January 15, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 9 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session
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AMERICA IS BECOMING MORE PRO-LIFE; Congressional Record Vol. 166, No. 9
(House of Representatives - January 15, 2020)
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[Pages H291-H295] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] AMERICA IS BECOMING MORE PRO-LIFE The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2019, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) for 30 minutes. Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege and honor to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives. And given that we have had some serious discussion here this evening, I really appreciate my colleagues, Chris Smith and others, who have spent an hour addressing the life issue here. As we come up on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, January 22--I believe that is a date that will live in infamy--America is becoming a more and more pro-life country. And as we watch the transition that is taking place in this country, that has to do with the March for Life that comes out here every year, when thousands of people, many, many young people ride from my neighborhood about 18 or 20 hours on a bus to get here, and they gather on The Mall for the events and the speeches and the rally and then march to the Supreme Court building. We often host them here with some hot chocolate. Each of these years that go by, I meet more and more young people that have become part of the pro-life network. So the network that is here, it strengthens people. They look around and they see that they are not alone. They come from churches; they come from schools; they come from families; they come from neighborhoods; and they understand that they are not alone, that there is a patchwork of people that are active across this country that is emerging into the majority in America. I will submit that we are now a majority pro-life nation, and that would be consistent with polling, the Barna poll that we did about, I suppose, a year and a half ago or a little more that showed that, just on the Heartbeat bill alone, which I happen to be the author of, H.R. 490, that we saw 61 percent support for the Heartbeat bill, without exceptions. Republicans were up at about 85 or 86 percent; independents were around in the 60th percentile; and Democrats are even in support of it, in the majority, at 59 percent of Democrats. So it may have been that America was a little bit ignorant about the beginning of life and the science of life and the moment that life begins, but we all knew that in our hearts when, in 1973, it was one thing, and it was a political agenda that was driven. And Norma McCorvey regretted that she happened to be Jane Roe. So she actually didn't get an abortion, and she became pro-life in her later years and became a pro-life activist. So it didn't serve her, and it surely didn't serve America. But some number of over 61 million American babies have been aborted since that period of time. And there have been struggles in this city. There have been women that come to this city and march for abortion, and so many women who come and march for life. But here is what I see. In 1976, Mr. Speaker, our firstborn child came into the world; and, of course I anticipated that with eager and nervous anticipation. But when that little boy--actually, not so little. He was almost 9 pounds. When he went into my hands and my arms and I looked at him and I held him in awe at the miracle that he was and is today, it was just stunning to me that, from my wife, Marilyn, and I came this little baby, this miracle. To look at him, to look in his eyes, to see his dark hair, and he turned out to be a blue-eyed, dark-haired little guy, and he had a lot of hair on his head, and it was just such a miracle to see and count the fingers and toes and look how perfectly they were formed. {time} 1945 As he lay in his crib, I would sit and look at him, and there was an aura about that little baby boy. There was an aura about him. And you could have convinced me that he was the second coming of Jesus Christ, that is how strong that was to me, that little boy miracle. As I looked at that, I thought this little guy here, how could anybody take his life now in these first minutes of his life or how could someone take his life the minute before he was born or the hour before or the day before he was born or the week or the month or the trimester, the first, second, or third trimester? And I just thought that through as I held that little miracle in my hands, and I knew that this life was precious and a miracle the moment that I could hold him and touch him and see him and feel that warmth and smell that fresh baby smell on him. And within minutes I went back through this process of development of this miracle from the moment of conception until birth. And at that moment I knew that you couldn't take that little baby's life at any point in this stage. I knew that his life began at the moment of conception. And from that moment on this miracle and millions and millions of other miracles needed to be protected from that moment on, that life begins at the moment of conception. That was 1976. Twenty years later I went out to San Diego to the