 20 weeks, 22 weeks, 24 weeks. But this little boy--he remembered what I said to him that day. I said: You are doing everything to save this little child's life, but when you go into the polls and vote, you are going to vote on the other side of that issue like you always have.

And he called me a name that day, kind of like the President did some of the NFL players, but he remembered exactly what I had said to him 30-some years ago. And he said: You know, you really straightened me out that day--because I gave him my remarks on that.

Now, that is a change in heart and a change in minds. America has undergone a change in heart and a change in minds. In fact, I stepped into a member of my staff's office here just last Friday, and the frame of the ultrasound of his firstborn is there, and it has been there for 9 years beside his desk. That little child, that little child they first bonded with him by looking at the ultrasound.

That little child, by the way, is my godson.

So each one of these lives are so utterly precious, and we are not going to stop. We are going to defend every life we can. We are going to protect every life we can. We are going to do the right thing that we can for the babies that we can save. Meanwhile, this goes on the conscience of America when we fall short.

But we are going to fall short tomorrow. We are going to succeed. We are going to find a way to move this legislation and others through the House and through the Senate to a President's desk who will sign that legislation.

When we contemplate the litigation that is bound to take place-- because there are people that are dug in deeply on promoting and defending abortion--we are going to have a new Supreme Court. One more appointment to that Court and we will get this past them, and a number of other pieces of legislation as well.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for his attention, his years of work on this very precious cause, and all of the rest who have done so much to step up and defend these lives. I am looking forward to tomorrow. There should be a great shout of joy coming off the floor of the House of Representatives.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk made in order by the rule.

Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This is the amendment that doesn't allow Federal funding to support any project that enforces Davis-Bacon rules.

Davis-Bacon rules have--actually, it is the last remaining Jim Crow law left on the books in America. It was established by a couple of Republicans in New York back in about 1932 or 1933, when they realized that of the few construction projects that were going on during the Great Depression, there was an Alabama contractor that underbid the local unions in New York to build a Federal building up in New York.

That contractor who came out of Alabama brought his labor out of Alabama, African Americans out of Alabama. So they got together and decided, let's pass a law to have a little trade protectionism between Alabama and New York. We are going to control who is in the union, and we will control the wages, and we will control the benefits.

I have been in the construction business, as of last Monday, for 42 years. We have paid Davis-Bacon wage scales most of those years, if not all of those years, and King Construction understands what this does.

First, it inflates wages, and the inflation of wages is dictated by a little board and committee that is supposed to be evaluating what is described as prevailing wage. But it is not prevailing wage, it is union scale, and it is a BOGSAT is what it is. BOGSAT, meaning a bunch of guys sitting around a table deciding that they are having trouble competing with the rest of the private sector, so they want to raise the wages of their construction workers so that they can get the pick of the cream of the crop of the construction workers to go to work for them rather than their competitor or another industry.

That is how this has gone on for all of these years in the private sector, the

Federal Government deciding what wages and what benefits should be paid. And now we are seeing benefits that are being paid in the fringe benefit category to people who have a health insurance program that is funded by the taxpayers, premiums funded by the taxpayers under ObamaCare.

So now, Davis-Bacon is even worse. It pays wages and it pays benefits that are designed to pay for their health insurance benefits, and they are doubling down on that and on the ObamaCare subsidy of their premiums. And so these wages no longer reflect prevailing wage. They haven't for a long time. They have long, and maybe always, been union scale. The union sits at the table with a few contractors in the BOGSAT, and they make the deal.

And I have a private contractor, a merit shop contractor, who has worked with this for 42 years. I have seen the inefficiencies it has created within our company, and competing companies as well.

And, yes, we like it when we can pay our labor the highest rates known to man. It makes our employees happy. And if I can look at our competition and we can sit down and say, you know what, we would like to give each of our employees a $5 an hour raise or a $10 an hour raise, and let's make sure that any other industry can't compete with the wages we are paying, because, after all, it doesn't really come out of our pocket as contractors. It comes out of the pockets of the taxpayers, borrowed from the Chinese.

