The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“NATIONALIZING THE ECONOMY” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H4497-H4504 on June 15, 2010.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
NATIONALIZING THE ECONOMY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Maffei). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege of being recognized to address you here on the floor of the House, and I have only a short privilege to look at some of the data that's been presented by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle in the previous hour.
I did look at the poster that says here's the economy as we know it in a very short snapshot in billions of chain GDP dollars. I don't know what chain dollars is. I have never discussed an economy within chain dollars. But I have also not discussed it within trends that are compressed down within the very few quarters that are presented in this graph that's been presented here before us on the floor of the House tonight, Mr. Speaker.
Here is what I would present. Let's just back up a little bit. Let's back up all the way to October of 1929 and think about what's really happened. This Nation has been challenged over and over again to come forward and determine where we are with our economy.
What kind of an economy are we? Are we the managed economy proposed by the Democrats on the other side of the aisle that believe that the President of the United States, the Cabinet, and the Pelosi Congress and the Harry Reid Senate should be the ones to make these economic decisions to manage the nationalized economy? Are we the kind of people that should be nationalizing even more of our economy? And I have gone through this list so many times I can almost recite it by rote in my sleep.
This Federal Government, albeit started under President Bush, with the support of Barack Obama all the way through and most of it picked up by him, has nationalized--and when I say ``nationalized,'' I mean owned, managed, or controlled--sectors of the economy that have to do with three large investment banks, and that's Citigroup, Bank of America, and Bear Stearns. Those three have been taken over by the Federal Government. AIG nationalized by the Federal Government, the insurance company. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The entities that the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, said he would never support a Federal bailout of Fannie and Freddie. No, he supported the takeover, the Federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
We have also watched General Motors and Chrysler be taken over by the Federal Government, and a bankruptcy proposal pitched by the administration to the chapter 11 bankruptcy court that dictated the terms of bankruptcy, and among those terms were: Hand over shares of the automakers to the automakers union. And while that was going on, the only bidder before the chapter 11 bankruptcy court with the case of Chrysler, where I actually have the data and probably have it in my hand here, the only bidder was the Federal Government. The structure of it going into chapter 11 was the Federal Government, set up for a bidder. The only bidder was the Federal Government. It was the Federal Government on both sides of that equation. Unprecedented.
A Federal takeover dictating to the bankruptcy court the terms of the resolution of Chrysler and handing over, in the case of General Motors, 17.5 percent of the shares in General Motors over to the automakers union, to the United Auto Workers. That's all taken place, including the takeover of the student loan program in the United States by the Federal Government.
Now, if we add this up, three large investment banks, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General Motors, and Chrysler, according to Professor Boyle of Arizona State University, that's one-third of the private-
sector activity of America swallowed up over the ownership, management, or control of the Federal Government.
Then you add to that the student loan program, and then you add to that the financial services that are being regulated right now that are being negotiated in the conference committee that's been named between the House and the Senate, that would put the Federal Government in the position to regulate every single credit transaction in America.
Now, I don't just mean one of the large bailed out, federally owned investment banks is doing business with one of the other large federally owned investment banks, that the Federal Government regulates that. I don't just mean that when a small community bank is doing transactions with people that are coming in to borrow money for operating capital or for a mortgage that the Federal Government regulates that. I will take it right on down to this question that was posed by the dentists. Would their transactions that are set up where they set up monthly payments for the parents to pay for the braces on the teeth of their children be regulated by the Federal Government and by the White House? Answer, yes.
Under this bill that's coming at us under the language we are dealing with, yes, the Federal Government would regulate the transaction, the credit transaction between the dentist and the parents who would want to finance the braces on their children's teeth. Uncle Sam injects himself into that equation.
Do you think that's to the point, Mr. Speaker, where we can't tolerate Federal intrusion any deeper? I think it's gone beyond where we can tolerate Federal intrusion any deeper. But it goes deeper yet. Not just into the cavities into our children's teeth or the braces on them, but right down into a neighborhood, friendly poker game.
And I had them analyze the language for this purpose. I just asked the question: Where does this stop? What are the restraints? What are the constraints on the legislation that would give the Federal Government the authority to regulate every credit transaction in America? And I asked specifically: Will you analyze the language in the bill and tell me could the Federal Government, if they chose to do so, regulate the credit transaction that's embodied in an IOU that could be put in the middle of the pot in a poker game in a neighborhood or a friendly or a family poker game? It might even be an IOU for toothpicks. Yes, the language allows the Federal Government to inject themselves into every credit transaction in America.
So we have the nationalization of one-third of the private-sector activity in the form of three large investment banks taken over by the Federal Government, AIG, the insurance company taken over by the Federal Government, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and General Motors and Chrysler. That's eight. That's one-third of the private sector activity according to the Arizona State professor, Boyle. One-third. And you add to that student loans, which I don't know what percentage of the overall economy that that is, and I don't want to speculate without some basis of knowledge on that.
But we have got 33 percent of the former private sector activity nationalized, taken over by the Federal Government, by the Obama administration now in control and the management or ownership or control of these private sector entities. And now we are at 33 percent. ObamaCare has passed. That's, by a consensus of accounts, right at 17.5 percent of the overall economy that goes into health care under the ownership, management, or control of the Federal Government; 17.5 percent. Where do you round that to, anybody in sixth grade math? Up to 18. Eighteen percent plus 33 percent is 51 percent of the former private sector activity under the ownership, management, or control of the Federal Government; 51 percent.