Republican National Convention, and certainly I had all of my colors on and all the things that are attached to your lapels and your delegation credentials that are out there. And on a Thursday afternoon at 3:00 I see on the tri- fold schedule there that said Christian Women for Choice are gathering there in San Diego at a location about a block and a half away from the convention center. Something called me internally and said, you have to go down there and see what is going on. I was curious. What scripture would be quoted to me from Christian Women for Choice? I took a friend with me and we went down and found this area. It was about an acre, I suppose, in size, maybe a little less, chain-link fence all the way around, stage in the middle, big old speakers up there and microphones. There were people still milling around, but there wasn't a program going on on the stage at that point. I went to an individual that looked like he was at least associated with somebody in charge and I asked him who was the leader of this and who is the head of the Christian Women for Choice. And he said, that is my wife, and he pointed to her and took me over and introduced me. We ended up on the stage. And as that conversation began, it became a debate. And I remember there in San Diego, for every delegate--I remember the number they told me--there was as many as 15,000 press in that city to cover the convention. So we had quite a lot of press in that protest zone where they would be looking for controversy. So the leader of Christian Women for Choice and I went at it in kind of a no-holds barred debate that just clashed back and forth between us. And several of the others would chime in for her, and every once in a while her husband would put his chin up over her shoulder, and he would bark some things at me, too. Mr. Speaker, I was far enough from home and convicted enough, having enough conviction for those that don't understand what that means, that I could just unload all of the things that needed to be said in the middle of that debate. She began to demand that we go out and collect the billions of dollars in child support that is owed by deadbeat dads is what she called them. And I said, I am happy to do that. I think they need to pay their child support, and I will be working to do that--it turned out in the Iowa Senate for starters--but you can't make that [[Page H292]] claim because that father doesn't have anything to say about whether that child is going to be born or not. If the mother is the only one that has anything to say, then when that child is born you don't have the claim that the father needs to pay the child support. Save the baby's life, protect this baby, and then we can hold the father to this. I am happy to do that. You don't have any claim to that, because you don't give the father any say in whether that baby is going to be born or not. And what I didn't hear anybody say here in this pro-life discussion that we had is the pain that a father goes through when the mother decides to abort the baby. I know people who have gone through that pain and that agony, and they were helpless to do anything about it. They want the baby. They say, I will raise the baby. It is mine. This is my flesh and blood. Give birth to this baby and I will take care of this baby for life. And when the mother says no, sometimes it is even a spiteful act. And I have had that happen close enough to me that I know that to be fact as well, Mr. Speaker. But in that debate with the head of Christian Women for Choice in San Diego in 1996 two things came out of that. Sometimes when you are tested under fire you get to a place where the principles are tempered to a point where they are no longer negotiable and they are as rock solid as they can be. Now I stand in auditoriums in schools K through 12, wherever the situation might be, and I will say to them, ``One day in your lives you will have this question come up around you, whether it is you asking the question or whether it is a friend of yours, acquaintance, or a relation, and it will be the question of abortion. Here are the two things you need to know''--and I will ask this question first, I will say, ``Is human life sacred in all of its forms?'' And they look a little bit slightly confused about what does ``all of its forms'' mean. And I say, ``Look at the person next to you. You are sitting next to one of your friends. Is that person's life sacred?'' And they are looking at you, Is your life sacred? And they will nod their heads and say, ``Yes, our lives are sacred.'' I say, ``So if you believe that human life is sacred, then is there any form of human life that is not sacred?'' How about someone that is a paraplegic, a quadriplegic, someone who is incapable of functioning verbally or getting up and moving in any way; is that person's life sacred? I say, yes, and so do they. They recognize that we have to have passion and compassion for all human beings. And so then once you establish that human life is sacred in all of its forms, then I say to them: Now you only have to ask one other question and that is, at what moment does life begin? Does it begin a week after birth? Does it begin the day after birth? Does it begin the minute after birth? That doesn't make sense to anybody in that gymnasium. These are young people, but they understand some things that