That is what is going on, and the wages increase is a 20 percent increase on balance. So, for example, if you want to build five bridges, repeal Davis-Bacon. If you want to build four bridges, stick with the imposed Federal union scale, the legacy of Jim Crow. If you want to build--let's just say a USDA building, the same formula applies. You can build five buildings; you can build four. You can build four stories, or you can build five, but we need to have competition in this U.S. economy.

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

Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Aderholt), the chairman of the subcommittee.

Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, and expending the balance of it, I would point out that some of these wages that we are looking at here, here are laborers in Indiana, a total of $34.63 an hour. Here is an asbestos worker, $46.05 an hour.

There are more here in the records, and I don't think that these are the kind of numbers that the gentleman is talking about. And I constantly hear the script read to us from the other side but never a response.

Mr. Chair, I urge its adoption, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, this is an amendment that requires that new hires under this appropriations bill are verified under E-Verify before they can go to work. It ensures that those funds that are made available in this appropriations bill will not be used for new hires unless they use the E-verify program as a responsibility that the Federal Government requires as a matter of law.

Current law requires the Federal Government to use E-Verify to enhance enforcement of Federal immigration law in all hiring. However, it has been brought to my attention that it isn't consistent across the different departments. We need to ensure that it is. It is in response to those concerns that I offer this amendment to require E-Verify.

I will just describe E-Verify.

Conditional to the hire, employers who have a prospective employee may go onboard the Federal internet site, which is the E-Verify site, and type in the valid information or perhaps the presented information of the prospective employee that has been offered a job. Should they clear E-Verify, you punch in what I just euphemistically call name, rank, and serial number. It is a short piece of data that includes birth date, name, and often birthplace. Then that goes into the internet site. It comes back to you and lets you

know that you can legally hire the individual that is identified in this data. That is E-Verify.

Hopefully, in this Congress, the Federal Government will pass and make E-Verify mandatory for private sector employers. Hopefully, we will do that in this Congress. But the Federal Government needs to, Mr. Chairman, address this, and it needs to do so with our own employees. That is what the King amendment does. It ensures that E-Verify is used by our own employees.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Aderholt), chairman of the subcommittee.

I would add for clarification, Mr. Chairman, that the provision the gentleman referred to is section 408 of the Foreign Service Act of 1980, which exempts those employees in foreign countries that surely would not want them uncovered under E-Verify.

In response to the gentleman's objection, I have tried to fool E- Verify by punching data into it. The longest delay I could create was 6 seconds. So as far as undue burden is concerned, a 6-second wait in the most extreme circumstances I don't think is extreme at all.

This is the right thing for the Federal Government to at least exercise the laws that we pass and we want to impose upon the rest of the country and upon ourselves.

So it is a clarification amendment, Mr. Chairman. I urge its adoption, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk made in order by the rule.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This is an amendment, a Davis-Bacon amendment, and it will be brought on each of the four segments of this appropriations bill that we are considering here in the House this evening and perhaps tomorrow morning, Mr. Chairman.

Just to make it clear, the text of the amendment is very simple. It says, ``None of the funds made available by this act may be used to implement, administer, or enforce the prevailing wage requirements in subchapter IV of chapter 31 of title 40, United States Code,'' and this is commonly referred to as the Davis-Bacon Act.

What the Davis-Bacon Act is, it is a statute that exists from about 1933, and its genesis is back during the Great Depression when there was, let's say, labor protectionism brought about by the unions in New York City. When a contractor from Alabama bid a Federal building contract--and there were not many of them in those days--that Alabama contractor was successful and he imported African-American labor out of Alabama to do the work in the trade zone of the construction unions in New York City. And so two Republicans, a Republican Senator and a Republican Member of the House, got together and wrote the Davis-Bacon Act, which is defined as prevailing wage.

In my 42 years in the construction business, which we just concluded as of Labor Day, this past Labor Day, we have dealt with the Davis- Bacon Act quite a lot. Our math goes somewhere between an 8 and 35 percent increase in the cost of the projects. We use an average of 20 percent. I believe you will see some of those sophisticated studies go to a 22 percent increase in prices.

So we are dealing with taxpayers' moneys here in a fiscal time when we need to get to a balance. There never was a time we should be wasting taxpayers' money. A prevailing wage, a real prevailing wage is a merit shop wage, not a union scale imposed by a BOGSAT, which is a bunch of guys sitting around a table deciding whether they want to give raises to the different classifications within the labor force.