And what did Alexander Tytler tell us out of Scotland back as a contemporary of Adam Smith? And in summary terms, when the public understands that they can vote themselves benefits from the public treasury, on that day democracy ceases to exist. That was Alexander Tytler in about the year 1776, a long time back.
Here we are. We are seeing data that shows that only 47 percent of the households don't pay taxes; 47 percent. We don't have a number that shows us the percentage of individuals. But if 47 percent of the households don't pay income tax, and that means Federal income tax, that tells us that we are only 3.0001 percent away from the majority of American households that don't pay income tax. Now, we are within the margin of error.
Who could think that the public hasn't figured out, with the tutelage of President Obama, that they should game the system? Because if you are a marginal employee individual, are you better off to game the system and put yourself on the public dole and tap into a myriad of the 72 different Federal welfare programs that are out there or are you better off to go to work every day?
If we default back to the statement made by Jimmy Carter back in 1976 in Iowa as he campaigned for President of the United States, impressed me--I didn't support him, Mr. Speaker; I want that to be clear in the Congressional Record--but he did impress me with a statement that he made. He said the people that work should live better than those that don't. I don't think Jimmy Carter lived by that, but he said that. And that impressed me that it was a simple, clear logic, the logic of clarity that should be delivered in this floor more often than it actually is.
Of course the people that work should live better than those that don't. But Jimmy Carter had a lot of trouble following through on that. But by today's standards, no, he wasn't. He was a piker by today's standards. Anybody that doesn't live up to an average standard of living can go to the public welfare rolls and expect that they are going to have their rent subsidized, their heat subsidized. They are going to have food stamps. They are going to have 69 other Federal programs that they can have access to.
We have become a welfare state. And that works pretty good for the people that want to create a dependency class in America. And that is clearly what's going on with the Obama administration, establishing and expanding the dependency class in America, because they understand that people who are dependent want to make sure that they go vote for the people who require them to be dependent before they will send more benefits their way.
Independent people say, I want less government. I want less taxes. I want a smaller role in our Federal Government. I want the States to have their constitutional right to all the powers that are not enumerated to the Federal Government devolve back to the States or the people, respectively. That's what I want.
Because I know that when people are responsible for their own activities and they are rewarded for positive behavior and the markets and the conditions of a just society provide disincentives for people who are lazy, who are not industrious, who don't take care of their families, who are dishonest, who might be indulging in substance abuse, those negative indicators for a society are punished in a just society, and positive behavior is rewarded in a just society.
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You don't have to rule or regulate a just society if you have the financial structures in place, the moral foundation in place and if you're not afraid to stigmatize negative behavior.
But this administration has capped off the effort so far of previous, shall I be nice and call them progressives, their effort, their effort to expand the dependency class in America. And whenever that happens, if this Congress expands the dependency class, it is the equivalent of taking a jackhammer and chiseling away at those beautiful marble pillars of American exceptionalism, chiseling them away, breaking down the very foundation that created American exceptionalism.
We're not a Nation that's created for greatness built upon dependency. The dependency class is anathema to the American people and the American spirit.
Independence is our spirit. Self-reliance is our spirit. Our vigor, our unique vigor is our spirit. Our liberty, our freedom is our spirit. That's who we are.
And how do we get to be in this great Nation? What are these pillars of American exceptionalism that are under assault by the active left in this Congress every single day, jackhammering away at those beautiful marble pillars of American exceptionalism? What are they?
Well, they're easy to find. You look in the Constitution of the United States, take a look into the Bill of Rights. Go right down through the list: freedom of speech, religion, and the press; the freedom of assembly; to petition the government for redress of grievances. Boy, that is beautiful.
Are those marble pillars, Mr. Speaker? Of course, they are.
Freedom of speech, to speak outward and openly of the things that we believe in without restraint or punishment, knowing that the State can't come in and crush us for our opinions, the freedom with a full-
throated objection to our government if they're going down a path that we object to or a full-throated support for a President or a Congress or a judiciary branch of government or any of the agencies within the government that's serving our people in a Constitution and a just fashion. That's freedom of speech.
Freedom of religion. Freedom of religion, to worship in the church of our choice or not to worship or worship in our home or under a tree or out in the pasture or while we're in the traffic jam and any way we choose. Freedom of religion. Freedom for a pastor or anyone in the congregation whom he might accept to come up and step behind the podium to preach to the Word and preach the law of God and do so without fear, without fear that the IRS might come in and rule that these words were somehow political or partisan and to take away the 501(c)(3) not-for-
profit status that exists for our churches within this country.
The IRS has intimidated pastor after pastor, congregation after congregation. The core of our faith in this country has been eroded because of IRS intimidation of our preaches and our pastors. Even though that speech is guaranteed in the Constitution, it doesn't guarantee that you get a tax deduction if you speak out too openly. So I tell my pastors, preach the Word, preach the law, preach your convictions and your faith to your congregation in a full-throated way, and if the IRS comes in and threatens to take away your 501(c)(3) status, tell them Steve King stands with you. I stand with you figuratively. If you need me to stand next to you literally, I will do so, and if you still don't have the courage to preach the Word and stand next to me, then I will come and I will preach the Word.