seem to be confused over here some days, Mr. Speaker. I say to them, ``What about that baby a minute before the baby is born, is that life?'' And some of them might look a little confused, but most of them know it is life. But I will say, But how about the week before? How about the month before? How about if that baby is born by cesarean, when does that baby become alive? Is it the moment the mother is opened up by the surgeon in cesarean and that baby is brought forward? How could that be? We take it back to the moment of conception. We say even more accurately, the moment of fertilization, but the moment of conception. We get to this place where most every young person in that gathering understands human life is sacred in all of its forms. It has to be the highest value that we have, and that it begins at a moment and the only moment that exists is the moment of conception. From there on out it is a matter of continuum and continual growth and continual cell division, continual metabolism getting to the point where that baby is in a condition to be able to live outside the womb. And then we nurture that baby, up on that baby's feet, we nurture that baby all the way through until that baby is in a condition where they can take care of themselves and eventually take care of their own parents and their own children. That is life. It is precious. If you sit around in a household in a family, especially when we go through the holidays that we have gone through, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's, where families gather together and you watch with joy as they interact with each other, and you know there might be in some of these homes--you know there are--there is grandpa's empty chair over in the corner, he is gone now. He is missed. There is a vacancy in the chair and there is a vacuum in the family because maybe grandpa or grandma has been such a big part of that family, but they still cherish the joy that they have shared. They don't often lay an empty cradle there in the living room for that baby that was aborted, but that is also the soul and the spirit that is not there to share in that family joy as well. This Nation has aborted 61-plus million babies. The back of the envelope calculation says that if half of them were girls and you look at the frequency of abortion going back to 1973 in the years that these women would be having babies you can easily get to the place where we are not just missing 61 million--I say that; it sounds odd even as I say it--we are not missing 61 million, as appalling and as ghastly as that is, we are probably missing another 61 million of the babies that were never born because their mothers were aborted. Add it up. Call it 120 million. Round it back to 100 million. Here we are in this country, we have aborted a workforce of 100 million. And I hear over here, well, we have to import people into America. We have to have cheap foreign labor because, after all, the total fertility rate is low enough in America. We are not replacing ourselves, and we are not raising enough workers to fill the gap. I recall in the Iowa Senate there was a bill to require each health insurance policy to cover contraceptives and the female State Senators made this argument--back then we were at a full employment workforce as well, Mr. Speaker, as full as it is right now. Right now we are kind of knocking on the door of the lowest unemployment we have had in Iowa. Well, we had that back in about 1997 or 1998, as well. Some of the State Senators went off to the women's State legislators gathering, and they came back with this idea that was going to spread all over the country: every health insurance policy has to cover contraceptives. Here is the argument they made: They said, with this short workforce that we have, this full employment economy we have, we can't afford to have women missing work because they are pregnant and having babies and taking care of babies. And back then I said, Who is going to do the work in the next generation or two if we don't have babies being born now? How do you fill that gap? It seemed to me to be a simple equation that I had raised, but yet their agenda worked opposite it. We need to remember, this Nation has sinned, and this sin of abortion weighs on the conscience of a country, a country that could well have 100 million more American babies born here, raised here, learning our civilization, learning our culture, learning our history, learning our language, sharing and growing an even greater Nation than we are today. And the recovery of that is heavy. Even when we end this ghastly practice of aborting babies, innocent, unborn human life, we have a long way to go to ever get back to where nature would have had us if we hadn't interfered with abortion. It troubles me a great deal. And one of the things I have done is drafted and introduced the Heartbeat Protection Act. That is H.R. 490. What it does is it protects any baby with a heartbeat. In fact, it says this: If a heartbeat can be detected, the baby is protected. It is really that simple. And so it requires that if an abortionist is preparing to perform his trade, he must first do an ultrasound. If that ultrasound produces a heartbeat, then that is the first certain physical sign of life in the womb, a heartbeat, and that is about 6 weeks into pregnancy. We don't punish the