I have long opposed the Davis-Bacon wage scale. It messes up the efficiency within our companies and makes us less efficient. This just doesn't raise the cost and impose the union scale on the taxpayers, but it erodes the efficiency that you can provide in a private sector approach. And so after all of these years, I am pledged to see the day when this is finally repealed.

I urge the adoption of this amendment which strikes the use of Davis- Bacon enforcement in the underlying appropriations, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to point out that I hear the script read every year that I bring the effort to repeal or undo Davis-Bacon, but I don't really hear a lot of response to the fact that Davis-Bacon is a Jim Crow law designed to keep minorities, particularly African Americans, out of the construction trades, particularly in the unions. The assertion that it is a prevailing wage doesn't hold up when you live in this universe where I have for 42-plus years--and that is just as an owner, and working out, I saw that also for other companies.

So when I see these rates and I talk to a contractor that is building bridges in rural Missouri down there in the whoops and hollers, as we say, and they are paying for an unskilled laborer who, for a number of those hours, does lean on the shovel while he waits for other things to get done, $23 an hour for wages, $22 an hour for fringe benefits, $45 an hour out of pocket for the contractor really just transferred to the taxpayer. That is an example.

There is much of it that is here that goes in 46, 57, here is $51.60 an hour, Mr. Chairman. So, no, this is not prevailing wage.

There is no study that I have found in all the time I have dealt with this that would demonstrate that prevailing wage is a merit shop earned wage. Instead, it is set, as I said, by a bunch of guys sitting around a table. It reflects almost always union scale.

Many of the merit shop contractors will not report their Davis-Bacon prevailing wages because they know that just brings union organization up against them. They want to avoid that, so they are not reporting what they are actually paying in wages.

In many of the States that have adopted a mini Davis-Bacon for their State or the States that are highly unionized, they press this thing to the point where the difference between the merit shop wages and union scale is very close together.

We have also double-breasted operations where you might have a company that is Company A and Company B wrapped up, and one-half of the company is union and the other half of the company isn't. That is to comply with Federal regulations.

There is a gentleman who used to serve this Congress in Massachusetts, who was famous for saying that the Federal Government has no business intervening in between a relationship between two or more consenting adults. I agree with that. An employee and an employer should be able to decide what they want to make as their business agreement. If I decide I want to pay someone $100 an hour or $1,000 or $1 an hour, that should be up to me.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk made in order by the rule.

Mr. Chairman, this is an E-Verify amendment. It was offered in the previous segment of this appropriation bill as well.

What it does, it just simply reinstates and clarifies Federal law, the requirement to use E-Verify in the forms of all Federal contracting. Under this T-HUD bill, that is what would apply.

We have run into cases where there has been, let's say, concerns that the Federal agencies are not uniformly and consistently abiding by Federal law. This says that the funds will not be used for new hires, unless they are verified through the E-Verify program.

The E-Verify program--we worked this now for quite a few years, brought to us by Ken Calvert of California--even though in its early days it hit a couple of bumps in the road, it has gotten better and better. We use it, I have used it, it is efficient, and it is not time- consuming at all.

This reiterates Federal law. In fact, the Federal Acquisition Regulation Act of 2009 reinforces and requires that compliance be there for new hires, and

to use E-Verify on all new hires affected by this appropriations bill.

Mr. Chairman, I urge this adoption, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, in response to the gentleman's comments, I am not at all convinced that it is needless. The reports that I am getting are that E-Verify has not been adequately enforced, especially at the contractor and subcontractor level.

This is Congress reminding those who consume Federal dollars and Federal contracting under this T-HUD appropriations bill that they shall comply with the law that was referenced by the gentleman. I don't know why it would be divisive, if it is Federal law, and needless, supposedly.

Let's go ahead and pass this and remind those that follow Federal law and this debate won't happen next year.

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

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk made in order by the rule.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to modify my amendment with the modification at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, this eliminates the funding that would go to Davis- Bacon and enforcing Davis-Bacon, the Federal wage scale that advertises prevailing wage but turns out to be union scale.

We debated this twice earlier this evening. The modification for the edification of the people who might not have picked up on that rolls this Davis-Bacon amendment together with the appropriations component that we will debate tomorrow so there is clarification here on the floor.