And if that doesn't give you enough conviction, remember this: Not in the history of this country has any church lost its 501(c)(3) status because a pastor spoke from his faithful religious heart and preached the Word, the gospel of the Lord to the congregation that has gathered together to hear that message. Not once, not ever, not in the history of America has a church lost its 501(c)(3) not-for-profit status because of preaching the Word from the pulpit.
The threat goes out continually, and when a conservative Christian takes a position that has impact, then you hear from the people like, well, let me see--to avoid controversy, let me just say liberal United States Senators who would like to use the IRS to intimidate their opposition. They aren't all alive today, but there's a history of these liberal United States Senators who have done so. None have been successful in removing the 501(c)(3) status. But the truth needs to be preached.
That's just the First Amendment. Freedom of speech, religion, and the press; freedom to peaceably assemble; and petition the government for redress of grievances, first amendment.
Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to own and control our guns and not have the Federal Government take them away or confiscate our guns. Now, I've been a Second Amendment defender for a long time, and I will be for as long as the Lord grants me breath in this life, but Mr. Speaker, many of the people that defend the Second Amendment seem to think that it's about owning and keeping firearms so we can target shoot, recreational shooting, hunt, or for self-defense. And I will take the position here, Mr. Speaker, that those three things that I've talked about, hunting, self-defense, target shooting, are all residual benefits, kind of like extra benefits that come with the Second Amendment.
We would have the Second Amendment whether or not there was target shooting, whether or not there ever was hunting, and whether or not there was self-defense because our Founding Fathers understood that we needed to have an armed populace to defend against tyranny. They understood that a tyrant would come and confiscate our guns and subjugate us to his armed forces, and we would have to knuckle under, and thereby would go our freedom. That was understood by our Founding Fathers, and they put the Second Amendment in so we could defend our freedom and our liberty and be an armed populace to defend against the tyrant.
And the good stuff that comes from that is we get to also hunt, target shoot and defend ourselves. Pretty simple concept. But you look around the world, I don't know of a country or a civilization that has registered firearms that has not confiscated them. When a Nation has confiscated firearms, that suppresses our freedom of speech, that suppresses our freedom of religion, that suppresses our ability to assemble and peaceably petition our government for redress of grievances because we would be intimidated by an all-powerful state. We need a state intimidated by the people.
That's what this country is about. The power in our government comes from God. Our rights come from God. They're vested in the people, and the people confer that authority into their elected Representatives. That is the very definition of a constitutional republic.
And so we have these rights: freedom of speech, religion, and the press; freedom of assembly; and Second Amendment, right to keep and bear arms, because that is a deterrent for tyrants that might want to subjugate us as a people, that might want to take away our God-given rights that we have vested in our elected Representatives. That's just the First and Second Amendment.
Those are all pillars of American exceptionalism. No other country has these kind of rights. They have politically correct laws in places like Canada and Great Britain, and those places are freer than many other places in the world, but we provide a full-throated defense of whatever our particular position happens to be.
We're American. We aren't people that cower. We don't shrink from conflict. We don't shrink from disagreement. I had a lady approach me on the street a couple of months ago, about the time when ObamaCare passed, and she said to me, you have to find a way to get along. It's kind of a Rodney King statement: Can't we all get along? Can't we compromise? Can't we get away from all of this friction and this tension that's going on here over ObamaCare?
And I listened to her. I'd seen the lady on the Hill for several years, actually, and I'd never had a conversation with her. And she impressed me with her deep conviction and commitment to following what was honest, especially in Judiciary Committee. I don't know her name. Only time I ever talked to her.
But I said to her, you know, we have these arguments here, we have this tension, we have this disagreement, and I think we do so because we're called to come to Washington to have these debates, to have these arguments, to have the disagreements so we don't have to come to blows in the streets of America, so we don't have to clash with each other. All the way across from sea to sea, we bring our conflict here. We have these debates here. We test each other in this battle of ideas here, and it's even more effective, and I will say significantly more effective, than it was in the era of the Founding Fathers because we have real-time communications.
Mr. Speaker, we have C-SPAN. We have live radio. We have Internet. We have podcasts. We can have real-time interactive town hall meetings that interact all the way across America. We can carry this message all across this country. This constitutional republic is more effective today from a communications standpoint than it was in the era of our Founding Fathers, and we should be grateful for that. It's our job to use it and utilize it and to continue to build upon this.
So let's have the debate. Let's have a nationwide debate. Let's get after this, and we're doing it, and come November, the American people will decide whether this path of the Federal takeover of first one-
third of the former private sector activity of our economy; then adding ObamaCare to this, another 18 percent of our economy going to 51 percent; then, sitting in conference committee right now being deliberated and debated by the conferee, another 15 percent of our economy, the financial sector of our economy, roughly 15 percent by some estimates, you add that onto the 51 percent, and we get up there to 66 percent of our economy; and then we have the cap-and-trade argument, roughly around 8 or 9 percent of our economy.
