Immigration
It's important to note that Congress writes the law.
Congress does not enforce the law. The Administration enforces
the law. All the laws Congress writes have no effect unless the
Administration enforces them.
That's important to note because Congress has passed many effective
laws to curtail illegal immigration and, if they had been enforced over
the years, we would not be in the situation we find ourselves in
today.
For example:
- In 1995, I chaired the 54-member Congressional Task Force on
Immigration Reform. Approximately 60% of the more than 80
specific recommendations we made were included in the “Illegal
Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996”,
which was signed into law on September 30, 1996.
- Among the law's provisions was worksite enforcement. Stiff
penalties, including jail time, were prescribed for employers who
knowingly hired illegal immigrants. Instead of enforcing the law, the
then-Administration made it easy for illegal immigrants to forge work
papers and impossible for employers to challenge an employee's right to
work.
That's just one of hundreds of examples. I have met repeatedly with the
directors of the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service and the
now-Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with Presidents and top
White House advisors, demanding better enforcement of our
laws.
Recently, President Bush began a more aggressive worksite enforcement
program, has required more industries to use an easy employee verification
system I authored into law, and has stepped up the program to screen for
immigration status at local jails—another program I authored, with Ventura
County's jail being a model of the program's effectiveness.
It's a good start. But only a start. For example:
- In 2004, Congress passed the “Intelligence Reform and Terrorism
Prevention Act”, which requires the Secretary of Homeland Security
to propose minimum standards for identification used by airline
passengers. We're still waiting. And while we do, anyone with a
matricula consular identification card can board an airplane.
- Consular cards are issued by foreign governments. There is no
attempt to determine whether the person obtaining the card is legally in
the United States. In fact, the only people who need these cards are
illegal immigrants, criminals and terrorists. No one denies this
fact.
So I will continue to author and work with my colleagues to author
good laws. And I will continue to pressure those who enforce the law until
they are enforced.
Economy
As I have said repeatedly, while I do not like government intervention, if we are to intervene, we must do so correctly. I believe the economic recovery bill passed by Congress on October 3 is fundamentally flawed. Congress should have stayed in Washington and not left until we had the right solution.
The underlying reason for our economic problem is that people are in homes they can’t afford and for which they never should have qualified. The roots of this go back to previous Administrations, when lenders were told they had to make loans to individuals who could not afford them. This was only compounded by tens of thousands of people, including illegal immigrants, who were given loans without proper scrutiny and often put no money down and made few payments, if any at all. Add to that greedy Wall Street scoundrels, unscrupulous mortgage brokers, and an ocean of consumer debt and it is easier to understand how we got into this mess.
None of these problems were addressed in the bill. Now, it is even more important that we aggressively make the necessary changes to end these policies and ensure this never happens again. I fully intend to focus my energy on that.
Energy
The U.S. energy crisis is not only a domestic crisis; it’s also a national security crisis. We are beholden to foreign powers for our energy supply, some of which are not particularly friendly to the United States.
It is therefore critical that the United States achieve energy independence. Doing so requires investment in all kinds of energy, including solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and nuclear. It means conserving where possible. It also means increasing domestic production and refinery capacity. The United States has an oil-based energy system. While we develop and transition to other energy sources, it is critical to develop domestic oil and natural gas capacities to guard against those foreign powers who would use oil scarcities to harm our economy.
When the world knows we are serious about becoming energy independent through all the resources and ingenuity available to us, prices will drop, our economy will rebound and we will have increased our national security.
Terrorism
It is no accident that a successful attack on U.S. soil has not been
accomplished since 9/11. But there are no guarantees. We are at war.
By design, the United States is not alone in this war. While the
U.S. must remain vigilant, we also work closely with our allies to fight
our common enemies.
I have been active on both fronts. As a senior member of the Foreign
Affairs Committee and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Europe, in
addition to being a senior member of the Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence, I work with our European and other allies to fight terrorism
here and abroad. Over the years, I have met with more than 100 heads of
state, government delegations, or members of foreign legislative
bodies.
Most recently, I traveled to Islamabad, Pakistan, to meet with
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on February 20, the day after the
Parliamentary elections. I was the first member of Congress to do so.
We discussed at length Pakistan's continuing role on the war on terror and
the problematic frontier section along the border with Afghanistan.
Earlier that week, I met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
and Deputy Prime Minister Tzipora Livni to discuss Israeli and Middle
East security and toured the Israeli town of Sderot, which has been under
siege from Hamas rockets fired from Gaza. I introduced and passed major
NATO expansion legislation and represented the House of
Representatives at the NATO summit in Prague in November 2002 at the
request of President Bush.
In January 2004, I traveled to Libya as part of an historic
congressional delegation to meet with Moammar Gadhafi after the
Libyan strongman denounced terrorism and agreed to open his country to
international arms inspectors.
Six weeks later, I chaired a meeting with family members of the victims
of Pan Am 103 to discuss progress with Libya.
On the home front, I chaired the first Foreign Affairs subcommittee
field hearing at Los Angeles International Airport after the 9/11
Commission released its report on the 9/11 attack. Eleven provisions
of the “9/11 Implementation Act” came out of my
subcommittee.
In addition, I authored anti-terrorism provisions in the “REAL
ID Act and the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration
Control Act.“
The work is ongoing, and I will continue to work with my congressional
colleagues and allied governments to fight our enemies until they are
defeated.
GI Bill
On May 15, the House Democratic leadership tried to use the Iraq/Afghanistan supplemental as a $250 billion Christmas tree filled with domestic spending unrelated to war spending.
I withheld my vote, as did most Republicans, to force the Democrats to come back with a clean war funding bill.
My vote on what the Democrats termed the GI Bill—which they attached as an amendment to the Emergency Supplemental—is similar. I am, in fact, a sponsor of the original GI Bill, but Democrats attached so much pork to the bill that it became a wasteful expenditure instead of a bill to help our military men and women.
We must support our military men and women. We also must control spending. It’s unconscionable that Democrats would exploit our troops to accelerate their wasteful, deficit-expanding spending.
The items the Democrats attached to the GI Bill included a $51.6 Billion Tax Increase, a Medicaid Regulations Moratorium, USAID funding for foreign countries, Gulf Coast Levees funding, and funding for the Bureau of Prisons and Census Bureau.
Democrats should not be exploiting our troops to force the passage of unrelated items. I and other fiscally conservative Republicans are demanding an up and down vote on the original GI Bill. Our men and women in uniform deserve no less. Then, if the Democrats want, we can have an up and down vote on these other issues and see if they survive on their merits.