I have long been for the repeal of Davis-Bacon. I have made a statement that the Federal Government doesn't have any business dictating to an employer and an employee what they should be able to agree to on wages.

We have been in the construction business for 42 years. We started on our 43rd year this week. We have paid Davis-Bacon wages in most of those years, if not all of those years, and it upsets the efficiency of being able to manage the job, and it interferes with that relationship.

If it is going to be prevailing wages, then let the market decide that. But the studies that we have out there, there is no study that I know of that would show where there is an imposed Davis-Bacon wage scale that it costs less money. It always costs the taxpayers more money to do a particular project.

Our records of these years run between an 8 percent greater than it

would be if we had merit shop or as high as 35 percent greater than the cost of the projects. We average it out to 20 percent. There are studies out there that say a 22 percent increase.

So I describe it this way: if the Federal Government is going to mandate union scale on construction projects, whether it be for building a wall on the southern border or an interstate or a bridge, a highway, a building, whatever it might be, you can decide whether you want to borrow money from China to build 4 miles of road or 5, if you want to build four bridges or five, or if you want to build four buildings or five. That is what it comes down to in the end. We can build five of everything instead of four if we just repeal Davis-Bacon.

So this scores well for us. The fiscally responsible people will come down on the side of eliminating Davis-Bacon. This country would not adopt such a policy if it happened today.

By the way, this is the last remaining Jim Crow law that I can find in America. As so many things are being taken down left over from that era, it is time we took down Davis-Bacon, too. So I would urge adoption of my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter).

Mr. Chairman, in response, I have heard a piece of history revisionism. Now is the first time I recall, in all these debates that we have had, that the purpose of Davis-Bacon, which does produce a result of union scales imposed by, as I said earlier this evening--it is not prevailing wage.

Employers that are nonunion don't report wages to the Federal Government because the union comes to organize their employees. So the thing that is called prevailing wage is a distortion of the reality. We know this.

I have been in this business 42 years. I talked to a contractor just a week ago who was a bridge contractor. He has been operating in rural Missouri. In just this past year's numbers, unskilled laborers cost him $45 an hour. There is no way that you go down to Missouri and hire somebody that is unskilled and you have to pay them $45 an hour. For somebody that is going to look through the chart, I should tell you it is about $23 an hour for labor and $22 for fringe benefits. The fringe benefits are to pay for your health insurance and your retirement program. But some of these employees are on our ObamaCare, with their premiums paid by other money that we borrow from China.

It is foolish for a fiscally responsible nation, trying to get to balance, to have a David-Bacon law in place. And I will pound on this drum until we come to our senses on this.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?

Mr. Chairman, I would just conclude that this is the first time I have heard that Davis-Bacon was formed to protect minority migrant workers that came out of Alabama to work in New York. That seems to me to be Members of Congress representing the folks that are not their constituents. That would be one of the rare times also.

So that is history revisionism. This is a Jim Crow law. It needs to go. It needs to be ripped out of the code at every opportunity.

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

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk made in order under the rule.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to modify my amendment by the modification at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for her consent to this unanimous consent request which will help expedite our debate here on this long appropriations discussion that we are having.

This is the amendment that requires that E-Verify be used in all new hires that are funded under this appropriation. And it is a well established debate, I think, not only throughout the years of E-Verify, but also throughout this evening.

It is all new hires, in conjunction with an offer of employment, simply run their data through E-Verify. If it comes back from E-Verify verifying that that information that is provided by the applicant identifies an individual who can work legally in the United States, that is the verification that the efficiency has gone way up into the upper 90, 99 point something percentile.

Mr. Chair, I urge the adoption of this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter).

Mr. Chairman, I would just reiterate that we are getting reports that there are gaps in this enforcement and, spending my life in a contracting business, I would remind the Members that we have general contractors, we have first tier contractors,

we have second tier subcontractors, even third tier subcontractors, and so we want to ensure that the enforcement is there of E-Verify. And I want to thank everyone for their cooperation, and I urge the adoption of my amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk made in order by the rule.

Mr. Chairman, this is a Davis-Bacon amendment that addresses the MILCON component of the legislation that is before us.