Now, if cap-and-trade is 8 percent of our economy, then that means, in case anybody wonders, cap-and-trade is about this: It's about capping carbon emissions and trading the carbon credits that you get. So if you are an electrical generating plant and you're burning coal like crazy in 2005, that's the measure, capping at 2005 levels of CO2 emission, and you're burning all kinds of coal and you're belching this CO2 out into the atmosphere, which doesn't alarm me, by the way, Mr. Speaker--I still don't think there's a scientific foundation for their hypothesis--but that's going on; the measurement of the emissions of the CO2 will be capped at 2005.
Now, let's presume that that same electrical generator takes half of his coal consumption down, replaces it with a nuclear generating plant--actually a new plant that will come online in 2017 in South Carolina. It will be the first one in probably 30 years by then. So you get carbon credits for taking the coal generation, the burning of the coal off line, that CO2 that's not emitted, and replaced it with the nuclear, just the tool that reduced the CO2 emissions. Now that coal-fired generating operation, which might be an entire utility network, will have half their CO2 emissions that have been cut now because of the replacement of nuclear become their carbon credits. Carbon credits that, what do they have now? They have something that has value.
They can take their carbon credits, and they can sell them through an exchange on the board in Chicago--there are two exchanges that exist as far as I know right now--and any organization, any entity, any utility that has to burn let's say more coal or more natural gas or more diesel fuel and emit more CO2 than they did before to supply more demand for electricity would have to buy the carbon credits from the entity that had created them by replacing the CO2 emissions with say nuclear or wind or solar or some other source. So these exchanges go on.
Carbon credits are expensive when they start, and as they dial this down, the idea is to reduce the CO2 emissions from the standard, the cap, that's the cap at 2005 emission levels, and trade the carbon credits, dial them down by 17 percent by a certain year, which seems to me is 2013, way too soon. And then from two thousand and whatever that year is, a 17 percent reduction, on out to 2050, reduce the CO2 emissions by 83 percent.
The vision is, by the time we get to 2050, we'd only be emitting 17 percent of the CO2 that we're doing today. I'm going to expect we're going to use the same amount of energy, and do you expect, Mr. Speaker, that these carbon credits are going to be worth more or less as the cap gets dialed down year by year, until the year 2050, where 83 percent of the CO2 emissions are shut down by the economics of this?
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Now, it doesn't just shut down the CO2 emissions and give us the same amount of kilowatt hours, or some other type of energy for that matter, or consumption, that could be diesel fuel or gas or anything. No, Mr. Speaker, it doesn't do that. What it does is it shuts down some of the emissions, but the economics of it require that the cost of power goes up. As the cost of power goes up, the consumption of power goes down. That means we use less energy between now and 2013 or 2017 and 2050.
If we use less energy, why? Do we turn the air conditioner, set it on 80 degrees--reminds me of Jimmy Carter when he said set your thermostat at 60. Remember? Dial the thermostat down to 60, buy a cardigan sweater, button that sweater up and sit in your living room and put a shawl over yourself and sit there and shiver because, after all, we have an American malaise, and we will never be the Nation that we were before, and we will never be the Nation again that we are today. That was Jimmy Carter's message. It also fits pretty close to Barack Obama's message, who, Mr. Speaker, has said that electricity costs would
``necessarily skyrocket'' under his plan of cap-and-trade.
So what are we doing? We have an administration, and the opportunists in the Senate and the House that are looking at the oil slick over the gulf coast, which is an environmental tragedy, and seeking to capitalize on that environmental tragedy by pushing cap-and-trade legislation which will cripple American industry. For example--and I don't think, Mr. Speaker, that I can give the data on this, but I would just suggest that those that are interested should take a look at the American kiln industry and understand that where we have kilns, it might be a really simple thing, it might be like a dryer where you heat up asphalt and you crank it through a barrel that's got heat in it and it brings it through the other side, kind of like a cement truck cylinder, and comes out the other side hot mix asphalt. It takes a lot of heat to do that, takes a lot of energy; there's a lot of CO2 emissions.
There are a number of other processes that are far more energy-
intensive, including the production of aluminum. We have a lot of aluminum in America, but it takes a lot of energy and emits a lot of CO2. This would about take the aluminum industry out of America to look at the cap-and-trade proposals that are out there.
Industry after industry in America would be crippled by cap-and-trade legislation. The cost of our electricity would ``necessarily skyrocket,'' to quote the President. The cost of our gas would go up, our diesel fuel, our kerosene, our jet fuel; I said our electricity. All energy gets more expensive. It just changes the proportionality of the cost per Btu from energy source to energy source. So we would, as a Nation, then make our energy more costly.
Now, what the cap-and-trade legislation does is it taxes everything that moves. It takes energy to move anything. Just moving my hand back and forth, you can count that in calories how much energy is consumed by that--not a lot, but it's some. If you would take a 200-pound man and run him up the stairs to the top of the dome in the Capitol and back down again--we have people that could calculate how many calories would be consumed by that effort to go up and down--you could turn that into and calculate it back down through Btus of energy. How could you replace that energy with gasoline or electricity with a motor that would take them up and down? This is energy. Anything that moves takes energy. You can't get something done without energy.