mother. We do punish the so- called physician, the abortionist. If a heartbeat can be detected, the baby is protected. And in the last Congress we took it to 174 cosponsors. Mr. Speaker, it protects every baby because it is innocent, unborn human [[Page H293]] life. These sacred souls, and I believe that God places a soul in that little baby at the moment of conception. But their sacred, little souls, we protect all of them. There has been some discussion here in this Congress and around the country about exceptions for rape and incest. This bill doesn't have exceptions for rape and incest. We had the votes to pass it off the floor of the House in the previous Congress a little more than a year ago, and we had the votes to sustain it going through the Judiciary Committee in the previous Congress a little more than a year ago. We didn't get this to the markup in Judiciary. We had a hearing, we didn't get it to markup, and therefore, we didn't get it to the floor. I fear that we have failed an opportunity that we could have sent a very strong message over to the Senate, which likely would not have taken it up. But to the rest of America, that having exceptions for rape or incest says that those babies are not precious. I argue that they are as precious to God as my own grandchildren are precious to me. There cannot be a legal distinction between a baby that is born as a result of conception that comes from rape or that comes from incest. In fact, they are as precious as any others. In this legislation, H.R. 490, if we were to incorporate exceptions for rape and incest what we would have instead would be exceptions that the Court could look at and say, Just a minute. What about equal protection under the law? If there is going to be equal protections for all persons, whether born or unborn, then if there are exceptions for unborn persons that are the result of the act of rape or incest, then doesn't the Court look at that and conclude that we are inconsistent and that the equal protection clause really doesn't apply and that Congress didn't apply the equal protection clause to all of the unborn? {time} 2000 We must protect all of them, Mr. Speaker. From a moral standpoint, it is the right thing to do. From a legal and analytical standpoint, and with an anticipation of a court that would one day see this legislation--I would never sue on this, but you know the other side will--we have to make sure that we are consistent and that we are legally sound without exceptions for rape and incest. Furthermore, if you have incest that is taking place in a family, if you allow abortions for incest, that means that the family member that is perpetrating incest on usually the innocent young girl gets a pass each time there is an abortion because there is not evidence of his crime. But if you prohibit abortions for the sake of incest, you are likely to uncover the crime of the family member that is abusing, generally, the young lady within the family. So I am grateful for my colleagues, that they came here and each one of them spoke up with passion for innocent, unborn human life. We will get there one day. Just like Dr. Martin Luther King said: I may not get there with you, but we are going to get there. We will be a pro-life nation by law, and we will recognize these lives from the moment they are conceived within the womb. Mr. Speaker, I will conclude the component of this discussion on the life issue. Again, I thank my colleagues for the work that they do. Correct the Congressional Record Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to make a short comment here on another circumstance that has taken place in this Congress, and it works out like this, that a year ago last week, an unprecedented action took place in this Congress, and that was I did an interview with The New York Times, and I was misquoted in The New York Times. That quote, some people would say that, well, it was an organic, spontaneous eruption of social media and print media. I say, instead, no, it was an organized effort to set this up and create a railroaded firestorm against me. I knew that that was going to take place, and I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, why I know that. And that is, even though there was a nearly perfect storm created against me in the previous election, and we emerged from that with a victory, after the election and before Christmas of 2018, a very highly placed and respected political operative said to me they are going to try again. They have chosen a messenger to go to the President, and this messenger has the President's ear. The messenger is to convince the President to send out a negative tweet on me, and that negative tweet is supposedly going to trigger the worst firestorm of media assault on me that could possibly be unleashed, and that they would make that try again in that way. Well, I preempted that at the White House to the extent I could, and I believe that was successful. In fact, I have no doubt that that was successful. Then, by January 8 of last year, I was able to get a meeting with that messenger, who said, ``I would never do that to you, Steve,'' but that also let the messenger know that I knew what the strategy was and what the attempt would be. I let them know that I am going to blow this thing wide open and tell the public what was going on if they made that