This Congress has had this debate a number of times over the past years. The history of the Davis-Bacon Act goes back to, I will say, a couple of Republicans that got together and decided they didn't want the construction market to have to face the competition of African Americans coming out of Alabama to build a Federal building in New York City. They took such great offense to that that they wrote legislation that is known as the Davis-Bacon Act, and the language says it requires a prevailing wage.

I have spent 42 years in the construction business, if I count the work my son does as he owns that company today, and we have dealt with that, I would say, nearly every year, if not every year, throughout all that time.

What we have is the Federal Government interfering in the relationship between the employer and the employee and setting a wage scale that is called prevailing wage. But that is set by folks sitting inside a room with a closed door, and they come out of there with the equivalent of a union wage mandated by the Federal Government. That is the net effect.

As we have kept records over the years, the increase in the cost of the projects for us has been between 8 and 35 percent, depending on how much is labor, how much is materials, and the nature of the job.

The Heritage Foundation has done a study or two. They come with a number kind of in that area. So I just boil it down to 20 percent. It is a 20 percent increase over the otherwise cost of a project, and that means this: without the Davis-Bacon wage scale imposed upon it by the Federal Government, the merit shop employees who meet plans and specs and do high-quality work--and there is nothing in our 42 years of history that would indicate otherwise--that we can build 5 miles of road instead of 4, we can build five barracks instead of four, we can build five bridges instead of four.

This is an unnecessary cost to the taxpayer. It brings efficiency to the expenditures of the taxpayers' money, and it does a lot better job of taking care of our military.

Mr. Chairman, I urge the adoption of my amendment, which simply does this: it says that none of the funds may be used to implement, administer, or enforce prevailing wage requirements that is referenced as Davis-Bacon.

Mr. Chairman, I urge its adoption, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, as I listen to that rebuttal, I would like to bring back a little more of the history of this, and it is this: that Davis-Bacon, and I have been looking at this a long time, as far as I know, and I believe it is true, is the last remaining Jim Crow law that exists in Federal statute today.

We should take care to pull it out of the Federal code. Its legacy is badly tainted. It was built as a racist law, and that needs to be eliminated, and we need to have a merit shop society where people can compete rather than the Federal Government deciding with a board or a commission behind closed doors.

Let's build more roads, more bridges, more barracks, more airstrips. Let's put our money to the best use we can. That is in keeping with Donald Trump's philosophy: get more for less. That is what you get with the King amendment, more for less, and we get to eliminate at least the effectiveness of this Jim Crow law on our MILCON as a starter.

If we do this here, we have got an opportunity, then, to go forward with this and finally one day completely repeal Davis-Bacon.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining on each side.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, as I listen to the gentleman, unfair; there is no such thing as unfair when you have someone who applies for a job and they are willing to work for a wage, and we want to hire the best people we can hire. We want to keep the best people we hire, and we want to pay the best benefits we can.

But when we have the Federal Government interfering with the efficiency of our operations and deciding that this machine pays $25 an hour and this machine pays $35 an hour, and on this shovel, if you are leaning on it, that pays 20 bucks an hour, who is going to climb into which machine and do what? The efficiencies of our operations go downhill when you have got the Federal Government setting those kinds of things.

We had a project years ago where the center line of the highway--we worked on both sides of a highway. The center line of the highway was a difference between two different regions with different prevailing wage scales. It was almost twice as much money on the south side of the highway as it was on the north side of the highway. Well, where do you think my crews wanted to work? They wanted to work on the south side of the highway. You have got to fight that constantly.

We don't need the Federal Government interfering. There used to be a gentleman from Massachusetts that would say that we should not have the Federal Government interfering between any relationship between two consenting adults. That is what an employment is, two consenting adults. It is a contract. We don't need the Federal Government there.

We need to build more projects for less money for the same standard of work. It is not unfair. It is high-quality work coming out of all the records of merit shop employees, and it is consistent with what America needs to do to compete with the rest of the world.

Mr. Chairman, I urge that the body come forward and vote for this amendment and block the Davis-Bacon wage scales and end up with an efficient form of construction for MILCON.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to be recognized by the gentlewoman from Wyoming, and I rise in support of this combined rule that we have here.

I thought it was important that I speak to some of the provisions that are in the underlying bill and also the provisions that are not in the underlying bill.