So this administration is for taxing everything that moves and a cap-
and-trade scheme that would cripple America's economy and put us at a significant disadvantage from the developing countries in the world, in particular India and China--other developing countries, but India and China in particular--it chases our industry over there. And then what would we do? They produce things in countries where they have cheaper energy and cheaper labor. They ship it back to us and we buy it. Well, what do we buy it with? Right now we're buying it with credit, and we are running up the debt against the Chinese. Their holdings of U.S. currency--or U.S. debt, excuse me--are approaching $1 trillion in U.S. debt today.
We lament the cost when a young person finishes their college education, receiving their degree--and there's a number out there, this is not a survey number, it's a general ballpark number that has a consensus to it--roughly a $40,000 debt for a young adult that receives a college degree, $40,000 to move into adulthood to pay off that student loan. Now, whatever that real number is, I'm working with 40, which I think is in the ballpark, and we worry about that student loan being paid off by that young person that has a college degree and is entering into the job market.
I'm not so worried about that $40,000 student loan, Mr. Speaker, because the baby born in America today owes Uncle Sam, the Federal Government, their share of the national debt, $44,000. You can go into the nursery and be there when they bring a new little baby out and put them in the nursery in the hospital. There might be one or two or six or 10 of these new little miracles laying there wrapped up in blue or pink, with their parents proudly looking through the glass or going in to hold their babies. These little babies, every one of them laying in the nursery today, their share of the national debt--not their student loan, which when they get a degree that helps them earn the money to retire that debt, but these little babies' share of the national debt,
$44,000. $44,000, Mr. Speaker, for the privilege of being born in the United States of America.
Well, I guess it's probably not the case for an anchor baby that gets citizenship along with it, at least that's an extra bargain that goes along--and I disagree with that. But that same little baby that's born today and owes the Federal Government $44,000, by the time that little baby goes on and learns to tie their shoes and goes off to kindergarten, works their way up through elementary school and walks into their fifth grade class--now, I pick that because that's 10 years, we have 10-year budgets here and we have 10-year budget windows and we calculate our costs over a 10-year period of time.
$44,000 in debt, welcome to America. This is the gift of life for being born in America, and you owe $44,000. A lot of them aren't going to pay their share, so if it's half of them, those other babies are going to owe $88,000. But the share for everyone who walks into fifth grade, according to this President's budget, by the time those $44,000 indebted children start fifth grade, they will owe Uncle Sam $88,000. That's the number, Mr. Speaker.
We should be very worried about a country that can't pass a budget, that for the first time since there have been budget requirements put into the rules here in the Congress itself, since 1974 when this began, this Congress doesn't have the will or the conviction to pass a budget because it is so abysmal, because the overspending is so atrocious, because the spending that they are conducting cannot be defended and they can't defend and vote against the amendments that would surely be attempted to be brought against a budget.
Now, there is a legitimate debate going on in this Congress and there is a legitimate amendment process going on in this Congress, but we don't have a budget and we're not going to have a budget. This Congress doesn't want to take responsibility for a budget.
We're going to see them package up a continuing resolution of some kind, a modified continuing resolution that pays off the political favoritism that they will need in order to go on in November, and we're going to get to the other side of the elections in November, kick the can down the road, and we'll be here on the floor of Congress sometime after election day in November; and this Congress will, by order of the Speaker, bring a huge omnibus spending bill to the floor.
If it's like the last one, 3,600 pages, several hundred billion dollars issued the night before, dropped on the floor with roughly 60 minutes to debate the issue, no amendments, voted up or down, and the government shuts down if we voted down. I will vote ``no.'' I would love to shut the government down for that kind of irresponsibility. It's unlikely that that will happen, however, because the Speaker has the votes and can do what she will.
So here we are, Mr. Speaker. This is a country that is built upon the rights that come from God, our liberty and our freedom. It's built upon this foundation that I declare to be the pillars of American exceptionalism. We are the unchallenged greatest Nation in the world, and we derive our strength from these pillars of exceptionalism, from free enterprise capitalism, from the rights that come from God, from our religious faith and foundation, this core of Judeo-Christianity that is America, and yet we're afraid to say so. We shy away and we shrink away from basic, simple utter truths.
I happen to have just heard a speech from, in town, the president of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre. He doesn't know I'm coming here to say this, but I was listening as he delivered his speech, and I wrote this down. He said, If you know the truth is on your side, say it and shout it as long as you can--excuse me. It might be say it and shout it as loud as you can. Stand up, shout them down, and don't you back down. Wayne LaPierre, president of the NRA, a man who has for a lifetime defended our Second Amendment and many of our other rights and freedoms, impressed me with the depth of his conviction and the clarity of his delivery tonight.
And now I take us to a subject matter that is on my mind to some degree, Mr. Speaker, and it has to do with what's going on from the White House and the Presidency through the Justice Department.
Now, the Attorney General, Eric Holder, came before the Judiciary Committee sometime in late May, right before we broke for the Memorial Day period of time, and he testified under oath that the Justice Department is not a partisan agency, that they don't operate on a partisan basis, that they are driven by the law. Well, I look at the President and the Attorney General and a number of the other representatives of this administration, it's hard for me to accept that statement on face value as being truthful because here's what I see and what I know: the President of the United States spoke out openly and plainly about the Arizona immigration law and made a case that in his view there was a built-in prejudice or bias or profile in the Arizona law because he said that if a mother were taking her daughter out to get some ice cream, they could find themselves having to produce their papers because of, presumably, their race. Arizona law forbids such a thing, but the President alleged such a thing.