effort. That was on January 8. That sent the message through, perhaps, to any planners and strategists that I knew what was up. The very next day, a State senator announced that he would challenge me in a primary. That was at 11:23 a.m. He had no media planned. He had no website. He had no activities or any kind of evidence that he was planning to run that was at least on paper. Still, he announced by Twitter that he was going to run against me. He was also scheduled to swear in to the next General Assembly, the Iowa General Assembly, on the following Monday, about 4 days later. The most improbable time for anyone to announce they are going to run in a primary against a seated Member of Congress was that day, but he did that that day anyway. I let the messenger know I knew what was up. The next day, I get a primary opponent. The following day, The New York Times story came out, and the rest is history, Mr. Speaker, The New York Times with the misquote in it. There is no tape. It is his word against mine. He has notes, he says. He admits there is no tape. He has notes, he says, but he won't divulge even the question that he would say that he asked me. So I made the point here on the floor, that if I had uttered those words, it would have been in repetition to a question he asked me. But I often defend Western civilization. I never have uttered those words, those two odious ideologies. One of them is on this chart right here. When I gave the answer that questioned the definition here of what is this, white nationalism, what is it, I said: It might have meant something different 1 or 2 or 3 years ago, but today it implies racist. Well, what did it mean before that? We went back to the year 2000, LexisNexis, and it was virtually unused. You can see all the way along here. Mr. Speaker, I will describe it because you can't actually see it, but I can. All the way along here, you can see that it is virtually unused until you get to 2016, and then this term was used 10,000-plus times, then 30,000. It is still up at 20,000 times, so 2016, 2017, and 2018. I could not have been more accurate when I said: It might have meant something different 1, 2, or 3 years ago. This is in 2018: 1, 2, or 3 years ago. What did it mean here, when nobody was using it? That is a hard definition to come up with because it is not in this big dictionary over here. You can't look up two words together and find out what they mean by looking in a dictionary. That is the annual records, Mr. Speaker. So we looked into 2016 and asked the question: When did this jump up? Well, it jumped up right here in the month of November and then up there pretty high yet in December 2016. What happened in November? Two things: Donald Trump was elected President and the Democrats gathered at the Mandarin Occidental Hotel to plan a strategy and what they were going to do to prevent him from being an effective President. [[Page H294]] Then we broke the month down, and here is what we have. November 14 and 15, the time that George Soros and the Democratic leaders were in the Mandarin Occidental Hotel planning a strategy. Well, was it a weaponization strategy of the term ``white nationalism''? You bet, right there. That is what happened, Mr. Speaker. So they launched that as a weaponization, and they used it as a weapon against me. When I stated those words here on the floor of the House of Representatives, I said there is a pause between the two odious ideologies and ``Western civilization.'' I made that case, and then I demonstrated that significant pause. Even though we have the best stenographers, I believe, in the world here, and they have been great for me to work with, it came out with exactly the same mispunctuation that The New York Times had. So I have introduced the bill called H. Res. 789 to correct the Congressional Record to at least reflect what the C-SPAN video shows that I said. Now, it also demonstrates that if these excellent people here can end up with that punctuation, it is pretty easy to explain what happened to The New York Times. Meanwhile, there have been only four people in the history of the United States Congress who have been removed from their committees. Three of them are either Federal felons or confessed Federal--they have been convicted of Federal felonies or confessed to Federal felonies, three of them. And me? There is not even a rule that I violated. It is just simply the will and the whim and the bloodlust of a political lynch mob, and that has been going on for over a year now today. And it is going to end, and I am not going to wait until this next year goes by and have to win another election and make a case. Furthermore, the term ``white nationalist'' had never been consciously even uttered on the floor of the House of Representatives since 1789 all the way up until the time that Donald Trump was elected President or George Soros led this situation at the Mandarin Occidental Hotel. So this resolution, H. Res. 789, is filed and cosponsors are signing on to it. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record an article from Politico. [From POLITICO, Nov. 14, 2016] Soros Bands With Donors To Resist Trump, `Take Back Power' (By Kenneth P. Vogel) Major liberal funders huddle behind closed doors with Pelosi, Warren, Ellison, and union bosses to lick wounds, retrench. George Soros and other rich liberals who spent tens of millions of dollars trying to elect Hillary Clinton are gathering in Washington for a three-day, closed door meeting to retool the big-money left to fight back against Donald Trump. The conference, which kicked off Sunday night at Washington's pricey Mandarin Oriental hotel, is sponsored by the influential Democracy Alliance donor club, and will include appearances by leaders of most leading unions and liberal groups, as well as darlings of the left such as House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairman Keith Ellison, according to an agenda and other documents obtained by POLITICO. The meeting is the first major gathering of the institutional left since Trump's shocking victory over Hillary Clinton in last week's presidential election, and, if the agenda is any indication, liberals plan full-on trench warfare against Trump from Day One. Some sessions deal with gearing up for 2017 and 2018 elections, while others focus on thwarting President-elect Trump's 100-day plan, which the agenda calls ``a terrifying assault on President Obama's achievements--and our progressive vision for an equitable and just nation.'' Yet the meeting also comes as many liberals are reassessing their approach to politics--and the role of the Democracy Alliance, or DA, as the club is known in Democratic finance circles. The DA, its donors and beneficiary groups over the last decade have had a major hand in shaping the institutions of the left, including by orienting some of its key organizations around Clinton, and by basing their strategy around the idea that minorities and women constituted a so- called ``rising American electorate'' that could tip elections to Democrats. That didn't happen in the presidential election, where Trump won largely on the strength of his support from working-class whites. Additionally, exit polls suggested that issues like fighting climate change and the role of money in politics--which the DA's beneficiary groups have used to try to turn out voters--didn't resonate as much with the voters who carried Trump to victory. ``The DA itself should be called into question,'' said one Democratic strategist who has been active in the group and is attending the meeting. ``You can make a very good case it's nothing more than a social club for a handful wealthy white donors and labor union officials to drink wine and read memos, as the Democratic Party burns down around them.'' Another liberal operative who has been active in the DA since its founding rejected the notion that the group--or the left, more generally--needed to completely retool its approach to politics. ``We should not learn the wrong lesson from this election,'' said the operative, pointing out that Clinton is on track to win the popular vote and that Trump got fewer votes than the last GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney. ``We need our people to vote in greater numbers. For that to happen, we need candidates who inspire them to go to the polls on Election Day.'' But Gara LaMarche, the president of the DA, on Sunday evening told donors gathered at the Mandarin for a welcome dinner that some reassessment was in order. According to prepared remarks he provided to POLITICO, he said, ``You don't lose an election you were supposed to win, with so much at stake, without making some big mistakes, in assumptions, strategy and tactics.'' LaMarche added that the reassessment ``must take place without recrimination and fingerpointing, whatever frustration and anger some of us feel about our own allies in these efforts,'' and he said ``It is a process we should not rush, even as we gear up to resist the Trump administration.'' LaMarche emailed the donors last week that the meeting would begin the process of assessing ``what steps we will take together to resist the assaults that are coming and take back power, beginning in the states in 2017 and 2018.'' In addition to sessions focusing on protecting Obamacare and other pillars of Obama's legacy against dismantling by President-elect Trump, the agenda includes panels on rethinking polling and the left's approach to winning the working-class vote, as well as sessions stressing the importance of channeling cash to state legislative policy battles and races, where Republicans won big victories last week. Democrats need to invest more in training officials and developing policies in the states, argued Rep. Ellison (D- Minn.) on a Friday afternoon donor conference call, according to someone on the call. The call was organized by a DA- endorsed group called the State Innovation Exchange (or SiX), which Ellison urged the donors to support. Ellison, who is scheduled to speak on a Monday afternoon panel at the DA meeting on the challenge Democrats face in winning working-class votes, has been a leading liberal voice for a form of economic populism that Trump at times channeled more than Clinton. As liberals look to rebuild the post-Clinton Democratic Party on a more aggressively liberal bearing, Ellison has emerged as a top candidate to take over the Democratic National Committee, and he figures to be in high demand at the DA meeting. An Ellison spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday evening. Nor did a Trump spokesman. Raj Goyle, a New York Democratic activist who previously served in the Kansas state legislature and now