I would characterize this rule, that is the rule for the reauthorization of the Department of Homeland Security--it is actually the authorization. It has never been authorized in that fashion before--the authorization of Homeland Security after 15 years. I think that it does a lot of good things in that it lays out a definition and frames the duties of the Department of Homeland Security broadly and pretty closely in their entirety.

There are some things that are missing from this that I would like to have plugged into this reauthorization language. However, I believe the goal was, all along, to draft a piece of reauthorization language that would be, I will say, compatible to both sides of the aisle and without particular dissent.

Therefore, we have a piece of legislation that isn't as impactful as I would like, and yet it is here on the floor under suspension with the idea that we can move this along and frame the Department of Homeland Security's duties in the fashion that is here.

I don't object to the provisions that are in the authorization language that exists, but I would point out that it sets the stage, and now there is an agreement that has been reached through a number of entities, including the White House, the DOJ, the DHS, and I understand from our leadership and others, that soon there will be the piece of legislation that we refer to as Davis-Oliver.

In Davis-Oliver, we actually have the enforcement provisions that are necessary to restore the respect for the rule of law, and especially the domestic enforcement of our immigration laws.

We are setting the stage for that and clearing the path for that with this rule on the legislation that will pass, I believe, under suspension.

The provisions that are necessary that I would point out to the body, Mr. Speaker, are this:

The number one most important is this: We only have 5,000 ICE agents for 50 States and territories. They are spread so thin they can't possibly enforce immigration law. We need that number tripled. That is 10,000 ICE agents. That is the most important component of this to have the officers to bring that enforcement.

Second thing is we need to make sure that the ICE detainer language is there and in Davis-Oliver. That is something that had been neutralized by an action of the Obama administration, and they need to be certain that they have the full authority to carry firearms.

Mr. Speaker, I make these points so that the body can anticipate what is coming down the pike. I intend to support the rule and the underlying bills, and I intend to be here on the floor advocating all of the components of Davis-Oliver, also including the components I have articulated here today.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the House.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding. And I have no better friend in this city either--or this country, for that matter.

Mr. Speaker, I am just called to come to this floor to add a few words to the topic that the gentleman from Texas has courageously brought forward and so few others would want to even speak to: the societal experiment that is going on in our military, the greatest military in the history of the world.

When the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) talks about how history will be written one day, this isn't a civilization killer, but it is an indication of a civilization killer. I think of the circumstances in a little bit older history, back in the 16th century and the 17th century when the Ottoman Empire and the Muslim armies were sweeping across the countryside, and whoever they captured, they pressed into slavery.

And when they pressed them into slavery, they wanted to have their crack troops--they were called Janissaries, and there were other troops too, as well. But what they did in order to keep them from reproducing was that they did reassignment surgery on those slaves that they captured, that they had put into their Janissary troops, and that reassignment surgery was they took them from being a virile, reproductive male into being a eunuch.

Now, they were suitable to work in the harem, but they found out when they put them out in the field to do battle against the enemy that they didn't have the testosterone to take on the fight. And so over a period of time, a generation or two, they finally realized: I guess we are going to have to stop turning these men into eunuchs if we are going to have them as a fighting machine. That is the Janissaries.

And the old history through that is replete with narrative after narrative of them taking out the knife and actually cutting the flesh off of these anatomically complete men. Some would die from that and some would live, but none of them had the will to fight. And so they decided that they were going to keep anatomically complete men, men that were producing testosterone, in their crack Janissary troops, where they fought well.

That is a lesson of the military, the Ottoman military from 200, 300, 400 years ago. And today we are here thinking somehow we are going to make the military better by letting people line up at the recruitment center who have planned that they want to do sexual reassignment surgery, know that it is expensive, and believe: I can just get into any branch of the United States services--the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, maybe become a Navy SEAL--and then submit to sexual reassignment surgery and go from a man to a woman.

By the way, it doesn't look like there are going to be any women becoming men after they go through SEAL training. I don't think that is going to happen, at least currently.

But there is no way that this enhances the capabilities of our military. There is no way it enhances the morale of our military, and you will never see a platoon that is made up by all of the folks that are likely to line up to sign up into our military.