Now, either the President misinformed the American people knowingly and willfully, or, Mr. Speaker, he hadn't read the bill. I'll opt to the side of he hadn't read the bill. I hope that's the case, and actually I believe that's the case.
Then we had Eric Holder, the Attorney General, who also alleged that there could be a profile take place under Arizona's immigration law that would bring about discrimination against people. It turns out that even though I asked Eric Holder before the Judiciary Committee, you have been charged by the President of the United States to use the force of the Justice Department to go against the Arizona law and seek to invalidate Arizona's immigration law, S. 1070, that bill that was drafted and put together by the fine and stellar State Senator, Russell Pearce of Arizona, that legislation--that has been signed into law and was enacted on the last day of July of this year--Eric Holder contends could bring about profiling.
Now, when someone says profiling in American Society today, they don't mean profiling according to, oh, let me say, whether you're a member of MENSA or whether you're a member of the Sierra Club. This is racial profiling whenever they say--when I say ``they,'' I mean the administration, people on the left, the self-professed progressives. They mean racial profiling. So the President implies, if not alleges, racial profiling, empowered by Arizona's immigration law, S. 1070. The Attorney General does the same thing. The Attorney General concedes that the President has ordered the Justice Department to seek to invalidate Arizona's immigration law.
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When I asked the Attorney General, under oath, before the Judiciary Committee, Point to me in the Constitution where you believe Arizona's immigration law has violated the United States Constitution, the Attorney General could not do so. In the alternative, I said, Then point to me to a Federal statute that you believe preempts Arizona's immigration law. The Attorney General could not do so. So, when I said, Point out then for me a case precedent, case law, that you believe is controlling, which would indicate that Arizona's immigration law might be unconstitutional or could be invalidated by a Federal court, the Attorney General could not point to a single case precedent either.
So he failed to be able to point to the Constitution, to a Federal statute that could preempt or to case law that controls, the Attorney General of the United States, but he is still using the resources and the authority of the Attorney General's office and the entire Justice Department of the United States to seek to invalidate Arizona's immigration law, which, for the record, Mr. Speaker, mirrors Federal law and is at least as constitutional as Federal immigration law. The Attorney General can't point to any place where that might violate, but he is still willing to pour in the resources and testify that his department is not political, and he admits that the President ordered him to use the department for what I believe to be political purposes.
For each of them to essentially imply or to confess that they didn't bother to read the Arizona law--but they wanted to tell the American people what to think about it--is political. It is unjust, and it is not consistent with the Constitution, with Federal statute, or with case law. That, Mr. Speaker, is what is going on.
In addition to this, on Arizona's law, we have other people who have weighed in on this. We have other people who have similar levels of, let me say, information to work with. The President doesn't read the bill, and he speaks out against it, and he seeks to drive a wedge based on race. The Attorney General is the one who is on the record saying the American people are cowards when it comes to race. Well, I'm not, but some are, and I understand why--because they turn their PC minyans against people who would speak out openly on these issues.
I think we should talk about race. I think we should talk about people who use race for political benefit--people like the President of the United States when he was informed of the incident of Professor Gates and Officer Crowley, in Cambridge, when Officer Crowley conducted himself consistent with, let me say, the rules of engagement for a peace officer in that community. When there was a call for him to come because someone was breaking into a residence in the neighborhood, Officer Crowley came and applied himself to that task as he had, I'm sure, a dozen times before, but Professor Gates objected to having law enforcement there to help protect his property. That message got to the President, and what does the President do? He sides with Professor Gates.
Barack Obama was wrong on the Gates issue, and all of the American people know it, and he could not bring himself to apologize to Officer Crowley or to clarify the issue. He was looking for a way out. That's why the President had the beer summit on the South Lawn. That's why Professor Gates and Officer Crowley came and sat down out on the South Lawn. It seemed odd to me that they brought one beer alone, on a single tray. They delivered it and went back and got another one. That seemed a little odd to me. That's what happened.
But, in a just world, the person who conducts himself in a just fashion is the one who receives the apology from the people who did not conduct themselves in a just fashion. I will argue, Mr. Speaker, that the President and Professor Gates had an obligation to apologize to Officer Crowley because, first, the President had prejudged that situation. His knee-jerk reaction defaulted in favor of the African American professor and against the Irish cop. That's what happened. I don't think anybody who watched this incident could think otherwise.
We have the President of the United States who defaulted in favor of alleging that there would be racial profiling taking place in Arizona because of their immigration law, and he perpetuated a flat-out misinterpretation, and it may well have been willful, of Arizona's immigration law to the rest of America.
Now, we should be able to look up to the President of the United States and to trust that he is properly briefed and that he is factual when he presents a position to the American people. That is American executive branch policy. We should be able to trust the President for that. The President should have people around him whom he trusts, who would go back and read the law and would brief the President.