sits on SiX's board, argued that many liberal activists and donors are ``disconnected from working class voters' concerns'' because they're cluster in coastal cities. ``And that hurt us this election,'' said Goyle, who is involved in the DA, and said its donors would do well to steer more cash to groups on the ground in landlocked states. ``Progressive donors and organizations need to immediately correct the lack of investment in state and local strategies.'' The Democracy Alliance was launched after the 2004 election by Soros, the late insurance mogul Peter Lewis, and a handful of fellow Democratic mega-donors who had combined to spend tens of millions trying to boost then-Sen. John Kerry's ultimately unsuccessful challenge to then-President George W. Bush. The donors' goal was to seed a set of advocacy groups and think tanks outside the Democratic Party that could push the party and its politicians to the left while also defending them against attack from the right. The group requires its members--a group that now numbers more than 100 and includes finance titans like Soros, Tom Steyer and Donald Sussman, as well as major labor unions and liberal foundations--to contribute a total of at least $200,000 a year to recommended groups. Members also pay annual dues of $30,000 to fund the DA staff and its meetings, which include catered meals and entertainment (on Sunday, interested donors were treated to a VIP tour of the recently opened National Museum of African American History and Culture). Since its inception in 2005, the DA has steered upward of $500 million to a range of groups, including pillars of the political left such as the watchdog group Media Matters, the policy advocacy outfit Center for American Progress and the data firm Catalist--all of which are run by Clinton allies who are expected to send representatives to the DA meeting. The degree to which those groups will be able to adapt to the post-Clinton Democratic Party is not entirely clear, though some of the key DA donors have given generously to them for years. [[Page H295]] That includes Soros, who, after stepping back a bit from campaign-related giving in recent years, had committed or donated $25 million to boosting Clinton and other Democratic candidates and causes in 2016. During the presidential primaries, Soros had argued that Trump and his GOP rival Ted Cruz were ``doing the work of ISIS.'' A Soros spokesman declined to comment for this story. But, given that the billionaire financier only periodically attends DA meetings and is seldom a part of the formal proceedings, his scheduled Tuesday morning appearance as a speaker suggests that he's committed to investing in opposing President Trump. The agenda item for a Tuesday morning ``conversation with George Soros'' invokes Soros' personal experience living through the Holocaust and Soviet Communism in the context of preparing for a Trump presidency. The agenda notes that the billionaire currency trader, who grew up in Hungary, ``has lived through Nazism and Communism, and has devoted his foundations to protecting the kinds of open societies around the world that are now threatened in the United States itself.'' LaMarche, who for years worked for Soros's Open Society foundations, told POLITICO that the references to Nazism and Communism are ``part of his standard bio.'' LaMarche, who is set to moderate the discussion with Soros, said the donor ``does not plan to compare whatever we face under Trump to Nazism, I can tell you that.'' LaMarche he also said, ``I don't think there is anyone who has looked at Trump, including many respected conservatives, who doesn't think the experience of authoritarian states would not be important to learn from here. And to the extent that Soros and his foundations have experience with xenophobia in Europe, Brexit, etc., we want to learn from that as well.'' The Soros conversation was added to the agenda after Election Day. It was just one of many changes made on the fly to adjust for last week's jarring result and the stark new reality facing liberals, who went from discussing ways to push an incoming President Clinton leftward, to instead discussing how to play defense. A pre-election working draft of the DA's agenda, obtained by POLITICO, featured a session on Clinton's first 100 days and another on ``moving a progressive national policy agenda in 2017.'' Those sessions were rebranded so that the first instead will examine ``what happened'' on the ``cataclysm of Election Day,'' while the second will focus on ``combating the massive threats from Trump and Congress in 2017.'' A session that before the election had been titled ``Can Our Elections Be Hacked,'' after the election was renamed ``Was the 2016 Election Hacked''--a theory that has percolated without evidence on the left to explain the surprising result. In his post-election emails to donors and operatives, LaMarche acknowledged the group had to ``scrap many of the original plans for the conference,'' explaining ``while we made no explicit assumptions about the outcome, the conference we planned, and the agenda you have seen, made more sense in the event of a Hillary Clinton victory.'' Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I will conclude my remarks, and I yield back the balance of my time. ____________________
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