This policy clearly enacted, clearly advertised, is a neon sign for people who want to have sexual reassignment surgery. They will line up at their recruiter's office and they will go into the military, and the military will be saying: You know, we had to turn this person away because they were too heavy, and this one had flat feet, and this one had a bad eye, and this one had a congenital defect of one kind or another, but if they don't have those and they want sexual reassignment surgery, we will cut them up and remake them into something different, to the tune of $3.5 or $3.9 billion over a 10-year period of time, and put them off in the recovery room for 2 years before we can put them to work and use them.

And, by the way, they are likely then to be discharged to come back into society if their only purpose was to get the free surgery.

And can you imagine someone who has now gone into Walter Reed Hospital, taken up a bed in Walter Reed Hospital, maybe a roommate with someone who was hit by an IED, someone who lost a couple of legs, amputated in the dangerous, dangerous service of the freedoms of our country, can you imagine those two beds, side by side, and one of them missing a couple of legs, or an arm, or an arm and a leg, or two arms, and the other one saying, ``Well, I just came in for sexual reassignment surgery''?

I won't say the next thing that is in my mind. I think the public understands the image of what this is.

This is one of the most appallingly stupid things I have ever seen the United States Congress do, and it has got some competition, but I don't even know what is second, it is so bad. And the long-term thinking of this, the implications of this are awful, Mr. Speaker. We need to reverse this somehow.

I would add, also, that Bob Gates, the former Secretary of Defense, testified before the United States Congress that we had an obesity problem with our young people in America that is a national security risk, it is a national security concern, and we ought to be adopting Michelle Obama's Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act that cut the calories down on these kids, because we didn't have enough of them that were available to meet the physical standards to get into the military, and it

was a national security risk. Those were his exact words, ``a national security risk.''

Well, if we can put the kids on a diet in school because it is a national security risk for getting people to meet the weight standards of our military, isn't this a national security risk when you have all of these resources that are redirected from F-35s and pension plans and a raise for our military and housing on our bases, and the list goes on and on, redirect those resources to sexual reassignment surgery and then have them mustered out of the service as soon as they get what they went into the service for in the first place? This is idiocy on the part of the United States Congress.

I salute the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Hartzler) for introducing this amendment. I had a similar amendment that was turned down in the Rules Committee. But this is something this Congress made a significant error on. Twenty-four Republicans and every single Democrat voted against this.

I thank the gentleman from Texas for bringing up the topic, and I would be happy to yield back to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think it is a couple of things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 18 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, July 14, 2017, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to reciprocate in a compliment to the gentleman from Texas, who stands here and leads in this Congress every day, and takes on a heavy load in the Rules Committee. A lot of times those are late night meetings--maybe the rest of us have put our feet up, not so much me, but some of the rest of us, Mr. Speaker--and Pete Sessions is up there working away, keeping organization in this House, and helping bring these things to the floor. We would not be here on the floor today if we didn't have a Rules Committee to work with and that cooperated.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Goodlatte for joining with me on this and putting his name on top of this bill as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, or we would be still stuck back in hearings and markups.

This is a great week to be debating these immigration bills that are here. A big reason for that is that this is a hold-their-feet-to-the- fire week that many of us have joined, as the radio talk show hosts that believe in secure borders, the rule of law, enforcing immigration law, and building a wall come together at the Phoenix Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. We talk about the rule of law and enforcing immigration law. That has gone on now for a long time. I have joined in most of those.

But, also, this is a week that the grieving families, who have lost a loved one at the hands of a criminal alien in this country, have not only come to this city and joined in the radio discussion that has taken place at the Phoenix Park Hotel, but they also were invited out to the White House to meet with the President yesterday, where there were a number of these families that were there to be represented and respected. I would say two-thirds to three-quarters of them are people who I have worked with from nearly the beginning of the tragedy that struck their family.

I am greatly respectful of the individuals who have had the courage to step forward that President Trump has identified. I recall those times when he asked some of these families--Jamiel Shaw, for example; Michelle Root; Mary Ann Mendoza; and Sabine Durden, whose son Dominic was killed by an illegal alien.

These families are families that have paid a huge price, but they were strong enough and courageous enough to step up on the stage with Presidential candidate Donald Trump and recount their stories to the media, some of them to speak before the national convention and reiterate these stories.