Well, it's obvious to all of us who have watched this and who have read the law that the President spoke about Arizona's law and had not read it. If he were briefed, it was off of the MoveOn.org Web site. He is surrounded by people who read those Web sites, who believe them, and I'm not sure that the President has access to the objective truth given the people around him and given the way he has responded.
So you have two cases where the President's default reaction falls in the favor of an individual because of skin color as opposed to individuals because of the rule of law--or let me just say truth, justice, and the American way. There is a default mechanism in place. He has an Attorney General who follows that same path, who lectures the American people and who says that the American people are cowards when it comes to race. Well, he has not been a coward when it comes to race.
His administration, his agency--the Justice Department--has cancelled the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of America, which is the case of the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia, who much of America has seen on videotape--let me say YouTube. They are paramilitary uniformed individuals, the members of the New Black Panthers, who were standing there in berets, with big, old billy clubs, smacking them in their hands as white people came to vote, calling those people crackers and telling them, We're taking over this country. We're going to be in power after that.
That's a generalization of their statements, but the accuracy of that record is out there on YouTube for all the world to see. That case was open and shut. The case was made by the Justice Department under President Bush. As the handoff took place and went over to the Eric Holder Justice Department under President Obama, what happened, Mr. Speaker? Loretta King, in the Justice Department, cancelled the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of America because it would have brought about convictions on those New Black Panther party members. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez came before the Judiciary Committee and testified that they got the highest punishment allowed under the law--
negotiated.
Mr. Speaker, it was not true. It's not true today. The statement that he made to the Judiciary Committee was false--he knew it the day he said it--and it was to misinform because he was under some pressure and needed to get off the hook. That's a matter of the Congressional Record. He was under oath. It is something that we should pursue. It's unlikely that we can get anywhere with it. That's Tom Perez. So the administration has cancelled the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in the history of America. It was a done deal. They cancelled it.
The administration and Loretta King in the Justice Department cancelled also the will of the people in Kinston, North Carolina. That's K-I-N-S-T-O-N. They dropped the ``G'' because they didn't want to be another Kingston, North Carolina. They voted by referendum the will of the people. The number that I remember--and it's generally memorized but not specifically accurate--is 70-30, a significant landslide majority. They voted to end the partisan local elections in Kinston, North Carolina, and to no longer label the candidates with an
``R'' or a ``D'' for ``Republican'' or ``Democrat'' by their names. That was the will of the people.
Though, because Kinston is a covered district, controlled by the Voting Rights Act, if they are going to move a voting booth 10 feet down the hallway, they have to get the permission of the Justice Department under Federal law. So, under the Justice Department, Loretta King, apparently, is the one who speaks for the Justice Department, who speaks for Eric Holder. She issued a letter that cancelled the election results of Kinston, North Carolina, and she declared that they would have partisan elections--and the city council and the mayor of Kinston, North Carolina--because African Americans wouldn't know who to vote for if a candidate didn't have a ``D'' beside his name.
Mr. Speaker, that is fact. That is the letter that was written and issued by our Justice Department under the pen and the signature of Loretta King, under the guidance and control of Attorney General Holder. Now, when we talk about things that have a racist flavor to them, when presuming that African Americans can't figure out who to vote for unless they have a ``D'' beside their names, I guess you could make the argument that you would want to profile all the African Americans and declare that they're all Democrats. Therefore, it makes it simple if you just label the people they want to vote for with a
``D.''
I think that has all kinds of racial implications. I don't think those implications have any place in the application of the laws or in the application of the Constitution of the United States. There should be equal justice before the law. This Lady Justice needs to be blindfolded and needs to stay blindfolded. Everybody should be subjected to the same level of law and enforcement without regard to race, creed, color, ethnicity, national origin, and a number of other indicators, but I've listed most of them that are in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act right now.
Now, this goes on. This is a Justice Department that can't find a dollar or an individual to commit a minute, let alone a career or a team and a few million dollars, to investigate ACORN--ACORN, the corrupt, criminal enterprise that everybody knows today is a corrupt, criminal enterprise. It has been undermining the very foundation that sits underneath our Constitution, itself, which is, Mr. Speaker, legitimate elections. Legitimate elections, the faith in the legitimacy of our elections, is what keeps this constitutional Republic functioning and alive and gets us back to well. ACORN has damaged all of that. ACORN has threatened all of that. ACORN has diminished our liberty and our freedom, and it has undermined the very foundation for our Constitution.
Any Justice Department worth its salt would investigate ACORN, but Eric Holder can't touch that--whether it's an order of the President, who used to work for ACORN, I don't know. We should remember that the President of the United States worked for ACORN. He represented them in court. He represented them pro bono in court. Can you imagine being an attorney and representing somebody in court pro bono and not agreeing to their agenda? He also worked for them in the form of Project Vote, which was when President Barack Obama made his reputation for organizing communities and politics in Chicago. Project Vote is, part and parcel, ACORN.
The President of the United States is ACORN. He is identified with ACORN. He made his reputation with ACORN. He has worked for and with ACORN, and he has trained ACORN workers. When he said during the campaign to his supporters to ``get in their face,'' it is pretty consistent with the message that they train ACORN activists, which is to ``get in their face.'' Go intimidate some bankers while you're at it and see if you can get them to make more bad loans in bad neighborhoods. Let ACORN be positioned to judge whether lenders are making enough bad loans in bad neighborhoods.
This became a big component of what has undermined our economy and what has caused this downward spiral. The President was involved and complicit in the effort that brought about the undermining of our financial institutions in America by his involvement of working with, for, and in promoting and representing ACORN.
Then, when he was elected President of the United States, he sought to move the United States census from the Commerce Department into the White House. He could manage the census, the counting of the people--
real or imagined--from the White House. The public uproar over ACORN caused him to back away from that and to sever the relationship that he had that ACORN was to be working as a contractor with the Census Department. Now, it doesn't mean because they decided not to have a formal contract with ACORN that ACORN wasn't going to be involved in the census. We know that people are policy. We know that there are a lot of ACORN people involved in the census. How could there not be with nearly a half a million people working to count the 306 or so million people who we are?
When we follow the money, when we track ACORN, the path leads us to the White House. ACORN should be investigated by any legitimate Justice Department. Kinston, North Carolina, didn't need to take place. The voice of the people said, We don't want partisan elections. We want to vote for the candidate. We don't want to vote for their political party. This was cancelled by Loretta King and the Justice Department.
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We don't need to have voter intimidation with new Black Panthers out there with billy clubs and a Justice Department that would cancel the prosecution that was open and shut. We need no voter intimidation in America.
And where could you better send the message than putting those people that are the new Black Panthers, that are clearly wide open guilty, under the heaviest penalty allowed by law?
This is all part of the character and the makeup of this administration; this administration, who plays the race card; this administration, who defaults in favor of whichever minority they think might be the one that would most likely support their political party and their agenda. And I point to the new Black Panthers. I point to the President's remarks on the mother and the daughter going to get ice cream in Arizona. I point to the Justice Department canceling the prosecution, the open-and-shut case, by then almost closed case, of the new Black Panthers in Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia; of the city and their municipal referendum on no partisan elections in Kinston, North Carolina; the failure of the Justice Department to investigate ACORN; and the fact that the President spoke out--now this moves into a little bit different subject area, but it also ties, in my view, together--and the President demagoguing Arizona's immigration law, not having read it; the Attorney General doing the same thing, and finally admitting that he'd not read the bill. Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, demagoguing Arizona's immigration law, not having read it, and having admitted that to Senator John McCain. And, let me see, the Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner taking Arizona's immigration law all the way to the Chinese and saying, Well, we brought it up early and often.
Apparently, we're a sinful Nation because we believe in the rule of law, Mr. Speaker.
And let me see, who's left out of this? Oh, yes. John Morton, the Assistant Secretary, who is the head of ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who remarked that he wasn't committed to handling all the people that might be picked up by Arizona immigration or by Arizona's law enforcement officers in enforcement of Federal immigration law.
So this whole picture of this administration paints something that makes it really hard for government teachers to get this message down to their students. We have students that are juniors or seniors in high school, and you're teaching them government. They might be younger than that, but juniors and seniors in high school. They might read the paper and watch the news, and they sit in the classroom, and the teacher will say, We have a separation of powers. We have the legislative. We have the executive. And we have the judicial branches of government. These are three separate powers. Some teachers will teach they're separate but equal. That's another hour to talk about it. I don't believe they're equal. But they are separate.
To argue that they're separate and having students watch the news and hear that the President doesn't want to enforce immigration law because he doesn't agree with it; that he wants to hold law enforcement hostage until the American people accept his form of amnesty. The President doesn't get that kind of discretion. The President's job is to enforce the law. The Attorney General's job is to enforce the law. John Morton's job as head of ICE is to enforce the law. And the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano's job is to enforce the law. Because you disagree with the law means nothing. You enforce that law whether you agree with it or not because you're not a policy maker. You're a law enforcer.
That's how our Constitution is set up. That's the power that's invested in them. If our Founding Fathers had wanted them to be legislators, they would have written it into the Constitution. If the people of this country wanted them to be legislators, I can tell you what they would have done. They would have amended the Constitution and had the power to change Federal law over to John Morton, Janet Napolitano, Eric Holder, for the President of the United States, or maybe even Michael Posner, the Assistant Secretary of State. Who knows.
That's not who we are. That's not the way it is. We must defend the rule of law. It is an essential pillar of American exceptionalism. We cannot sustain our greatness as a Nation if we're going to allow the discretionary--discretionary--enforcement of the law to come from executive branch people. And for a President of the United States, who taught constitutional law, albeit as an adjunct professor at the stellar University of Chicago School of Law, to think that that's the case, that he doesn't understand this any better, he thinks he can get away with it.
Well, I am here to say, no, the American people know better. We can read the Constitution. We can read our history. And we have access to the information necessary to keep an educated populace, coupled with an armed populace, coupled with the people that have enough self-
confidence to be in a full-throated way to stand up and defend our liberty and defend our freedom. That's who we are, Mr. Speaker. That's who we must remain. That's the character that we must maintain. And we cannot allow ourselves to be diminished by a people who happen to find themselves right now sitting in controlling positions within this government that don't understand or willfully defy our values as a Nation or our Constitution.
Mr. Speaker, I couldn't have picked a better moment to yield back the balance of my time.
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