Just this morning, I heard Jamiel Shaw reiterate the story of the murder of his son that took place within the sound of the gunshots of the living room that Jamiel Shaw was sitting in. I have heard that now for 9 years, but the pain has not gone out of his voice, Mr. Speaker. We have some obligations here. And I heard it in the previous speaker: Keep our people safe.

Well, of those who die at the hands of criminal aliens, illegal aliens--anyone who is unlawfully present in America and perpetrates violence against an American citizen, kills an American citizen, or someone who is lawfully present in America--every one of those are preventable crimes, 100 percent preventable crimes.

I would just direct the attention here, Mr. Speaker, of a tweet that I had them pull down for me. I didn't know the date, but I saw the news story about Kate Steinle. It says: ``Family devastated after woman shot, killed in San Francisco.

``The family of a San Francisco woman who was killed in a seemingly random act of violence is mourning her loss as police continue to search for a . . . .''

And then it is lost in space--the article that I read.

But it must have been published on the 2nd of July--she was killed on the 1st--of 2015. My tweet came up on the 3rd, the very next day. I didn't stop to think about it. I didn't wait to see if it became a national story that Bill O'Reilly would bring up. By the way, I thank Bill O'Reilly. He helped a lot in getting us here today.

But here is a message I sent out, with a picture of Kate Steinle. It says: ``100 percent preventable crime. Just enforce the law. This will make you cry, too, and it happens every day.''

That is within only 142 characters, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a tweet regarding Sarah Root.

Sarah Root, 21, would be alive, living & loving life if

Obama had not violated his oath & ordered ICE to stand down.

Teen charged in Iowa woman's death may've fled the country

Authorities say a teenager who was at the wheel of a car

that was involved in a crash in Omaha last month that killed

an Iowa woman has missed a court hearing and may have fled

the count . . .

Mr. Speaker, every day in this country, at the hands of criminal aliens, people who are lawfully here are suffering, and they are paying a huge price. There isn't a way that we quantify loss to a crime. The crime victim is often out of the equation when it comes to enforcing the law.

I sat in on a case where I was the subject of a severe property rights crime. I listened to them announce the case,

the case of the State v.--I remember his name--Jason Martin Powell. It occurred to me that I am not in this. My name isn't part of the proceedings because we don't honor the victims enough.

Well, we are honoring them here today in a couple of pieces of legislation that are coming down, and we are honoring the life of Kate Steinle, and we are honoring the work of Jim Steinle, the rest of her family, and all of those adults who came forward and put their necks on the line for this.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee not only for working with and cooperating on all this legislation, but for the relentless work that has come forward in the committee. He has spent a lot of time on this floor and in committee, and we are getting some progress here today.

This is a big week, and we are starting to restore the rule of law. The sanctuary cities legislation, which is before us right now, is something I just looked back through my records and wondered: How long have I slugged away on this?

The first amendment I brought was in 2005 to cut off some funding to sanctuary cities. At each appropriations opportunity, along with CJS and Homeland Security, when there was a chance, I would bring another amendment and another amendment, 2005 on through 2014 and 2015. In 2015, then I introduced the broader sanctuary cities legislation which is the basis for this legislation.

I also had the misfortune and fortune of having the Root family as my constituents. Sarah Root was tragically killed by an illegal alien on the streets. Her father and mother both have been here to testify. Her mother is in town this day. Her father, Scott Root, testified before the committee. He said this:

They bailed the killer of my daughter out of jail for less

money than it took to bury her, and he was out of this

country before we could have the funeral.

Those words were some of the most chilling and mournful words that I have heard in this Congress. This bill today honors his daughter's life, Michelle's daughter's life, Sarah, and it also brings into play the enforcement that we need to have.

We have got to put an end to sanctuary cities and ban those policies--which the bill does--block the DOJ grants if they don't comply with the Federal law, and refuse the warrants to the sanctuary cities because they will just release them on the streets and let ICE take custody of them within 48 hours. And then the good faith hold harmless for ICE detainers, when they got the wrong recommendation out of the Obama administration, this makes the right recommendation to local jurisdictions.

The private cause of action is also very useful to us. It is a good, solid bill. I thank the chairman and all those who put the work in this today, and I urge its passage.